How Big Can You Be? with Jessica López-Barkl and Darah Donaher

Hello! This month, Gina and Kelly sit down with Associate Professor of Theater and Communications Jessica López-Barkl and Assistant Professor of Theater Darah Donaher. In this episode, “How Big Can You Be?” Darah and Jess share with us the personal and professional growth students experience when they engage in theater driven pedagogies. Please be sure to subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @pedagogyagogo. 

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Transcript

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00:00:00 Gina Turner

One, two, three, 4.

00:00:03 Gina Turner

Pedagogy a go go.

00:00:07 Gina Turner

Pedagogy go go go.

00:00:14 Gina Turner

Hello and welcome to Pedagogy a Go-Go, a podcast about how we engage with learning and why.

00:00:21 Gina Turner

This is season 6, episode 2, How Big Can You Be with Associate Professor Jessica Barkle and Assistant Professor Dara Donoher.

00:00:31 Gina Turner

And we are your hosts, Kelly Allen and Gina Turner.

00:00:36 Gina Turner

Hi, Kelly Allen.

00:00:37 Kelly Allen

Hey, I don't know if like people realize that like

00:00:44 Kelly Allen

every time that we start this, like while you're saying your intro, I'm just like holding back trying not to laugh.

00:00:51 Kelly Allen

Because we've just been like yucking it up like right before.

00:00:54 Kelly Allen

But anyways, how are you doing today?

00:00:57 Gina Turner

I'm doing much better, actually.

00:01:00 Gina Turner

I came in with a headache, but just the yucks always help to treat the headache, and so I'm feeling much better.

00:01:08 Kelly Allen

Oh, that's awesome.

00:01:10 Gina Turner

How are you doing today?

00:01:11 Kelly Allen

I'm doing well.

00:01:13 Kelly Allen

I took a mostly me day today.

00:01:17 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

00:01:19 Kelly Allen

I think I was sharing with one of you 2 earlier that I finally created

00:01:26 Kelly Allen

So I make pottery.

00:01:28 Kelly Allen

So you guys know that.

00:01:30 Kelly Allen

Oh yeah.

00:01:30 Kelly Allen

So, and I would like to start selling that pottery.

00:01:34 Kelly Allen

So I created an LTD and this ceramics partner of mine and I are gonna sell some pots.

00:01:45 Gina Turner

Cool.

00:01:45 Kelly Allen

So I was like, I need to make some pots.

00:01:47 Kelly Allen

So I took a me day.

00:01:49 Kelly Allen

And I made pots.

00:01:50 Gina Turner

What a great thing to do.

00:01:52 Kelly Allen

It was wonderful.

00:01:54 Gina Turner

Like that, because you're also doing something that's creative and doing something that's hands-on.

00:01:59 Gina Turner

So that's like, you know, when I take a me day, it's like, binge watch a television show.

00:02:08 Kelly Allen

No, that's nighttime.

00:02:10 Kelly Allen

Oh, speaking of which,

00:02:11 Kelly Allen

Have you watched The Lowdown yet?

00:02:13 Gina Turner

Yes, I love it.

00:02:14 Kelly Allen

Okay, I'm only on episode 4, I think it is.

00:02:19 Kelly Allen

But my goodness, gravy, is that show amazing.

00:02:23 Gina Turner

It's really fun.

00:02:25 Gina Turner

It's really fun.

00:02:26 Gina Turner

I'm only, I've only watched 3, so don't give away.

00:02:29 Kelly Allen

I won't, Oh my goodness, it's so good.

00:02:32 Kelly Allen

But okay, and I'm going to loop this in to what we're talking about here and like with the ceramics and what have you, like I

00:02:40 Kelly Allen

am driven by like beauty, not in kind of like, the classical, whatever sense it is, but just like the making of beautiful things that make its way into the world.

00:02:54 Kelly Allen

Like listening to the Beatles, like

00:02:58 Kelly Allen

if I listen to a lot of this stuff all at once, I get overwhelmed by that feeling.

00:03:03 Kelly Allen

It's like, it's like, wow, they did all of this in like less than 10 years.

00:03:07 Kelly Allen

Like all these, like these beautiful things.

00:03:09 Kelly Allen

But like when I go and I look at art and, like, so we're talking with theater folks today, like when I watch a play, like I'm just completely overwhelmed by

00:03:22 Kelly Allen

the beautiful things that we are able to create.

00:03:26 Kelly Allen

And I'm really driven by this desire to be a part of that.

00:03:33 Kelly Allen

Like I want to make beautiful things.

00:03:37 Kelly Allen

And I'm not saying that my pots are beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but for me, like the actual, like actually making them

00:03:47 Kelly Allen

feels beautiful.

00:03:48 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:03:48 Gina Turner

Well, the act is beautiful of creation, right?

00:03:51 Gina Turner

So, and I'm sure your pots are absolutely gorgeous, Kelly.

00:03:54 Kelly Allen

Some of them are good.

00:03:56 Gina Turner

There's a word that I can't think of that's kind of like awe, but it's a better word.

00:04:00 Gina Turner

But it is that kind of overwhelming awe and joy that you feel watching something that's so

00:04:08 Gina Turner

so precisely and with so much care being made.

00:04:14 Gina Turner

And I, so I know what you mean.

00:04:17 Gina Turner

It's a simple example, but I was driving in today and I heard Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

00:04:26 Gina Turner

And that is just a perfectly crafted song.

00:04:30 Gina Turner

Those pips, they're back there, like narrating the song to us as she's, heartfelt, pouring her heart out.

00:04:40 Gina Turner

And I kind of had that feeling just listening to that song, like, wow, this is so...

00:04:46 Kelly Allen

Amazing.

00:04:47 Gina Turner

Yes, So I'm really excited to get to talk to some art folk today in our podcast.

00:04:54 Gina Turner

We get to have Associate Professor of Theatre, Jessica Barkle, and Assistant Professor, Dara Donoher, of Theatre and Communication.

00:05:04 Gina Turner

I guess the department is Theatre and Communication.

00:05:07 Kelly Allen

I think Jess teaches communication in theatre, and Dara is, I think she's exclusively

00:05:15 Kelly Allen

theatre and then she does the shows and stuff.

00:05:17 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:05:18 Kelly Allen

We'll ask.

00:05:19 Kelly Allen

We'll get some clarification.

00:05:21 Gina Turner

We will get some clarification.

00:05:23 Gina Turner

Yes, we will.

00:05:24 Kelly Allen

Cool.

00:05:24 Kelly Allen

Looking forward to it.

00:05:25 Gina Turner

Me too.

00:05:26 Gina Turner

If you had just one word to describe yourself as a teacher, what would it be?

00:05:35 Gina Turner

Well, I guess maybe we get started.

00:05:39 Kelly Allen

This is generally how it happens, yeah.

00:05:42 Gina Turner

And Jessica, you were just talking about

00:05:45 Gina Turner

teaching the persuasive speech.

00:05:48 Gina Turner

So maybe you can talk about the classes that you're teaching.

00:05:52 Jessica López-Barkl

I teach 2 sections of in-person Comm 101, one asynchronous, fully online, Comm 101.

00:06:02 Jessica López-Barkl

I teach theater portfolio, acting 2, plays, classics to contemporary.

00:06:11 Gina Turner

Wow, that's.

00:06:14 Jessica López-Barkl

It's technically 7, but we shouldn't really count portfolio as a full class because it's more like independent study and I meet with them once a week.

00:06:24 Jessica López-Barkl

Toward the beginning it was a little heavy.

00:06:26 Jessica López-Barkl

There were longer conversations, but now they're, I'm like, did you do the thing?

00:06:31 Jessica López-Barkl

Did you turn the thing in?

00:06:32 Jessica López-Barkl

Okay, great.

00:06:34 Jessica López-Barkl

I'll see you later.

00:06:36 Gina Turner

I was just talking to actually to the president of our college about how you spend, 90% of your energy with 10% of students.

00:06:44 Gina Turner

So it's always so great to have the students where it's like, you did it?

00:06:48 Gina Turner

Excellent.

00:06:49 Gina Turner

See you later.

00:06:50 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:06:51 Jessica López-Barkl

I think they were a little weirded out about that, like about.

00:06:55 Jessica López-Barkl

five weeks in, now I talk to them for like 5, we're done.

00:06:58 Jessica López-Barkl

Like, yeah, we're done.

00:06:59 Jessica López-Barkl

Because you have nothing else to show me until you do the thing I told you to do.

00:07:03 Jessica López-Barkl

Which doesn't do till the end of the semester, but I need to know that you did those things.

00:07:07 Darah Donaher

Yeah.

00:07:10 Gina Turner

And how about you, Darah?

00:07:11 Darah Donaher

I teach the acting one class, one section of it.

00:07:15 Darah Donaher

Claire Freeman teaches the other section of it.

00:07:17 Darah Donaher

I teach a section of introduction to theater in person, and then I teach an introduction to theater section asynchronous online.

00:07:26 Darah Donaher

And then

00:07:28 Darah Donaher

part of my course load is also directing the shows.

00:07:31 Darah Donaher

So I directed She Kills Monsters in October.

00:07:35 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:07:36 Darah Donaher

And then I pick up with the Circle Mirror Transformation.

00:07:38 Darah Donaher

We have auditions tonight and tomorrow for Circle Mirror.

00:07:42 Darah Donaher

So that counts within, that'll be in January.

00:07:45 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:07:45 Darah Donaher

Yeah.

00:07:46 Darah Donaher

So when we're not,

00:07:48 Darah Donaher

directing, then we might get extra.

00:07:49 Darah Donaher

So we kind of fluctuate on that on that scale.

00:07:53 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:07:54 Gina Turner

And then you might pick up some communications classes as well.

00:07:58 Darah Donaher

I probably won't.

00:07:59 Darah Donaher

Jess will stay on that a little bit.

00:08:02 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah, I sort of sit in a liminal state of theater, calm and English because the

00:08:10 Jessica López-Barkl

plays classes cross-listed.

00:08:12 Gina Turner

Okay, gotcha.

00:08:14 Jessica López-Barkl

So I have a sociology student in there right now.

00:08:19 Jessica López-Barkl

It's like all of you listen to this part and then Lily, you can kind of listen.

00:08:27 Kelly Allen

So Derek, are any of your classes online?

00:08:30 Darah Donaher

I do one section of Intro to Theatre online, fully asynchronous.

00:08:34 Kelly Allen

So for performance people, how do you feel about teaching online?

00:08:41 Darah Donaher

I was in grad school at the time getting my MFA at Michigan State when the pandemic hit.

