trevordayschool

TREVOR DAY SCHOOL / 45 Theatre Design and Production students work with guest Molly Litvin '21 on an Applied Theatre workshop incorporating lights in the tech booth. "Being able to question one's own process, reflect, edit, and re-work the problem until it makes sense (aka the scientific method)…is one of an artist's basic life skills." —Molly Litwin '21 I N S I D E T R E VO R T R E VO R T R A N S L AT E S F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S A L U M N I University's Curricula Enhancement Module Series tells us that as we search to define our connection with the world around us, "cultural competence is the ability of an individual to understand and respect values, attitudes, beliefs, and mores that differ across cultures, and to consider and respond appropriately to these differences in planning, implementing, and evaluating." But is art only art if it's perceived by an audience? Is art also valued as a process of human experience even when it does not produce a product? This begs the question of what and how value is assigned. As artists, if we are producing for the consumer public, we are valuing art based on popular taste, but that in itself seems to diminish the process of experiencing artistic exploration in the first place. So what, then, is the value of arts education in today's 21st-century learning? We need to critically examine the quantitative and qualitative evaluative research on curriculum in the arts, but the nature of instilling a value judgment inevitably remains subjective and imperfect. In the quest for excellence in Trevor's arts education, we continue to pursue examination of curricula, instruction, and pedagogical methods, but as educators and artists, we also navigate through map and compass to define our own routes of exploration. Some examples of newly expanded performing arts offerings now include on- and off-campus partnerships with STREB (extreme pop-action with the Lower, Middle, and Upper School divisions), Brooklyn Academy of Music, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the Joyce Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and more. New Upper School courses include Behind the Scenes (an introduction to acting and movement), Design Thinking, and a rebranding of familiar courses, such as the Art of Storytelling (previously Theatre Design and Production). In addition, the interdisciplinary course English Radical Texts: Poetry, Politics, and Performance provides an English elective in the 11th and 12th grades that explores the cross-section of theatre arts, spoken word, and a typical English class. We also offer professional development for teachers in Sound Painting techniques with Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble. We encourage all alumni to connect and reconnect with Alumni Relations, because we have many opportunities to continue to nurture your relationship to arts education as we build our network of guest speakers, guest artists, and internship opportunities for students. We look forward to nurturing all artists, past and present, in the Trevor Day School community. n Drama in the classroom extended to work on the productions after school. The image here is of scene work on the 2023 Upper School play Steel Magnolias.

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