How do you describe your work to people who don’t work in your field?
I am a professional storyteller. I not only tell stories on the stage, but I also serve as a professional performance coach for folks outside of my discipline. We all tell stories - many times a day. My job is to help those not trained in professional performance to clarify and shape the story they want to tell, and then guide them through the use of their body and voice to present the most compelling version of themselves. The use of stories for persuasion has been around for as long as humans have had language. I am an expert in the utilization of tips and tricks that help make anyone’s story more compelling.
What’s one big problem you want to solve through your work?
I want to change the perception that the arts are an optional, added extra in education - particularly undergraduate education. Teaching theatre skills to non drama majors is an important part of my work at U of A and has been a passion of mine for many years. Students who label themselves as unimaginative or shy leave a theatre class with a transformed perception of their personal abilities. Theatre training does wonders for self-confidence.
Your new book, , articulates how an education in theatre develops important transferable skills to support success in many different careers and sectors of the economy. Tell us more about that theory!
The current employment market is dynamic and changing every day. It used to be that one could study as an accountant, or a doctor or an engineer, and enter the job market applying the skills learned at university in that particular field. Even the definition of an employment field has become fuzzy and the continuing evolution of AI only increases that complexity. Desirable skills like interpersonal communication, creativity, adaptive problem solving and team work are present in theatre education and available in the Department of Drama. We offer students across campus the opportunity to develop these critical skills, thereby making them more employable post-graduation.
How did you develop the ideas in this book and gather data?
I was feeling rather pessimistic about the future of my field about ten years ago. I became concerned about the employment prospects for those I was teaching. I recognized that I was educating hundreds of students as actors and directors, knowing that there weren’t enough opportunities for all of them in the professional theatre. So I wondered, “Are my students getting work? If so, where? Are they using their theatre degree? Was their education worth the money spent?” Those were the questions driving my study.
To find out, I initially approached alumni offices in the U.S. where I was located at the time. They all turned me down flat when I asked if they might be willing to share my survey. So I did what a number of researchers are doing today when they want to locate a specific population, I turned to social media. I shared my survey with my contacts and asked everyone to pay it forward and for their contacts to pay it forward. This snowball sampling worked quite well and I managed to gather a robust set of data.
The answers to my questions surprised me. Yes, graduates were finding work – some of them in the theater – but almost all were employed and in an astonishingly rich array of fields. Some confessed that their theatre degree made a difference because they brought unique skills to their jobs as project managers, government employees, not-for-profit directors and such. It was a pretty exciting finding. Is a theatre degree of value to students and institutions? Yes, in today’s marketplace, it offers an essential collection of skills that make students more employable, and some form of theatre training should probably be included in every degree.
What does the word “innovation” mean to you?
Yikes. This is tricky as I know it is an important concept. Innovation requires one to ‘see sideways,’ a term I use for real creative thought. Considering brand new paradigms is scary stuff and it’s common for people to think, “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.” I have had the privilege of working with physicists, biomedical engineers, law students and economists. Shifting fields and reconsidering the norms of one’s particular practice, that’s fertile ground. Amazing things can happen when habits are broken and traditions are challenged.
What’s been your biggest a-ha moment — in life or work — so far?
We have to go back several decades for this – and it was truly transformative for me. I was a young actor in New York City trying to survive by teaching software classes to the general public. It was grim – such a slog. Every day, teaching the same thing, and then running to my shows or my classes at night. And then one day it hit me that I was viewing the situation entirely wrong. The teaching I was doing wasn’t really about the content at all - it was about the people. And each person in the classroom was a rich source of new information, an opportunity to challenge myself to meet their needs, a way to reconsider all of the strategies I had been using. That was a really important idea for me. From that point forward, I was hooked on teaching. I am a practicing artist (acting and directing) and I love my work, but I really, really love the work I do in the classroom and the impact I can have on students.
How do you come up with your best ideas? Do you have any rituals or habits that trigger your creative spark, for example? What do you do to create space for innovation?
My best ideas emerge under one of two circumstances.
- I’m not thinking about what I want to create every moment of every day. I tuck it ‘in the cooker’ and forget about it. And then at some point a random connection will occur – usually because I am not looking at it directly. Then I start the battle over whether or not the idea holds merit, because, as I said earlier, really new ideas are terrifying.
- My personal creativity is greatly enhanced when I work in a team. It’s the artist's version of stone soup. Everyone brings an ingredient to the table, and we allow ourselves to be challenged and inspired (and sometimes annoyed) by one another. The final product bears only a small resemblance to the original idea from any one of us. But it is almost always far more interesting than any one person’s singular vision. I highly recommend working in such a way.
What’s your favourite thing about working at the U of A?
Teaching and making theatre and I’m grateful to work in a department that allows me to do the work I love to do.
What’s next for you? Do you have any new projects on the horizon?
I’m currently working with a cultural center in Kampala, Uganda. I travel with local experts to small villages, record Indigenous stories, and then adapt them into children’s plays. I’m also working with an artist in New Mexico. We’re putting together several national and international tours that will feature Indigenous stories in children’s play format from Uganda, Canada and the U.S. The cross comparison of these cultural frames, the opportunity to partner with and guide young Indigenous artists and help them launch their careers – pretty exciting stuff.