00:08:46 Darah Donaher

But at Michigan State, so the way that training program worked was that I taught a bunch of classes while I was also a student.

00:08:55 Darah Donaher

And a lot of our course loads each semester for every grad student was that we taught at least one online course a semester because they

00:09:03 Darah Donaher

It was a way for us to make money in the department and things like that, right?

00:09:07 Darah Donaher

So they offered a ton of online courses already.

00:09:09 Darah Donaher

They were very forward in online learning.

00:09:12 Darah Donaher

Not much of it was performance-based, but I felt like I had a handle on a lot of those kinds of things.

00:09:18 Darah Donaher

And then pandemic, we did all have to switch.

00:09:20 Darah Donaher

And I was teaching my own sections of acting classes as a grad student, and Jess was teaching acting, and we had to pivot online.

00:09:27 Darah Donaher

So we've done it.

00:09:30 Darah Donaher

It happens and happened, but that intro theater class is not necessarily a performance-based.

00:09:36 Darah Donaher

It's much more, what is theater?

00:09:39 Darah Donaher

Where do we find it?

00:09:40 Darah Donaher

Let's read about it.

00:09:42 Darah Donaher

Let's look at some history.

00:09:43 Darah Donaher

But performance online is a whole subject in itself.

00:09:49 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah, I mean, I taught musical theater.

00:09:51 Jessica López-Barkl

I taught movement.

00:09:52 Jessica López-Barkl

I taught voice for performance.

00:09:54 Jessica López-Barkl

I taught

00:09:56 Jessica López-Barkl

all of my performance classes during the pandemic for about two full years.

00:10:00 Jessica López-Barkl

And I think that cohort that came out of that, I would say the only thing that was bad was voice.

00:10:09 Jessica López-Barkl

You can't truly test, because they had microphones, what they were actually producing.

00:10:15 Jessica López-Barkl

And so when I started casting alumni into some of our seasoned shows,

00:10:22 Jessica López-Barkl

it was obvious that had lacked.

00:10:24 Jessica López-Barkl

So I think it is possible to teach those performance courses.

00:10:27 Jessica López-Barkl

And actually, the industry has pivoted to that.

00:10:31 Jessica López-Barkl

They make you have your auditions for dance are on reels now.

00:10:36 Jessica López-Barkl

You need to know how to record it.

00:10:37 Jessica López-Barkl

Your singing is all recorded now.

00:10:40 Jessica López-Barkl

Your auditions are typically recorded.

00:10:42 Jessica López-Barkl

Everybody left their offices that they were paying for in New York City and work out of their home now to save money.

00:10:48 Jessica López-Barkl

So you send in your auditions.

00:10:51 Jessica López-Barkl

And so

00:10:52 Jessica López-Barkl

even though I wasn't a fan, it's too late.

00:10:55 Jessica López-Barkl

Like the industry shifted after.

00:10:57 Jessica López-Barkl

So having to teach them how to perform, utilizing that two-dimensional space is important.

00:11:04 Jessica López-Barkl

But voice for performance, I wouldn't do that again online ever again.

00:11:08 Jessica López-Barkl

It didn't work.

00:11:09 Kelly Allen

So what has been the impact of this shift?

00:11:14 Kelly Allen

I guess like first on the industry, but then

00:11:17 Kelly Allen

also kind of like when you're teaching, like what kind of students are coming out of that environment?

00:11:27 Jessica López-Barkl

I mean, there's two answers to that.

00:11:29 Jessica López-Barkl

Like even at NCC right now, I know we have some students who actually stopped being theater majors during the pandemic and they're back.

00:11:38 Jessica López-Barkl

And they don't necessarily know the students who maybe started last year, but are now in Acting 2 because they took Acting 1 with

00:11:45 Jessica López-Barkl

Bill Munimer during the pandemic.

00:11:47 Jessica López-Barkl

And so you kind of get to see that generational shift of the traumatized one versus the one that's been fully in person, but maybe had high school slash middle school during the pandemic.

00:12:02 Jessica López-Barkl

You have that side.

00:12:03 Jessica López-Barkl

But the other thing is that because they have to,

00:12:09 Jessica López-Barkl

When we were re-looking at our program map, it was very important to me that they understood and maybe worked more heavily with Mario's program in media and have switched our voice class that we had because we had like a one credit movement in voice.

00:12:25 Jessica López-Barkl

that's not going to help them anymore.

00:12:27 Jessica López-Barkl

So we wanted to make sure that transferred.

00:12:29 Jessica López-Barkl

We looked at other schools and I noticed not even our transfer partners had anything regarding voiceover work currently like what we're doing for podcasting and that idea of learning how to do this technical aspect, which they are going to be forced to do on their own when they have to send in self tapes during audition season.

00:12:47 Jessica López-Barkl

So we added that to our program map and our curriculum for those classes because that's the way the industry has pivoted.

00:12:56 Gina Turner

That's so interesting because one of our colleagues has a daughter who is trying to work as a performer in New York.

00:13:05 Gina Turner

And one of her issues is that because it's all recorded and sent in, now it's not 100 people waiting in line for the audition.

00:13:14 Gina Turner

It's 1000 people sending in audition.

00:13:18 Darah Donaher

And I did the thing where I stood in line in mid-January when I first moved to New York.

00:13:23 Darah Donaher

And you sign up on a list, the non-official list doesn't even exist anymore.

00:13:29 Darah Donaher

So now like lining up and putting your name on this list and going home and coming back like isn't a thing.

00:13:34 Darah Donaher

Now you have to go.

00:13:35 Darah Donaher

So it has changed the landscape of even what we're preparing students to walk into, which is very different from when you've been in New York and when I've been to New York.

00:13:45 Darah Donaher

And

00:13:47 Darah Donaher

It just has shifted the entire career moving forward.

00:13:52 Darah Donaher

But it's nice to go to conferences and talk to other professors about like, how are you dealing with and talk to casting directors and for them to say, in-person auditions aren't going away.

00:14:04 Darah Donaher

We're guaranteeing they're not going away.

00:14:06 Darah Donaher

But first step might be to screen now.

00:14:10 Darah Donaher

And, but then the access does open up, right?

00:14:13 Darah Donaher

All of a sudden the accessibility is more.

00:14:17 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:14:17 Jessica López-Barkl

It's amazing.

00:14:18 Jessica López-Barkl

As a mother, it's impossible to try to continue being a professional actor or director if I'm always having to pound the pavement.

00:14:29 Jessica López-Barkl

You just leave the industry at some point because you can't.

00:14:32 Jessica López-Barkl

But now I can.

00:14:33 Jessica López-Barkl

And I've had a whole different career post-pandemic as an actor again that I didn't expect to do because I was just like, my life choice, this is more important to me and I cannot spend 5 hours to wait in line.

00:14:47 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm a union member, so I get to, I'm on the list, but that doesn't even guarantee me the amount of time that I have to drive down to New York City or to those places to get that spot that I have received and then wait my turn.

00:15:01 Jessica López-Barkl

It still takes time because there's other people on the list.

00:15:04 Jessica López-Barkl

This has opened up that equity and that inclusion in a way that is amazing.

00:15:09 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:15:09 Darah Donaher

And I think what, if we look back at teaching, I think something that I spend time on now, maybe more than I did before,

00:15:17 Darah Donaher

is just basic of you need to make eye contact with each other.

00:15:22 Darah Donaher

And how do we actually look at each other?

00:15:24 Darah Donaher

And playing games in person, right?

00:15:27 Darah Donaher

We lost, we were able to play some games.

00:15:29 Darah Donaher

People kept coming out with all these different like drama classroom, online Zoom games.

00:15:34 Darah Donaher

And so like you try all of them and you pass the ball and you, right?

00:15:37 Darah Donaher

But it's all online.

00:15:38 Darah Donaher

And we did the best we could.

00:15:41 Darah Donaher

but having them back in a room to actually play and be like, it's okay to look at this person and really engage in a scene.

00:15:50 Darah Donaher

And that has been, I think, things that have formed since.

00:15:54 Darah Donaher

And we're learning like that is a skill.

00:15:56 Darah Donaher

And even without Zoom, that students who are on their phones all the time, they're not used to the personal interaction.

00:16:03 Darah Donaher

is really, is something that I hit on more than I had in the past.

00:16:07 Gina Turner

That's so interesting.

00:16:09 Gina Turner

And it also makes me think about how much they're seeing performance on say, TikTok or Instagram or

00:16:18 Gina Turner

YouTube or that people are producing their own content.

00:16:22 Gina Turner

I have a couple of little accounts that I follow.

00:16:25 Gina Turner

I love a blogger.

00:16:26 Gina Turner

They're absolutely hilarious.

00:16:29 Gina Turner

So are they kind of, are the students coming in thinking, I want to be on the stage or I want to be on TikTok?

00:16:38 Gina Turner

Or are they, I mean, are they talking about that where they want to?

00:16:42 Jessica López-Barkl

You know, it's interesting.

00:16:43 Jessica López-Barkl

That's a conversation that happens in this.

00:16:46 Jessica López-Barkl

thing that developed during the pandemic for those of us who had to do tech theater and television tech and film tech, it's called Office Hours Global now.

00:16:56 Jessica López-Barkl

And we talk a lot about on the pedagogical days, we talk a lot about how TikTok is pivoting to maybe some having some streaming of their own and how, you know, and you start to hear that because they get to know that stuff first because they're the tech people.

00:17:08 Jessica López-Barkl

And I still listen to that at least twice a week.

00:17:11 Jessica López-Barkl

It's every day.

00:17:11 Jessica López-Barkl

But it's like,

00:17:13 Jessica López-Barkl

It's wild to me how the industry has shifted and what people could have aspirations to do, and that was another reason we really wanted to add one of Mario's classes in the media area and make sure that...

00:17:25 Jessica López-Barkl

The technical aspects are not something that they frown upon, but that becomes a part of the way it's scaffolded into the program in the flow so that they see that it's not just another thing.

00:17:36 Jessica López-Barkl

It's something they have to do and they have to have their hands on.

00:17:39 Jessica López-Barkl

Gone are the days where you can just be a stupid actor.

00:17:42 Jessica López-Barkl

Like you just can't get away with that anymore.

00:17:46 Jessica López-Barkl

And I think

00:17:48 Jessica López-Barkl

we would be idiots if we didn't pivot with it and try to make sure that even though we might have some thoughts about wanting to be a TikTok star, they're making more money than we are.

