Tisch Drama's training studios, theatre studies program, faculty, students and staff build relationships with new and existing communities as part of the Tisch School's Community Week 2017! Here's a look at how:
DEPARTMENT-WIDE ACTIVITIES:
Student-run Hurricane Relief Effort
Spearheaded by second-year Tisch Drama student, Kayla Zanakis, from October 2nd, through Monday, October 23rd, the department will collect supplies in support of communities impacted by recent natural disasters. Students and a Student Services advisor are working in coordination with the New York City Mayor’s Office, which has established drop off locations throughout the city to aid hurricane victims. Information about additional relief efforts has also been shared. Culminating on the closing weekend of Community Week, a special effort has been made to spread word about the relief effort to the Tisch Drama Community and beyond. Several professional training studios have incorporated the relief effort into their Community Day activities.
In Classrooms
Tisch Drama’s Theatre Studies faculty is incorporating the concept of community and relevant themes in classroom discussions and lectures.
AT THE STUDIOS:
Atlantic Acting School
Atlantic is planning a group activity on Community Day morning, between 9:00am and 10:30am. This will take the place as part of the first class. Students will be divided into groups, each composed of first, second, and third year students, and each group will be assigned a studio space. The groups will be led through an exercise with a faculty member that tasks them with creating a short piece in the time they have together. There will be a short sharing of the pieces at the end of the 90 minutes. The goal is to create stronger bonds within the studio between students who may have not yet met each other.
The Classical Studio
The Classical Studio will join with the Department of Dramatic Writing to have an open discussion on free speech, offense, and art-making (this will happen on the 7th floor in the Goldberg Theater). The Classical Studio students will then retire to the Cabaret, and have a discussion on the topic — particularly as it relates to the two offense-inducing plays Classical is presenting this year—and share a group meal.
Experimental Theatre Wing
ETW is honoring and exploring community this week and next.
On Tuesday, October 17, the ETW first-year students spent the morning meeting the 4th grade class at P.S. 3, a District Two public school in the West Village. The two classes (ETW and P.S 3 4th grade) are the same size. The two groups greeted each other and then broke into one- on-one buddies. They answered two questions: “When you first meet me some of the things you first think of are...” and “When you first meet me you don’t know this about me…” Then each ETW student was taken on a tour of P.S. 3 by their buddy. All students eventually met up in Beth’s 4th grade classroom, when they spoke together about the morning and then all (ETW, 4th grade, teachers,) learned and sang a song together. Back at Tisch, ETW students commented on how much one learns about their own community by stepping into another.
On Friday, October 20, the ETW community will celebrate Community Day in a number of ways. We are turning the ETW Lobby into a community “stoop” before classes, during breaks, and during lunch. Students are encouraged to start conversations with someone they don’t know, as well as to generate small performances inviting others to join in. Post-its will be available for students to write or draw on and post them anywhere. A large empty poster will be displayed inviting comments. Students will be given the opportunity to write anonymous letters to first years and seniors.
On Friday, October 27, the entire ETW community will spend all day, all together celebrating classwork, the mid-semester, and each other. Most classes will present work and lunch will be served. Students will break into small groups to talk together with people from each year. This community day, called Share Day, is a twice semester fixture at ETW and one of everyone’s favorites.
Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute
The Strasberg Institute will host an event during which students will read scenes from the play The Katrina Project: Hell or High Water and engage in discussion around the subject of community and crisis. The students will be working on analyzing and rehearsing this script in their Script Analysis class as well. This play is “an emotional journey into the hearts and souls of Hurricane Katrina survivors. The Katrina Project: Hell or High Water is based on actual interviews, collected stories, and found texts, providing a voice for one of the greatest natural disasters in our country's recorded history. The play follows a diverse group of characters as they reflect on, and experience the devastation, heartbreak, anger, and, ultimately, hope of the thousands affected by the Category 5 storm.”
New Studio on Broadway and The Meisner Studio
Barbara Allen from NSB and Gigi Buffington from Meisner will take a group of students from both studios to the Bronx to work with The Archer Shakespeareans, an after-school program at Archer Elementary School that provides 4th - 8th grade students with the opportunity to study and perform a Shakespeare play and learn how to play in a rock band. www.thearchershakespeareans.org
Playwrights Horizons Theater School
PHTS 2nd year students were given two words, “Uniquely America”, as a prompt to write short plays, that the 1st year students will rehearse and perform. We will use these plays as a vehicle to engage with both the joys and challenges of our current time, and as a way to build true community in the way only theatrical collaboration can.
Production & Design Studio
P&D will have an All-Studio "Breaking of Bread" (also known as a six-foot sub) at noon. The "price of admission" is to donate to Tisch Drama’s Disaster Relief Drive.
Stella Adler Studio of Acting
Students will write anonymous letters (for security reasons) to clients at Rikers Island Correctional Facility as part of Stella Adler Outreach Program. Words of support, or how seeing the work that the inmates are doing in the programs with our faculty have moved them.
Stonestreet Studio
On Community Day, Stonestreet will have a studio-wide screening to share pilots and series that our actors worked on in LA. The focus of the screening will also be to collect necessary items for the Tisch Drama's disaster relief drive, as a way not only to build community within Stonestreet but to help other communities in need.