Teaching Introduction to Acting at Bronx Community College: From Shakespeare to SZA
1 Bronx Community College of the City University of New York
Abstract
Diversity has been the focus of countless books, articles, and conferences in higher education. Unfortunately, for many of us in the majority culture, this issue never required too much investment of time or concern because we were already benefitting from the existing system of racial and/or gender privilege. In this essay I recount my awakening as a teacher and theatre artist when I began teaching "Introduction to Acting" at Bronx Community College (BCC). At a majority minority institution, I came face to face with my own ignorance, complacency, and sense of entitlement. In order to engage students whose age, background, culture and perspective differed from mine, I needed to familiarize myself with the voices of youth culture, the theatrical traditions of Latinx, African-American, Asian, Caribbean peoples; as well as performance styles and acting methodologies outside the traditional Eurocentric repertoire. As a result, not only has my vision of theatre and theatre education transformed, but also my artistic and social consciousness.
Keywords
- diversity
- teaching
- theatre
- acting
- culturally relevant pedagogy
- community college
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