00:18:02 Darah Donaher

And we also sit in a different position than some four years do because getting into a four year for theater, especially if they want to do musical theater or especially if they want to pursue a BFA,

00:18:15 Darah Donaher

they have to pre-screen for the larger schools.

00:18:18 Darah Donaher

So we're not even just preparing them for the industry of filming themselves for self-tape, but also we're prepping them hopefully in that class of, oh my gosh, it's called portfolio, that we're also preparing them.

00:18:32 Darah Donaher

We put it now, we changed what semester it's in our program map

00:18:35 Darah Donaher

to be in their third semester because all the college auditions happen in the January time slot.

00:18:42 Darah Donaher

So we also want to prepare or right now.

00:18:45 Darah Donaher

Pre-screens are starting to be due November 1st.

00:18:48 Darah Donaher

So we want to also prepare them to be able to do pre-screen to get into their four-year, which four-year colleagues aren't necessarily preparing them for that.

00:18:56 Darah Donaher

They're preparing them for this.

00:18:58 Darah Donaher

So we're preparing not only for four years, but also hopefully afterwards.

00:19:01 Jessica López-Barkl

And a lot of programs do their theater portfolio in that last semester because they're leaving their four-year and they're going, but ours makes more sense if it is in that penultimate semester because we hope that they don't think that they are ready to go join the industry after only two semesters.

00:19:18 Jessica López-Barkl

for schooling, it's scaffolded to prepare them for that, but that's not gonna, there's no backup plan.

00:19:24 Jessica López-Barkl

So they really need to go get that four-year education.

00:19:27 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm a big believer as somebody who comes from generational poverty that we need to save their money on this end because when they leave their four-year, they have to do internships where they make absolutely nothing to build that resume.

00:19:39 Jessica López-Barkl

And people who come from generational poverty like me, you're not,

00:19:43 Jessica López-Barkl

you're not going to know that you can't afford to do that show to get it on your resume because you can't pay your rent and you can't eat.

00:19:50 Jessica López-Barkl

So the opportunities are less.

00:19:52 Jessica López-Barkl

And I want to make sure that when we're centering that community college experience, which is mostly in-person, hands-on, that they are getting the most amazing training and they will be the most amazing people that we send off to these four years.

00:20:09 Gina Turner

So it's striking me that we've never talked to someone in, when we've had people on the podcast who are in the arts.

00:20:17 Gina Turner

Like, right?

00:20:18 Gina Turner

I don't think we've ever interviewed someone who is literally in the arts.

00:20:22 Gina Turner

We've talked to English faculty and science faculty and math faculty.

00:20:28 Gina Turner

So it makes me think of you really are

00:20:31 Gina Turner

having to mentor them in a very different way.

00:20:34 Gina Turner

And I guess this is also leading me to the next question, which is if you can think of a word to define yourself as a teacher and how you engage with your students, because it is a different, it feels a little different to me and maybe I'm wrong about that.

00:20:52 Kelly Allen

No, it feels a lot different.

00:20:53 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:20:55 Kelly Allen

No, sorry, I digress.

00:20:58 Gina Turner

I appreciate the validation.

00:21:00 Kelly Allen

Oh, Lord.

00:21:01 Darah Donaher

I think the word that comes to mind when I was thinking about it is just like the idea of being dynamic in a classroom.

00:21:10 Darah Donaher

We go from teaching a lecture-based, like for me on a Tuesday, like I go from teaching A lecture-based course

00:21:16 Darah Donaher

that we're talking about all different aspects of theater.

00:21:18 Darah Donaher

And then a little while later, I end up going to teach my acting class where then I'm involved and I'm up on my feet and I'm jumping around and I'm, because they might come in with that energy that's here.

00:21:29 Darah Donaher

So I have to then, the energy has to go up.

00:21:32 Darah Donaher

And so how do I, what game do we play?

00:21:35 Darah Donaher

How do I engage in the room and engage with them?

00:21:37 Darah Donaher

And so

00:21:39 Darah Donaher

the word that came to me was dynamic, just because that energy has to shift.

00:21:42 Darah Donaher

And then also on the days where it might just not exist, and how do we deal with that?

00:21:47 Darah Donaher

And being able to shift in the room, I think in a theater classroom is really important, just because you're going to get all different things in a day.

00:21:55 Darah Donaher

So dynamic would be mine.

00:21:57 Darah Donaher

And also, my name is Dara Donoher, so it starts with a D, so I have to keep with the D thing.

00:22:04 Kelly Allen

Your parents also start with D's.

00:22:06 Darah Donaher

My entire family is DD and my middle name is also D, Dara D'Alimpio Donoher.

00:22:12 Darah Donaher

So I have to keep only in the D's.

00:22:14 Gina Turner

So I had to use a D adjective.

00:22:17 Gina Turner

I love that comedic.

00:22:19 Darah Donaher

That's a whole other conversation.

00:22:26 Jessica López-Barkl

I've always said I follow the three pillars of rigor, consistency, and passion.

00:22:31 Jessica López-Barkl

But if it would be like just one, it's passion.

00:22:33 Jessica López-Barkl

I think at the end of the day, again, I have already said this, but I come from very poor people.

00:22:39 Jessica López-Barkl

And it didn't matter to me that I was poor and my dad was very loving, you know, and my mom was very loving.

00:22:47 Jessica López-Barkl

And you didn't, the rest of it,

00:22:50 Jessica López-Barkl

didn't matter as long as there was something passionate going on.

00:22:53 Jessica López-Barkl

I wouldn't say it was happy or sad, but that there was feeling there.

00:22:58 Jessica López-Barkl

And so when I'm in the classroom, I think that I always talk a little bit about what a theater professional, Patsy Rodenberg, calls the second circle.

00:23:06 Jessica López-Barkl

First circle is kind of what we're all doing right now.

00:23:08 Jessica López-Barkl

We're kind of sitting and relaxing and making this very conversational and fun.

00:23:12 Jessica López-Barkl

Second circle is that presence, that dynamic energy that Dara was talking about.

00:23:17 Jessica López-Barkl

And the third circle is like where you're just like too loud and maybe a little agit part.

00:23:20 Jessica López-Barkl

and that's too much.

00:23:22 Jessica López-Barkl

So we try to talk about that in theater, we have to be second circle.

00:23:27 Jessica López-Barkl

Maybe in film, we're a little first circle, but because their audience is very small, whereas the canvas of the stage of theater is much bigger, we do need that second circle performance.

00:23:40 Jessica López-Barkl

And

00:23:41 Jessica López-Barkl

I don't know how not to do that anymore, to be honest.

00:23:44 Jessica López-Barkl

Like I've been teaching college as I was since 2008, and I just don't know how to not be on the tips of, on the balls of my feet and always forward.

00:23:53 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:23:54 Jessica López-Barkl

So passion.

00:23:55 Gina Turner

Well, I love that framing.

00:23:57 Gina Turner

I've never heard it before, that first, second, and 3rd circle, because it strikes me that we all have to negotiate those circles as instructors in the front of a classroom, right?

00:24:08 Gina Turner

And also kind of move

00:24:11 Gina Turner

definitely between 1:00 and 2:00.

00:24:13 Gina Turner

And sometimes when you're trying to get that energy going up in the other room.

00:24:18 Gina Turner

I know, now that I have a name for it, I know I've been in third circle and it's unfortunate.

00:24:25 Jessica López-Barkl

That is not good for anyone when I'm there either.

00:24:33 Gina Turner

That's great.

00:24:34 Jessica López-Barkl

And yet when I've taught prisoners, they're like, you know, Miss, when we're there,

00:24:38 Jessica López-Barkl

we still like you.

00:24:39 Jessica López-Barkl

It's when we get quiet, you should get scared.

00:24:41 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm always like, oh, yeah.

00:24:43 Jessica López-Barkl

Good to know.

00:24:44 Jessica López-Barkl

Heard.

00:24:45 Jessica López-Barkl

Wow.

00:24:47 Gina Turner

Can you say a little bit more about working with prison population?

00:24:50 Jessica López-Barkl

Sure.

00:24:51 Jessica López-Barkl

I always tell people it's the best thing I've ever done.

00:24:54 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:24:55 Jessica López-Barkl

And no one ever sees it.

00:24:57 Jessica López-Barkl

So, you know, because it's so specific.

00:24:58 Jessica López-Barkl

But I've done it.

00:25:01 Jessica López-Barkl

I started doing it when I was in AmeriCorps in New Mexico.

00:25:04 Jessica López-Barkl

I worked in both,

00:25:08 Jessica López-Barkl

so youth detention for both boys and girls.

00:25:11 Jessica López-Barkl

And then I started teaching college to, in medium custody and maximum custody with Walla Walla Community College at their Washington State Penitentiary through the Sunshine Lady Foundation.

00:25:24 Jessica López-Barkl

It was soft money, and I just thought it was no way to make money, so I'm just going to go.

00:25:29 Jessica López-Barkl

And it was amazing.

00:25:31 Jessica López-Barkl

And I accidentally was teaching Introduction to Theater, and they read that the reason people started to understand Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett was because it was shown at a prison, and the guys were like, yeah, it's about waiting.

00:25:45 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:25:46 Jessica López-Barkl

Which is what Beckett kept saying.

00:25:47 Jessica López-Barkl

It's about waiting.

00:25:48 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah.

00:25:49 Jessica López-Barkl

And they're like, yeah, we know waiting.

00:25:51 Jessica López-Barkl

There's like the guy who just showed up.

00:25:52 Jessica López-Barkl

And then there's like the guy who's been here for like 2 weeks and he like keep telling you when like calls are going to happen.

00:25:57 Jessica López-Barkl

And they were like, hey, miss, has anyone ever like have prisoners done Waiting for Godot?

00:26:01 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, I don't actually don't know.

00:26:02 Jessica López-Barkl

Can we?

00:26:03 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, I don't know.

00:26:07 Jessica López-Barkl

So I ended up producing it in Washington State Penitentiary in their barber shop.

00:26:12 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:26:14 Jessica López-Barkl

And then we did Iceman Cometh there, and then funding dropped.

00:26:19 Jessica López-Barkl

And then when I worked up in New York, I worked in maximum security and medium security.

00:26:25 Jessica López-Barkl

at Solomon Correctional Facility, which was Maximum, and Woodburn Correctional Facility.

00:26:30 Jessica López-Barkl

But then at Wordburn, I started working with rehabilitation through the arts, which recently got more famous because of the film Sing Sing.

00:26:37 Gina Turner

Yes.

00:26:38 Jessica López-Barkl

So anytime people are like, Jessica knows those guys.

