Too Risky to Take Seriously?

This fall, I am back teaching the Theatre for Young Audiences class at NYU. We look beyond the traditional scope of what theatre for young audiences means and into a number of ancillary areas. Our conversations frequently turn to theatre in schools and the challenges this can bring.

This week, we will look specifically at works written by young playwrights. In preparation, I was reminded of this quote from Gerald Chapman's work, which connects to a number of questions the class have about why certain things can and can't be done in schools.

"Instead, the main requirement for playwriting is a vivid awareness of the life around you and inside you, and this awareness, as we find in these plays, is direct and often uncompromising in its voice. School authorities will not necessarily sympathize with this awareness, or at least with the way it is expressed, and that is a further reason why playwriting is not widely taught: it is too risky to take seriously." (p. 6)

This leaves me thinking that perhaps the way we improve theatre education for students is not through rubrics and contests specifically, but in finding an answer to the question: how can we create an environment that allows us to take students' work in the serious manner that it demands?

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