Day 1/11 - The Journal Begins

Well, here we are, the first 'fun class' I've taken in a while. I only need 18 credits to graduate, 9 in Cinema, 6 in Computer Science, and 3 in Theatre. I guess this class will finish my minor, but I'll be taking another Theatre class in the fall, so this class is truly an elective for me.

My first day of Drama in the Classroom was great. The instructor, Dr. Vershawn Young (Vershawn or Dr. V) began with, and sustained, an enthusiastic attitude and tangible interest in teaching the material that was only exceeded by the quality of his resume. I was hesitant going into the course, as I had been told that the other DitC instructor was really good. I'm very glad I'm taking the course now, and glad to have Dr. V as my instructor.

I'll be journaling once a day, about the day's lessons and assigned readings. Tonight I'll be writing by laptop and candlelight about Day 1 of 11.

I feel like I'm coming at this course from a different perspective than most in the class. For starters, I'm the only male save Dr. V, I'm neither an Education nor a Theatre major, and I have no intentions of teaching in a classroom setting, theatre or otherwise. Seeing those as negatives, the positive influences on my perspective are that I've performed educational and entertaining pieces for children of all ages, I'm a judge for the Iowa High School Speech Association, and I'm a director and teacher of an Improv Comedy troupe. Throughout my college career I've had to shape courses to fit my own goals and needs, and I'll have to do the same with this course, however, I dont' believe for a moment that I'll be learning 'useless knowledge' here.

One of the first things we did today was the beginnings of a KWL chart. KWL stands for:

K What do you already Know?
W What do you Want to know?
L What have you Learned?

Now, I've never heard of KWL before, but apparently it's some sort of aphrodisiac for education majors (for some reason, none of my teachers ever felt like using corny prescribed teaching methods, that only served to make me, and others, wary of them, hence my criticism). We stood in two circles, a member of the inner circle telling a member of the outer circle what they know, and a member of the outer circle telling what they want to know. In doing this I am once again reminded of one of my greatest weaknesses:

I am the shyest improv actor you will ever meet.

Fortunately this exercise had a structure I could fall back on. Hi, my name's Darin, here's what I know:

• Drama in the Classroom builds confidence in students, both in themselves as a performer, and in their interactions with classmates.

Hmm, now is that hypocricy, or self-medication? Irony is my favorite form of comedy.

Next we learned about the Actor's Tools:

• Body
• Voice
• Imagination

We did some yoga-ish warmups, here's where I think my confidence caught up. It's funny how many people believe things like this are ridiculous and stupid. A few people in the class seemed to think that. They go at it with an attitude like "I'm too cool for this. I'm only doing this because I have to, and I'm not going to enjoy it. See, look at me, I don't enjoy this". Improv has built up a lot of trust inside me, so in situations like this, I try not to make my classmates earn it for themselves. The body and voice warmups we did were familliar and unifying, though the imagination excercise reminded me again how silly a person can look as they try not to look silly.

The next thing we did was a Name Performance. We would come up with 2 adjectives to go with our name, and we'd perform them with gesture and vocality. The hardest part for me was coming up with my adjectives. I finally settled on Exploring Creating Darin, and determined my actions moments before going onstage. Allowing time to rehearse would have been nice, but I think I did alright. In watching others perform, I could see that people were becoming more and more comfortable, despite this activity's one-on-many nature. After the performances we offered an Aesthetic Valuing. Aesthetic Valuing is:

Evaluating the artistic elements of a performance.
Aestetic Valuing specifically responds to:

• What does the performance mean? Personally? Socially?
• Were the objectives achieved? In what manner? How well?

We offered two stars and a wish to each group, essentially an open-faced compliment sandwich.