00:26:41 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, I do, but like, don't be impressed.

00:26:44 Jessica López-Barkl

Like, they're way cooler than I will ever be.

00:26:47 Jessica López-Barkl

But yeah, I do see that

00:26:52 Jessica López-Barkl

There are many things we just don't talk about in the world, and it gets shut into the prison system pretty quickly.

00:26:57 Jessica López-Barkl

And so I remember when I first started teaching the prison system, Obama was elected, and people kept talking about a post-historical society.

00:27:04 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, interesting.

00:27:06 Jessica López-Barkl

I work in a state that's 85% white and 90% people of color in the prison system.

00:27:13 Jessica López-Barkl

That's not true.

00:27:14 Jessica López-Barkl

There's that pipeline.

00:27:17 Jessica López-Barkl

And I grew up, my brother was in, youth detention and easily, started was in that pipeline as well.

00:27:23 Jessica López-Barkl

I don't think it necessarily discriminates race, but it's there and it's in poverty.

00:27:28 Jessica López-Barkl

And that's, you don't see rich people behind bars.

00:27:33 Jessica López-Barkl

So it was amazing to have conversations about death of a salesman.

00:27:39 Jessica López-Barkl

with a bunch of men in there and seeing how what they thought was what their dad did was what they were gonna do, but that the world changed so you can't do that anymore.

00:27:50 Jessica López-Barkl

And I can't take away how much amazing conversations I've had.

00:27:54 Jessica López-Barkl

Or like Iceman Cometh, there were dudes who were just in that bar for 20 years.

00:27:58 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:27:59 Jessica López-Barkl

So there were guys were like, yeah, I've been in the same bar.

00:28:02 Jessica López-Barkl

for the past 25.

00:28:04 Jessica López-Barkl

and I can't do that research.

00:28:06 Jessica López-Barkl

I can only have those actors just sitting authentically in front of me and have that happen.

00:28:11 Jessica López-Barkl

So that's, I can't, I can only say those things or read their papers, which you can never read, because that would be exploiting them.

00:28:18 Jessica López-Barkl

But some of the best papers I've ever read were from some of the men and women I've taught.

00:28:23 Jessica López-Barkl

So yeah.

00:28:24 Gina Turner

Do you think that informed you generally in terms of teaching like our population of students?

00:28:29 Jessica López-Barkl

Hitting that authentic voice.

00:28:31 Jessica López-Barkl

I know how to get there now.

00:28:32 Jessica López-Barkl

I know what it sounds like and I know how to train it.

00:28:36 Jessica López-Barkl

And that took time.

00:28:37 Jessica López-Barkl

that's its own pedagogical thing that is time.

00:28:40 Jessica López-Barkl

That heuristic process of layering and getting there.

00:28:47 Gina Turner

I'm just, I'm getting chills thinking about, you know, a production of

00:28:53 Gina Turner

I just forgot the name of the play.

00:28:55 Jessica López-Barkl

Waiting for Godot.

00:28:56 Jessica López-Barkl

I thought Waiting for Godot.

00:28:57 Jessica López-Barkl

Ice Wing Cometh.

00:28:58 Gina Turner

No, the other one.

00:28:59 Gina Turner

Death of a Salesman.

00:29:00 Gina Turner

Death of a Salesman.

00:29:01 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:29:01 Gina Turner

And that trapped feeling of the.

00:29:04 Jessica López-Barkl

That paralyzation.

00:29:06 Jessica López-Barkl

Yep.

00:29:06 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:29:07 Kelly Allen

I don't know, you just said so many things.

00:29:09 Kelly Allen

And then, like, and I want to make sure that we can, like, pivot over to Derek, because I, you know, know that you have been, you have a lot of experience.

00:29:21 Kelly Allen

with theater with children.

00:29:25 Kelly Allen

So, and I'm not, I'm not drawing parallels at all.

00:29:29 Kelly Allen

It's your experiences, but like, but before we, before we do that, like Jess, I just, like, I'm just curious, like, what, like, if you had to give, I don't want to say like an elevator speech, but like, if you had to, you know, just explain to someone,

00:29:47 Kelly Allen

like what the value is for theater in the prison system.

00:29:52 Kelly Allen

And hopefully, like, explain in a way that it's, not only valuable for those who are incarcerated, but for those who are not.

00:30:02 Kelly Allen

Like, I don't know if you could unpack that.

00:30:04 Jessica López-Barkl

Well, I mean, the persuasive argument is follow the money.

00:30:08 Jessica López-Barkl

Because recidivism, if you think about our tax dollars, is $60,000 per prisoner.

00:30:16 Jessica López-Barkl

in that we pay on our tax dollars, right?

00:30:19 Jessica López-Barkl

And the only thing that has been proven to lower recidivism is education.

00:30:25 Jessica López-Barkl

The only thing that is proven at 90 percentile to reduce recidivism, because that's 65 is just education, 90% is arts education.

00:30:34 Jessica López-Barkl

So California's state penitentiary system knows this.

00:30:37 Jessica López-Barkl

So there are arts education throughout California's penitentiary system because they followed the money.

00:30:42 Jessica López-Barkl

It is intrinsically

00:30:45 Jessica López-Barkl

good, but that never, you can't sell that to somebody.

00:30:48 Jessica López-Barkl

You can't sell that to a correctional officer who thinks his tax dollars are paying for me to come teach men or women in the prison system who they feel like, well, why do these people get these classes?

00:30:59 Jessica López-Barkl

Why do they get college?

00:31:01 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm like, I don't want to get in an argument with right now, because you could actually make sure I'm not here.

00:31:05 Jessica López-Barkl

they can kick me out.

00:31:07 Jessica López-Barkl

They can make my life horrible.

00:31:08 Jessica López-Barkl

So I don't say anything.

00:31:09 Jessica López-Barkl

But their tax dollars weren't paying for any of it.

00:31:11 Jessica López-Barkl

was always soft money at every institution I've worked at.

00:31:14 Jessica López-Barkl

But actually, it's in their best interest that they did, because it's the only thing proven to take that down.

00:31:22 Jessica López-Barkl

But the value, the value beyond that

00:31:26 Jessica López-Barkl

is how do you get people to tell stories that will make people want to sit down and hear them that live at, I can't get somebody to play Vladimir or Estragon or Lucky or Pazo in Waiting for Godot like the men I had sitting in front of me who had experienced 25 years down.

00:31:49 Jessica López-Barkl

And I got to watch that.

00:31:50 Jessica López-Barkl

And my father got to watch that.

00:31:52 Jessica López-Barkl

You know, my dad who had an 8th grade education,

00:31:55 Jessica López-Barkl

He came and he said, when he left and he goes, they all look like Troy, which is my brother's name.

00:32:00 Jessica López-Barkl

And I said, oh.

00:32:02 Jessica López-Barkl

And that hit me because I realized that was a fear of my father's, that my brother who had gotten caught up in that was going to end up there.

00:32:09 Jessica López-Barkl

And he realized none of those men were scary.

00:32:11 Jessica López-Barkl

I think he was frightened that I was teaching there.

00:32:13 Jessica López-Barkl

And he got to meet all those men and he got to see that they were amazing and well-spoken and that they respected me.

00:32:19 Jessica López-Barkl

and that he also saw an amazing story.

00:32:22 Jessica López-Barkl

Would a man from South Dakota want to go see Waiting for Godot and watch for two hours, this repetitive absurdist play?

00:32:28 Jessica López-Barkl

Probably not.

00:32:28 Jessica López-Barkl

He loved every minute of them.

00:32:30 Jessica López-Barkl

And he hugged them, which is weird because my father was not a hugger.

00:32:34 Jessica López-Barkl

So for me, it's like you take this, you know, my father, who I look at a lot of things from my father's point of view, is this idea of anybody can go see a story be told.

00:32:44 Jessica López-Barkl

And if it's done in an authentic way, it's going to hit you.

00:32:48 Jessica López-Barkl

You can follow the money or you can follow the story.

00:32:52 Kelly Allen

Yeah, but what I'm kind of also hearing in that kind of thread is like when getting the opportunity to, witness one of these productions, so for the people on the outside looking in, like they, it's an opportunity to understand that,

00:33:16 Kelly Allen

that these people are not defined by their incarceration.

00:33:19 Kelly Allen

And then I would have to say that the same is true when you look at it from the other way, that these individuals can, it's like, I am not defined by what I'm experiencing right now, no matter how much kind of,

00:33:36 Kelly Allen

the outside world wants to kind of brand that label on me.

00:33:42 Jessica López-Barkl

I mean, the sense of penitentiary and penitence, like this idea of time served for the crime that you do.

00:33:50 Jessica López-Barkl

And I've never taught a man or a woman in the prison system who was proud of what they, you know, like, or felt like they were a product of what they came from.

00:33:59 Jessica López-Barkl

I actually got a man who just yelled at me one day.

00:34:01 Jessica López-Barkl

He was like, no, I had good parents.

00:34:03 Jessica López-Barkl

This was absolutely on me.

00:34:05 Jessica López-Barkl

He was like, don't try to think that I was a product of something.

00:34:08 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, he's like, I'm serving my time because I should serve my time.

00:34:13 Jessica López-Barkl

And in RTA, my boss is a man who served 28 years.

00:34:17 Jessica López-Barkl

and I've learned a lot from him.

00:34:20 Jessica López-Barkl

he was like, he consents off of some of the men we work with through RTA.

00:34:25 Jessica López-Barkl

He's like, that man hasn't really accepted what he's done to his victims.

00:34:30 Jessica López-Barkl

and then one day he was like, he knows now.

00:34:32 Jessica López-Barkl

And he could tell.

00:34:33 Jessica López-Barkl

He could tell after having some deep acting or being in a show.

00:34:37 Jessica López-Barkl

Because I did On the Waterfront with them and I was the actor in it.

00:34:41 Jessica López-Barkl

was different because I'd always been a director, but this was the first time I was like an actor and I got to hang out backstage with them and we got ready and we were all nervous together.

00:34:48 Jessica López-Barkl

It was really crazy.

00:34:50 Jessica López-Barkl

But my boss comes up to me and he goes, that guy.

00:34:54 Jessica López-Barkl

that guy he knows now.

00:34:55 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, oh, that's amazing.

00:34:56 Jessica López-Barkl

And I kind of looked and I could see that he was sitting over with something because the character had brought something out in him that you couldn't have taught him.

00:35:04 Jessica López-Barkl

unless he had been forced to sit with it.

00:35:07 Gina Turner

Well, I am making the link back to theater and children because it is such an empathy building, I mean, and self-awareness and emotional intelligence building exercise to the theater.

00:35:21 Gina Turner

I mean, it is, right?

00:35:23 Gina Turner

So I mean, I'm sure you can see transformations in children that you've worked with.

00:35:29 Darah Donaher

Yeah, I think something that Jess said that hit me was

00:35:34 Darah Donaher

So many, so I work at Pennsylvania Youth Theater, which is an after-school programming that kids come to PYT.

00:35:42 Darah Donaher

Through PYT, I also do outreach into our local schools.

00:35:45 Darah Donaher

So I even go into the elementary schools to do workshops, whether it be for a certain grade or if it's over the summer.

00:35:53 Darah Donaher

But I've spent a lot of time, and I also worked at Moravian Academy's Swain campus as their theater teacher.

00:35:58 Darah Donaher

So in all of these ways, like at Swain, they had to take my class.

00:36:02 Darah Donaher

It was one of their specials classes.

00:36:03 Darah Donaher

So they came to my class because they had to.

00:36:05 Darah Donaher

Now some of the kids loved it, right?

00:36:07 Darah Donaher

Theater was their thing.

00:36:09 Darah Donaher

They were so happy.

00:36:10 Darah Donaher

When I go into an after-school program, usually they have signed up for it, but it is something, hopefully, that is free to them, that those are the schools we go into, right?

00:36:18 Darah Donaher

So we're getting funding from somewhere, whether it be the school or United Way or something

00:36:23 Darah Donaher

we have gotten money to go into the school to do a programming.

00:36:26 Darah Donaher

And then at PYT, again, hopefully the students who are signing up want to be there.

00:36:32 Darah Donaher

So I've seen all the levels of it, but something that Jess said, which was when, especially I'm going into a school where they might not ever see theater again, or this is their first thing,

00:36:43 Darah Donaher

Sometimes the theater part is what keeps them there for the day.

00:36:47 Darah Donaher

It's what gets them to school in the morning.

00:36:49 Darah Donaher

It's what...

00:36:50 Darah Donaher

I'm the director at Liberty High School for their shows.

00:36:53 Darah Donaher

So many of my students...

00:36:55 Darah Donaher

come up to me and it's the best part of my day when I'm here, right?

00:36:59 Darah Donaher

Or I wasn't going to come to school today.

00:37:01 Darah Donaher

I wasn't feeling great, but I'm here because I wanted to go to rehearsal.

00:37:05 Darah Donaher

Now, if they're sick, they need to stay home.

00:37:07 Darah Donaher

However, if it's just like, I wasn't sure I was going to take a mental health day, but I wanted to be at rehearsal and they know they can't come to rehearsal unless they were in school, that's their part of the day.

00:37:16 Darah Donaher

It's the same with band.

00:37:18 Darah Donaher

It could be the same with their art class.

00:37:20 Darah Donaher

Like the arts, a lot of the times for a lot of our students, K through 12 is the thing

00:37:25 Darah Donaher

that gets them to school.

00:37:27 Darah Donaher

It's the thing that keeps them at school.

00:37:29 Darah Donaher

It's the thing that diverts them from, I was going to go hang out with this person, but actually maybe this person, right?

00:37:35 Darah Donaher

It gives them other opportunities.

00:37:37 Darah Donaher

And I think it is part of that is that it's what keeps them going.

00:37:43 Darah Donaher

So I see that part of it.

00:37:45 Darah Donaher

And then, yeah, I think confidence building, empathy, compassion, joy, they get all of it when they,

00:37:52 Darah Donaher

Either they see a show.

00:37:53 Darah Donaher

Sometimes it's just simply by coming at PYT for our school shows.

00:37:57 Darah Donaher

We bring in 250 students a day to see our school shows.

00:38:01 Darah Donaher

And for so many of those schools, that could be the only time that student sees theater or it's the first time they see theater.

00:38:08 Darah Donaher

And they're six years old in kindergarten.

00:38:10 Darah Donaher

And I remember sitting in an audience at six years old and being like, I've never seen anything like this in my life.

00:38:16 Darah Donaher

And how do I do it?

00:38:17 Darah Donaher

Right?

00:38:18 Darah Donaher

And so like that's the thing then that they get to go home and

00:38:22 Darah Donaher

I start most of my, with my littles, I start class by talking about how do you play dress-up at home.

00:38:29 Darah Donaher

And that's what we're going to do.

00:38:30 Darah Donaher

And playing with your imagination is freeing.

00:38:36 Darah Donaher

And it's exciting when I get to work with younger students because they don't have those inhibitions yet.

00:38:41 Darah Donaher

So when I say be a tiger, the amount of seven-year-old incredible tigers I've seen is outnumbered.

00:38:50 Darah Donaher

That's something that at the collegiate level, I struggle with sometimes.

00:38:54 Darah Donaher

But because they do, they have the wall.

00:38:57 Darah Donaher

They're too cool to be tigers.

00:39:00 Darah Donaher

They're not full-bodied.

00:39:02 Darah Donaher

But yes, I think it is so important for children to have the opportunity, whether it be theater, music, art,

00:39:12 Darah Donaher

It builds confidence.

00:39:13 Darah Donaher

It builds, it helps them stay at school, literally.

00:39:18 Darah Donaher

And it gives them skills to problem solve.

00:39:21 Darah Donaher

So much of theater is problem solving.

00:39:23 Darah Donaher

There's so much problem solving.

00:39:25 Darah Donaher

They have to work as a team.

00:39:27 Darah Donaher

It's not an individual sport.

00:39:29 Darah Donaher

So just even having to be in a group project or things like that, like they build these skills that they don't,

00:39:36 Darah Donaher

Literally at PYT, hanging up a costume after a show is your responsibility.

00:39:42 Darah Donaher

Putting it on a hanger and putting it up next to your number.

00:39:45 Darah Donaher

It's a skill.

00:39:46 Darah Donaher

It's a skill.

00:39:47 Darah Donaher

It's a skill that if you can learn that at 8 years old, it is your responsibility to pick it up off the floor, put it on the hanger and hang it back up.

00:39:53 Darah Donaher

That's something for at home then.

00:39:55 Darah Donaher

Right?

00:39:56 Darah Donaher

You're responsible for your clothes.

00:39:57 Darah Donaher

You're responsible for your property.

00:39:59 Kelly Allen

My daughter doesn't do that.

00:40:01 Kelly Allen

Her crap is all over the damn place.

00:40:03 Gina Turner

I bet she does it at the theater though, Kelly.

00:40:05 Kelly Allen

Yeah, so now I know.

00:40:07 Kelly Allen

And I'm going to say, I'm going to be like, babe.

00:40:09 Darah Donaher

I love the things we learn about our children and other people.

00:40:12 Kelly Allen

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

00:40:14 Darah Donaher

No, So I just think there's all different, even to be able to sit at a rehearsal and know it's not my turn to be on stage right now, but I have to sit here quietly and I'm going to watch and I'm going to observe and learn and not be on my phone because I'm not allowed to be.

00:40:27 Darah Donaher

And how do we use our time?

00:40:29 Gina Turner

Oh, gosh.

00:40:29 Darah Donaher

Right.

00:40:30 Darah Donaher

So it's just all, it's all different skills.

00:40:33 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:40:34 Gina Turner

I was really thinking about collaboration and back to what you were both saying about eye contact and just that the ability to be in space with another human being is priceless to have those experiences.

00:40:46 Darah Donaher

And there aren't as many spaces that we're doing it.

00:40:48 Gina Turner

Right, exactly.

00:40:50 Darah Donaher

So it gives an opportunity.

00:40:51 Gina Turner

What is an exercise that you do with our NCC students that you just love, that you really do feel like helps them to build

00:41:00 Gina Turner

authenticity, helps them to build that collaboration.

00:41:03 Darah Donaher

I just did, I just finished my, they do like a, in my intro to theater, I have a playwriting assignment for them where they come in, they've thought about dreams that they've had, that they remember if they do.

00:41:16 Darah Donaher

And they come in and they share these dreams and they have to create

00:41:20 Darah Donaher

A five-minute play.

00:41:22 Darah Donaher

Most of them it's longer because they get so excited.

00:41:25 Darah Donaher

A five-minute play, but they have to write it, they have to act in it, they direct it, they have to bring in props.

00:41:31 Darah Donaher

But the amount of fun that they had with being like, at first they're like, what?

00:41:34 Darah Donaher

Because it feels so daunting.

00:41:36 Darah Donaher

And then at the end they're like, are we writing another one?

00:41:38 Darah Donaher

But they love it.

00:41:40 Darah Donaher

It's their favorite thing of the whole semester.

00:41:42 Darah Donaher

I love it because they get to be so creative.

00:41:45 Darah Donaher

And there's parameters and things, but watching them go from, in a group of five, and then a few weeks later, they're performing this play.

00:41:55 Darah Donaher

It's just so joyful.

00:41:56 Darah Donaher

And they watching each other have so much joy, and it's like the loudest cheer you'll ever hear from the rest of the class that their classmates did it, because they also did it, and they're having rehearsal outside of class.

00:42:06 Darah Donaher

It's just,

00:42:07 Darah Donaher

It's so fun.

00:42:08 Gina Turner

And they're doing everything.

00:42:09 Gina Turner

They're writing, they're directing, they're doing all of the aspects of it.

00:42:14 Gina Turner

So again, there's that responsibility and collaboration going on.

00:42:18 Darah Donaher

Yeah, all that collaboration.

00:42:20 Gina Turner

That's so cool.

00:42:20 Gina Turner

How about you, Jess?

00:42:21 Jessica López-Barkl

You know, I'm just getting to know our NCC students, and I got them in acting too.

00:42:25 Jessica López-Barkl

And so it was a little bit of experimentation this semester to, you know, the first week I said, hey, you know what, come next week with a monologue and a scene.

00:42:35 Jessica López-Barkl

show off for me.

00:42:36 Jessica López-Barkl

I want to see what you got.

00:42:37 Jessica López-Barkl

And then we've been kind of building from there.

00:42:39 Jessica López-Barkl

I have a curriculum, obviously, that I follow, but that was kind of how we started.

00:42:42 Jessica López-Barkl

And we do, we have hesitancy and we were struggling with voice and we were supposed to be doing Greeks and Shakespeare, which is in the curriculum and in the

00:42:53 Jessica López-Barkl

course description and they're not ready for it, which is why we need to change the program map.

00:42:59 Jessica López-Barkl

But we worked with what we had.

00:43:00 Jessica López-Barkl

It was so funny.

00:43:01 Jessica López-Barkl

It was like the past two weeks were kind of golden.

00:43:04 Jessica López-Barkl

There's a lot of frustration, I think, with me.

00:43:06 Jessica López-Barkl

And I read their journals every week.

00:43:07 Jessica López-Barkl

They have a reflection journal that they have to write every week.

00:43:10 Jessica López-Barkl

in addition to some text analysis and actual learning and warming up and doing all the stuff.

00:43:15 Jessica López-Barkl

And each week I, or two weeks, I do different pedagogies as we go along.

00:43:19 Jessica López-Barkl

And we hit the global majority area of Vissav Lode-Meyer Hold, which is

00:43:24 Jessica López-Barkl

He was a artist who taught biomechanics in Russia and in fact died because Stalin killed him.

00:43:33 Jessica López-Barkl

And then I did Tadashi Suzuki work right after that, which is what we've been doing.

00:43:37 Jessica López-Barkl

And it's hilarious.

00:43:38 Jessica López-Barkl

The room has changed.

00:43:40 Jessica López-Barkl

Like they are, they noticed.

00:43:42 Jessica López-Barkl

They noticed.

00:43:42 Jessica López-Barkl

They're stomping.

00:43:43 Jessica López-Barkl

Well, because we had this day where you have to dance with Stick, which is this like Jacques Lecoq, the Savolode Meyer whole thing.

00:43:50 Jessica López-Barkl

And there was this other act, this thing where I went, come to Mama.

00:43:52 Jessica López-Barkl

And they have to run at me

00:43:54 Jessica López-Barkl

with their eyes closed and notice when they get scared.

00:43:57 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:43:58 Jessica López-Barkl

And notice their blocks and notice where they, and it was so funny.

00:44:02 Jessica López-Barkl

And it was so funny to watch none of the, even the playing field, nobody could dance with a stick.

00:44:06 Jessica López-Barkl

It was so funny when she saw me, what are you doing today?

00:44:08 Jessica López-Barkl

I was like, stick.

00:44:08 Jessica López-Barkl

And she goes, stick.

00:44:10 Jessica López-Barkl

And then the next week I was grabbing another thing of the bigger stick and she goes, what you doing today?

00:44:14 Jessica López-Barkl

I was like, Suzuki.

00:44:15 Jessica López-Barkl

And she goes, and I got up there.

00:44:18 Jessica López-Barkl

And then, you know what's so funny is they bought, after the dancing with stick and the Come to Mama, they were all at the same level and they were

00:44:24 Jessica López-Barkl

all crazy and having fun that when I came in with this really, really strict Noh theater, kabuki theater mixed with ballet, strangely, the Japanese drinking song where they're having to look over on the horizon at their enemy and hold 2 invisible sticks with buckets of water on it and like go down in a grande plier and sing this crazy Japanese drinking song, one thing down and one thing up, they all came up and they were like, second circle.

00:44:54 Jessica López-Barkl

That's great.

00:44:55 Jessica López-Barkl

And they were so much more fun with each other.

00:44:56 Jessica López-Barkl

And we were doing the absurdist scenes, because the curriculum and the course description asked for absurdism.

00:45:02 Jessica López-Barkl

So they're doing like Eugenio Nesco, Rhionnaceros, they were doing Wayne Never Godot, they were doing The Lesson, Beckett's play that's called play where there are three people and urns.

00:45:13 Jessica López-Barkl

Love it.

00:45:15 Jessica López-Barkl

was the best work they did.

00:45:16 Jessica López-Barkl

And so I would never have said, oh, that's the key.

00:45:20 Jessica López-Barkl

But now I feel like that was the key.

00:45:23 Jessica López-Barkl

We need more physical

00:45:24 Jessica López-Barkl

We need more global majority techniques and pedagogies in our classrooms to sort of open that up.

00:45:30 Gina Turner

I think I remember that song from when I was in undergrad.

00:45:37 Jessica López-Barkl

I didn't learn it in Japanese, but it says when evening comes to Tokyo.

00:45:44 Jessica López-Barkl

Let's fill the city.

00:45:46 Jessica López-Barkl

Lonely I sit and stare.

00:45:48 Jessica López-Barkl

My tears, my only friends.

00:45:50 Jessica López-Barkl

Yes, Oh my gosh.

00:45:53 Gina Turner

Yeah, so Suzuki technique is an acting technique that is really, you're really grounding your body physically and you do a lot of stomping around.

00:46:02 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah, they have this thing called the grammar of the feet.

00:46:05 Jessica López-Barkl

I have them walk across the floor like only on the outsides, but you have to roll and you have to hold and you're stepping on the ancestors and you cannot break their bones.

00:46:12 Jessica López-Barkl

and you have a spider on you and you do not want to drop the spider.

00:46:14 Jessica López-Barkl

They're all the students are like, yeah, They totally went for it.

00:46:17 Jessica López-Barkl

And if you had told me that our students at CCU would have fallen for that at the beginning of the semester, I would have said no.

00:46:23 Jessica López-Barkl

But even them, they were like, Ryan, that was the best thing that's ever happened to me.

00:46:26 Jessica López-Barkl

Dancing with stick.

00:46:27 Jessica López-Barkl

It made me cry, but I loved it.

00:46:28 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm like, all right, come to Mama.

00:46:31 Gina Turner

You know, and it's another thing that our students aren't embodied, right?

00:46:35 Gina Turner

We're so caught up in what we're supposed to look like and how we're supposed to be.

00:46:42 Gina Turner

in space.

00:46:42 Gina Turner

And as adults, we're also supposed to not use our bodies and be scared of our own bodies.

00:46:49 Gina Turner

How small can you be?

00:46:50 Gina Turner

How small can you be, exactly?

00:46:52 Darah Donaher

And yet in all my classes, I'm like, but how big can you be?

00:46:55 Jessica López-Barkl

Where's the chaos?

00:46:58 Jessica López-Barkl

Give me some controlled chaos.

00:46:59 Jessica López-Barkl

That creates second circle.

00:47:04 Gina Turner

Says Kelly.

00:47:05 Kelly Allen

Yeah, I don't know.

00:47:06 Kelly Allen

And just like that phrase, like, how small can I be?

00:47:09 Kelly Allen

Like, I

00:47:11 Kelly Allen

I'm thinking about how often that happens in my classes.

00:47:17 Kelly Allen

Like, totally subconsciously, they're just trying to figure out like how small can I be in this class and just get by or just not get noticed, not have to perform whatever.

00:47:31 Kelly Allen

But

00:47:33 Kelly Allen

That's terrifying.

00:47:34 Kelly Allen

Okay.

00:47:34 Jessica López-Barkl

And on the flip side, too, is like we tend to breed a lot of neurodivergent humans.

00:47:41 Jessica López-Barkl

And as somebody with autism, it's fascinating to think about my masking I did most of my life and how exhausting that is, but that I loved theater because theater allowed me to be all these other people.

00:47:52 Jessica López-Barkl

It didn't have to be me.

00:47:54 Jessica López-Barkl

And that was so, it's very strange to think I was the first day of acting class.

00:47:58 Jessica López-Barkl

I'm like, we are a tribe of people who hate themselves.

00:48:03 Jessica López-Barkl

The students always look at me and they're like, it's true.

00:48:06 Jessica López-Barkl

I mean, because we want to play other people.

00:48:09 Jessica López-Barkl

So there is a level of self-hatred that just sits in how small can I be because I want to hide me, but I can get big when I play someone else, when I don't have to sit in that level of self-hatred.

00:48:23 Jessica López-Barkl

And so it's freeing and that embodying is wonderful.

00:48:27 Jessica López-Barkl

Even though it seems that two things can be held to be true at the same time, I can hate myself and do a good job.

00:48:32 Gina Turner

Yeah, I just, I'm thinking now too, like, how do I embody my psychology students?

00:48:40 Gina Turner

I mean, I did, you know, my health psychology class, we would do a little bit of yoga, you know, toward the end of the semester in the spring.

00:48:46 Gina Turner

But how do you get people to

00:48:50 Gina Turner

be bigger, and it seems like we could take some pages out of the theater faculty book.

00:48:56 Darah Donaher

I don't think a game ever hurts.

00:48:57 Darah Donaher

Or a little dance it out.

00:49:00 Darah Donaher

Dance it out, play a game.

00:49:02 Darah Donaher

We did some stuff with like business majors at Michigan State and how you can bring improv into different areas and games are always good.

00:49:12 Darah Donaher

Games are always good and they always want to play a game and just to start class with it or end class with it.

00:49:18 Darah Donaher

we forget that play is in our nature and so games and play are anything.

00:49:25 Jessica López-Barkl

That interdisciplinary partnership of being able to integrate the arts into any and all areas was a class I used to teach in New York called Methods of Elementary Theater Education where you taught those games, but how does that apply to social studies?

00:49:41 Jessica López-Barkl

How does that apply to language arts?

00:49:42 Jessica López-Barkl

How does that apply to science?

00:49:44 Jessica López-Barkl

How does that, and there was a game for each and we hope to encourage

00:49:47 Jessica López-Barkl

I encourage that class to exist someday, but we have other things that we need to.

00:49:52 Darah Donaher

Even I taught about the Moravians that settled in Bethlehem to a third grade class through theater.

00:49:58 Darah Donaher

Wow.

00:49:58 Darah Donaher

And it was so much fun, right?

00:50:00 Darah Donaher

And we could still like play games and I was able to teach about the Moravians, but bring theater into it.

00:50:05 Darah Donaher

And then it's just awesome.

00:50:08 Gina Turner

Oh gosh.

00:50:09 Gina Turner

I want to be a theater major.

00:50:13 Darah Donaher

Hang out.

00:50:14 Darah Donaher

Well, when she tells me about the stuff she's doing, when Jess does stuff in her acting 2 class, when she was like, we're doing Suzuki, I was like, can I come up?

00:50:20 Darah Donaher

You could have.

00:50:21 Darah Donaher

I would not have stopped you.

00:50:23 Jessica López-Barkl

They would have, they would have like, after Dance with Stick, they're open to whatever now.

00:50:27 Jessica López-Barkl

Like, whatever you want, crazy lady, we will follow you.

00:50:30 Gina Turner

Well, I don't want to bring the room down, but we do like to ask if there are things that you would change about the profession or change about

00:50:42 Gina Turner

the way theater is taught or anything.

00:50:45 Gina Turner

I mean, you've already sort of highlighted, like you mentioned, this sort of global perspective on acting training.

00:50:52 Gina Turner

Other things that you would want to add or change.

00:50:55 Jessica López-Barkl

I think the industry is doing a lot of that.

00:50:57 Jessica López-Barkl

There's a lot of gate, there's a lot of gatekeeping.

00:50:59 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah, the gatekeeping of our industry is hard.

00:51:04 Jessica López-Barkl

getting over audience development and this mentality that we don't leave our homes anymore, we can get everything on a streaming service and having in-person experiences is, you better have food or alcohol attached to it or I'm not coming.

00:51:20 Jessica López-Barkl

Is it done at 9?

00:51:22 Jessica López-Barkl

So I mean, that's, I don't know, there's nothing we can change about that.

00:51:27 Jessica López-Barkl

I would, you know, I was thinking about that question last night.

00:51:29 Jessica López-Barkl

I thought,

00:51:30 Jessica López-Barkl

I would love for higher ed to not always think that the first thing when they're in a budget crunch is that we're going to cut the arts.

00:51:36 Jessica López-Barkl

And they always cut theater first.

00:51:38 Jessica López-Barkl

I've been the product of two theater programs in community college settings that have ended.

00:51:43 Jessica López-Barkl

So as a 47-year-old, this is the third time I'm starting at another community college.

00:51:48 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm so happy to be here.

00:51:49 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm so happy that they loved it enough to bring two of us because it's impossible to do alone.

00:51:54 Jessica López-Barkl

So excited to have a partner in this.

00:51:56 Jessica López-Barkl

But

00:51:57 Jessica López-Barkl

I would love for when we're at the table and thinking about budget cuts, can we stop thinking that theater is the first thing that should go?

00:52:04 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah.

00:52:05 Jessica López-Barkl

And if I was going to bring the room down, that's what I would say.

00:52:08 Darah Donaher

No, I think that's true.

00:52:09 Darah Donaher

And I'm a little bit newer to everything, especially to higher ed.

00:52:14 Darah Donaher

I did my grad school and I've adjuncted, but this first full-time gig for me.

00:52:19 Darah Donaher

And so I think I'm getting to learn it and know it.

00:52:22 Darah Donaher

But just in general,

00:52:24 Darah Donaher

accessibility, I think, is one of our weakest that I wish we could do more for.

00:52:33 Darah Donaher

I think the hardest part of like, yeah, we can offer online classes, but it's not the best online, or how do we make it better online so that we can offer more online, and then more people can take it, and more majors could take it then because they can't fit it into their class schedule, but they would love to take a theater class.

00:52:48 Darah Donaher

And so I think the accessibility of it is something that I sit with and I go,

00:52:55 Darah Donaher

wish it could change.

00:52:56 Darah Donaher

How do I change it?

00:52:57 Darah Donaher

Right?

00:52:57 Darah Donaher

It's that like, I'm sure I could do something and it's the finding the what?

00:53:02 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah.

00:53:03 Jessica López-Barkl

Six years ago, I was a little upset with the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and how they were treating community college students.

00:53:11 Jessica López-Barkl

And my students in particular at the time felt like they would only choose the big four years and they were the one, the only ones who are winning.

00:53:17 Jessica López-Barkl

And I thought, okay, maybe like cheerleading, we should have one that's just like the double A and the triple A's and maybe the community colleges.

00:53:26 Jessica López-Barkl

And the students were like, no, because then that's dumbing it down.

00:53:28 Jessica López-Barkl

And I was like, oh, okay, I hadn't thought of that before.

00:53:30 Jessica López-Barkl

But

00:53:31 Jessica López-Barkl

I thought you can only change from within, so I joined their boards.

00:53:35 Jessica López-Barkl

And I joined what at the time was called Representation, Equity, and Diversity, but it's now called Building Opportunities through Leadership and Development.

00:53:43 Jessica López-Barkl

But for me, being a part of that executive committee in two regions now, and being able to really talk about access and bringing a sensory room or a Zen space

00:53:57 Jessica López-Barkl

for neurodivergent people, because there's a lot of us in theater, having that ability for somebody to go reground themselves because they need it after having a tough day, a tough round, and they're a place that they're not used to.

00:54:10 Jessica López-Barkl

You know, we sort of piloted that in our region one, and we're going to be bringing it to region 2.

00:54:15 Jessica López-Barkl

which is the region that Pennsylvania is in.

00:54:17 Jessica López-Barkl

And our students are going to be a part of that.

00:54:20 Jessica López-Barkl

And I think that we know that that's a problem in our industry.

00:54:23 Jessica López-Barkl

And so, and I can't just complain.

00:54:26 Jessica López-Barkl

I grew up in a blue collar world and I'm like, I can't just sit at a table and say, where's the solution?

00:54:32 Jessica López-Barkl

We can keep talking about problems till the cows come home.

00:54:35 Jessica López-Barkl

But you can go out and do something.

00:54:37 Jessica López-Barkl

And I'm not saying I'm the best for those environments because forward facing I'm a white woman.

00:54:42 Jessica López-Barkl

So, but I'm going to go and do that to create access for our students and for the people that maybe don't have voices yet in that way, so that they will do the same later.

00:54:53 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:54:54 Jessica López-Barkl

And that's what we have to do for emerging thinkers, thought leaders.

00:54:59 Jessica López-Barkl

You know, that's our job as, you know, if they don't ever do the thing that they did when they were in their college education, that we should still hope that they are going to be thought leaders as citizens.

00:55:12 Gina Turner

I just want to sit here another hour and talk about all of this stuff and sing some more Suzuki songs.

00:55:20 Gina Turner

With Saki.

00:55:22 Gina Turner

Yes.

00:55:26 Gina Turner

But I guess I will direct us to our last question, sadly, which is the not guilty, guilty pleasure that maybe your colleagues don't know about you.

00:55:36 Kelly Allen

Yeah, and I was curious about this one, because just...

00:55:39 Kelly Allen

Based off of everything that you two have shared, I'm like, is it possible for a theater person to have a guilty pleasure?

00:55:44 Kelly Allen

Because they're just like, to hell with it, we're doing everything.

00:55:47 Kelly Allen

So, but yeah.

00:55:48 Darah Donaher

Do you have one?

00:55:50 Jessica López-Barkl

I mean, I had to ask my husband because I'm an oversharer.

00:55:53 Jessica López-Barkl

Darren knows this.

00:55:55 Jessica López-Barkl

So I'm like, what is there that people wouldn't know about me?

00:55:59 Jessica López-Barkl

My students used to get shocked that at one point in my life, I was a little obsessed with America's Next Top Model because I would watch it and just like feel better about myself.

00:56:07 Jessica López-Barkl

Like those are bad people.

00:56:09 Jessica López-Barkl

And I am a good person while I watch this.

00:56:13 Jessica López-Barkl

But then it got really trashy and I couldn't handle it anymore.

00:56:15 Jessica López-Barkl

I do love a good trash magazine.

00:56:17 Jessica López-Barkl

But I've kind of gotten away from, because for sustainability purposes, I don't want to have to recycle it.

00:56:23 Jessica López-Barkl

So I got away from that.

00:56:23 Jessica López-Barkl

But there's also a lot of Catholic in here.

00:56:29 Jessica López-Barkl

But now it's Traitors.

00:56:30 Jessica López-Barkl

Yeah.

00:56:31 Gina Turner

Oh, I've heard people love that show.

00:56:34 Jessica López-Barkl

I mean, I know nobody on that show.

00:56:35 Jessica López-Barkl

I don't watch any of those other reality televisions.

00:56:37 Jessica López-Barkl

And that's like an anathema to theater people were like, reality television, you watch that.

00:56:41 Jessica López-Barkl

But I'm like, Traitors is hilarious because there's a whole bunch of people from other reality television and they are dumb.

00:56:47 Jessica López-Barkl

And I feel good about myself for watching it.

00:56:50 Darah Donaher

I support that.

00:56:50 Jessica López-Barkl

I also love Alan *******.

00:56:53 Darah Donaher

He's just.

00:56:56 Jessica López-Barkl

Universal treasure.

00:56:57 Gina Turner

I seconded.

00:57:01 Darah Donaher

I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure, but I love to golf.

00:57:04 Darah Donaher

So that's like something I do on my off time when I like need something to do or have time to do something.

00:57:11 Darah Donaher

But my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is that I do love The Bachelor.

00:57:17 Darah Donaher

I do.

00:57:18 Darah Donaher

And Dancing with the Stars.

00:57:21 Darah Donaher

So that is my life.

00:57:25 Gina Turner

Did you watch The Golden Bachelor?

00:57:26 Gina Turner

I did.

00:57:28 Gina Turner

Oh, I was mesmerized.

00:57:31 Darah Donaher

And I hate saying it because I literally remember my undergrad acting teacher, when he asked if anyone watched real television, I thought more people would raise their hand

00:57:40 Darah Donaher

because I was friends with these people.

00:57:41 Darah Donaher

I was like, we've watched it.

00:57:42 Darah Donaher

And so I was like, and he was like, you're killing our industry.

00:57:46 Darah Donaher

And I was like, I, no, I didn't.

00:57:49 Darah Donaher

I didn't.

00:57:50 Darah Donaher

I watched it.

00:57:50 Darah Donaher

I didn't really watch it.

00:57:52 Darah Donaher

But he's like, they're stealing jobs.

00:57:53 Darah Donaher

And I was like, I, but

00:57:55 Darah Donaher

But that is when you ask, because we're doing a lot of things, that is the time I truly turn off my brain.

00:58:01 Darah Donaher

And I just, and it's an hour and I just chill.

00:58:04 Darah Donaher

But I do watch The Bachelor.

00:58:06 Jessica López-Barkl

We need it, we do, all of us theater, all of us college professors, we do a lot of thinking and a lot of writing and a lot of meetings.

00:58:14 Gina Turner

It's true.

00:58:14 Gina Turner

We go home, we should look at some bad people and judge quietly.

00:58:19 Gina Turner

But my good answer is that I golf.

00:58:23 Gina Turner

I love it.

00:58:23 Darah Donaher

But Dolphine is actually my guilty pleasure.

00:58:25 Darah Donaher

I don't want to.

00:58:26 Darah Donaher

We can cut around all the rest of that.

00:58:30 Gina Turner

But we can go down together because I confessed my golden bachelor and bachelorette watching.

00:58:36 Jessica López-Barkl

Fair enough.

00:58:37 Gina Turner

Fair enough.

00:58:37 Jessica López-Barkl

No judgment here.

00:58:39 Kelly Allen

Where am I?

00:58:39 Kelly Allen

love it.

00:58:41 Kelly Allen

All right.

00:58:42 Kelly Allen

Well, thank you both for being here and being a part of the show.

00:58:46 Kelly Allen

It was just an absolute trip to just to learn from you and just kind of just

00:58:52 Kelly Allen

I don't know, just bask in your bigness.

00:58:56 Kelly Allen

Thank you.

00:58:57 Jessica López-Barkl

Dynamic and passion.

00:58:58 Darah Donaher

Exactly.

00:58:59 Darah Donaher

Dynamic and passion.

00:58:59 Darah Donaher

Second circle.

00:59:00 Gina Turner

Second circle.

00:59:01 Kelly Allen

That was incredible.

00:59:02 Kelly Allen

Thank you so much.

00:59:03 Gina Turner

Thank you for having us.

00:59:04 Darah Donaher

Thank you for having us.

00:59:05 Darah Donaher

Thanks so much.

00:59:05 Gina Turner

Thank you so much.

00:59:06 Gina Turner

This was awesome.

00:59:08 Gina Turner

Pedagogy, go, go.

00:59:12 Gina Turner

Pedagogy, go, go, go.

00:59:22 Kelly Allen

That was awesome.

00:59:24 Kelly Allen

Like, I don't know.

00:59:27 Kelly Allen

Just totally hoping that someone's going to bust out in song and dance and then boom.

00:59:31 Kelly Allen

Wish granted.

00:59:33 Gina Turner

Three theater people.

00:59:34 Kelly Allen

That was wonderful.

00:59:35 Gina Turner

You can't hold us back.

00:59:38 Kelly Allen

So, and I think, yeah, did you mention somewhere in there that like this is the first time that we've talked with someone from the arts?

00:59:46 Kelly Allen

Is that true?

00:59:47 Gina Turner

As far as I can remember.

00:59:50 Kelly Allen

Okay, well past guests, if you are from the arts and we forgot you.

00:59:56 Kelly Allen

I mean, I'm so sorry.

00:59:58 Gina Turner

We talked to Abby and Abby's A poet.

01:00:01 Kelly Allen

She's a poet and she's the first person that I thought of, yes.

01:00:03 Gina Turner

So that is true.

01:00:05 Gina Turner

So, and I'm sure other people have creative endeavors that I am glossing over.

01:00:10 Kelly Allen

Sure, There's Andrew.

01:00:13 Gina Turner

Yeah, exactly.

01:00:14 Kelly Allen

And you know, and his DJing.

01:00:16 Kelly Allen

Exactly.

01:00:17 Gina Turner

Yeah.

01:00:18 Kelly Allen

But they teach this stuff.

01:00:20 Kelly Allen

They teach this stuff.

01:00:22 Kelly Allen

And I didn't know what to think about kind of like the teaching of theater as part of an associate's degree.

01:00:34 Kelly Allen

I just, I mean, I've got a child who is like deeply immersed in musical theater.

01:00:42 Kelly Allen

But even with that, I wasn't quite sure

01:00:45 Kelly Allen

like what it looked like on the collegiate level.

01:00:49 Kelly Allen

And my goodness, I feel like I wanted to say this kind of like half jokingly, but mostly seriously.

01:00:59 Kelly Allen

I was like, should it be required that all students take a theater class?

01:01:05 Gina Turner

I was thinking the same thing.

01:01:06 Kelly Allen

Like the thing, like the criminy Christmas.

01:01:11 Kelly Allen

I just said criminy Christmas.

01:01:12 Kelly Allen

What's wrong with me?

01:01:13 Gina Turner

I love it.

01:01:15 Kelly Allen

That's that most wonderful.

01:01:16 Kelly Allen

Okay.

01:01:18 Kelly Allen

No, the thing about like how students just like they try to get as small as they can be, but like what they teach them is to be as big as they can be.

01:01:30 Kelly Allen

Like, I don't know, like I think that is such a valuable kind of like attribute to have, not only as an academic, but like just as a person.

01:01:39 Gina Turner

Yeah.

01:01:41 Gina Turner

I mean, I'm so glad to hear you say that because I know I'm biased because I did have the background of managering in theater in undergrad and doing community theater.

01:01:51 Gina Turner

And so I personally, the value of it is just simply selfish because it's fun.

01:01:58 Gina Turner

I loved doing it because it was fun.

01:02:01 Gina Turner

So I think maybe I would take for granted a little bit the full on developmental

01:02:10 Gina Turner

benefits that doing theater does for people.

01:02:15 Gina Turner

And so it's their experiences, Jess's experience with the prison population, Dara's experience with children.

01:02:23 Gina Turner

I mean, this whole life cycle, basically, of what it does for people and how it highlights

01:02:31 Gina Turner

and Jess also made that point about masking.

01:02:35 Gina Turner

And she talked about herself as an autistic person, masking as a normal person.

01:02:41 Gina Turner

But we all mask as adults.

01:02:45 Gina Turner

we all are pretending to be adults.

01:02:48 Gina Turner

And how great it is.

01:02:50 Gina Turner

I'm sorry, I could talk about this for another 14 hours.

01:02:53 Kelly Allen

Yeah, no, I absolutely.

01:02:55 Kelly Allen

It's intoxicating.

01:02:57 Kelly Allen

It really is.

01:02:58 Kelly Allen

And

01:03:00 Kelly Allen

so you mentioned a word that I think needs to be used more often in higher ed and that's fun.

01:03:10 Kelly Allen

So I think, was it Dara who had mentioned that like it's their classes why like their students come to school for that day.

01:03:21 Kelly Allen

And like immediately I was reminded of my experiences in high school.

01:03:26 Kelly Allen

Like I hated high school.

01:03:29 Kelly Allen

But I went because I wanted to go to art.

01:03:34 Kelly Allen

So it's like, that was like, that was like the place where I could be me.

01:03:41 Kelly Allen

And it was just absolutely wonderful.

01:03:42 Kelly Allen

So like, I'm thinking and like, I'm dead serious here that maybe like if we want to talk about like retention levels, let's talk about like injecting more art into our curriculum.

01:03:54 Kelly Allen

You know, just give our students something

01:03:58 Kelly Allen

to look forward to.

01:03:59 Gina Turner

Yeah.

01:04:01 Gina Turner

Well, we keep talking about multimodal, methods of students preparing work, doing their final projects.

01:04:08 Gina Turner

And then, I mean, I got so excited when they were both talking about wanting to do a kind of, how do you use theater to teach all these other different disciplines?

01:04:17 Gina Turner

And I'm like, please do that, please do that.

01:04:19 Gina Turner

If nothing else, do that as a CTLT workshop or something, but I didn't want to give them work.

01:04:24 Gina Turner

But

01:04:26 Gina Turner

And also that, gosh, and the idea of creativity is so necessary for everything that we do in life.

01:04:36 Gina Turner

Like we need to be creative.

01:04:38 Gina Turner

We need to be able to be adaptable in life.

01:04:40 Gina Turner

So why wouldn't we want to inject that in all of the coursework that we're doing?

01:04:47 Gina Turner

And for me, when she mentioned band, that was what got me through high school was being in the marching band.

01:04:52 Kelly Allen

Yeah, same, same.

01:04:54 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

01:04:55 Kelly Allen

I almost forgot about the band.

01:04:57 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

01:04:58 Kelly Allen

But yeah, I don't know.

01:05:01 Kelly Allen

It's just, as you've said a couple of times, like, I could have just kept talking to them like just all night long.

01:05:09 Kelly Allen

Oh yeah.

01:05:10 Kelly Allen

So for our listeners, it's presently after 5 o'clock P.m.

01:05:14 Kelly Allen

So I don't know why I needed to add that detail, but there it is, because I'm having fun.

01:05:23 Kelly Allen

But no, I could have just kept going on and on.

01:05:29 Kelly Allen

And then the earlier part about, teaching theater, like this very physical thing online, like it.

01:05:40 Kelly Allen

That's something that I had several questions in my head and I was like, Kelly, keep your mouth shut because it would have put us like totally in the weeds.

01:05:49 Kelly Allen

We would have never learned about like their not guilty pleasures and what have you.

01:05:53 Kelly Allen

But I just think that's fascinating.

01:05:57 Kelly Allen

Like not only did they pivot, but it's like they're still embracing kind of the physical element, but they're using that pivot.

01:06:06 Kelly Allen

as a way to kind of, as a strength in their programming to help students for the reality of what is theater.

01:06:16 Kelly Allen

So I don't know.

01:06:17 Kelly Allen

I feel like we need to bring one of our ceramics faculty in.

01:06:21 Gina Turner

That would be great.

01:06:22 Kelly Allen

Because they're also teaching.

01:06:25 Kelly Allen

like hybrid.

01:06:26 Kelly Allen

Now someone, so as I've said, like I make pots and like I'm like, how do you teach that online?

01:06:32 Kelly Allen

Because when I've taught it before, like I get up there, it's like we're like holding hands.

01:06:37 Kelly Allen

Like I'm like, here, I'm going to hold your hands for you and I'm going to make this pot with you.

01:06:41 Kelly Allen

And like, how do you do that online?

01:06:43 Kelly Allen

But like the way that they just do it with such like grace and professionalism is just,

01:06:50 Kelly Allen

It's so inspiring.

01:06:52 Gina Turner

Dynamic and passion.

01:06:54 Gina Turner

I think they both, I mean, not to be glim, but seriously, that's what they absolutely exhibited in their ability to, in their desire, I think, to continue to want to give the full experience to their students, no matter what the circumstances.

01:07:13 Kelly Allen

Yeah, wow.

01:07:15 Kelly Allen

So that was awesome, Gina.

01:07:16 Kelly Allen

That was super awesome.

01:07:19 Kelly Allen

As always, it's a pleasure to hang out with you guys and.

01:07:22 Gina Turner

Utter delight, talk shop.

01:07:24 Gina Turner

So, till next time, till the next time, all right, bye.

01:07:46 Kelly Allen

Thank you for listening to Pedagogy A Go-Go, recorded in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

01:07:54 Kelly Allen

Our producer in all things technology is Jeff Armstrong.

01:07:57 Kelly Allen

If you've got any questions, please send them to pedagogyagogo@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on social media @pedagogyagogo and click into our bio for copies of podcast transcripts, guest assignments, and other useful tidbits.

01:08:13 Kelly Allen

Until next time, this is Gina and Kelly saying we hope your day is filled with wonderful learning experiences.