This weekend, I took a short ferry ride from Lower Manhattan to Governors Island, which feels like another world. The island is always alive with art exhibits and cultural happenings, and this time, I was thrilled to check out the “OtherWorlds Fair.” This event, designed and run by New York City public high school students in collaboration with the Beam Center, marked the culmination of a six-week summer camp.
There were tents with various activities and projects showcasing the otherworldy experiences of teens, ranging from imaginative fashion designs to mock-ups of fantasy lands. The event also featured performances from other collaborators, including Building Beats and the Noel Pointer Foundation.
I watched an excited student perform a DJ set for the first time in front of a crowd. I spoke to a rising senior who built a carnival-inspired world with duct tape and cardboard that featured an electric-powered roller coaster train. The camp helped this science-focused student explore his creative side and make new friends.
A freshman helped me assemble a “flower bomb” with wildflower seeds, dirt, and clay, and proudly showed me the Big Bloom Flower Gazebo he helped build. The giant structure had a spinning top of fabric petals that required the students to learn woodworking, welding, and sewing. Oh, how I’d love to attend a creativity camp on an island!
The mashup of arts with science, technology, and engineering was incredibly inspiring. I loved this American Theatre article by Martine Kei Green-Rogers, the dean of the Theatre School at DePaul University, about the importance of theatre students engaging with different art forms.
“The future of theatre lies in our ability to be flexible, to bring us back to being in community with one another, to help future generations learn how to process the world around them through art, and to, as Hamlet says to the players, hold a mirror up to nature,” says Green-Rogers.
Wishing all the students and teachers a successful start to the school year!
Around the Web
- Huzzah! Here is the 2024-25 cohort of the BIPOC Critic’s Lab.
- ICYMI, check out the latest roundup of theatre workers, including a few educators.
- Theatre Communications Group has announced the recipients of the 2024 Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship, which supports costume designers in a university or professional training program.
- Attention educators! Check out the National Coalition Against Censorship’s toolkit for organizing against theatre censorship.
- The American Theatre Wing is accepting applications for its 2025 University Scholarships through September 16.
- Check out this article about two university students in the Black Theatre United cohort who interned at Situation Interactive this summer.
On Social Media
Theatre educators: With the school year approaching, what non-arts courses do you think are essential for theatre majors to take?
AT readers respond:
Laura Webster Marshall
Art history, MARKETING, design, PR, general business admin.
Holly E. McDonald
Outside of the core requirements, I wish they would be able to take whatever they want. Having the right to shape their own experience. There’s nothing worse than having students go into debt for courses they don’t want, have no interest in, won’t invest in, and may never use.
Maureen Scholz Patterson
Government and history. They need to know why playwrights wrote what they did when they did. They need to know what they’re up against and why.
Lucas Skjaret
Directors: art history and design 101 courses.
Susan Stroupe
Linguistics. Whatever the Physics for Poets equivalent is. Any class that requires hands-on fabrication, whether in visual arts or robotics. A class that involves the mapping of something much larger than ourselves. A non-theatre writing-intensive class.
Read more great responses here.
From the Archives
What Clothes After Closure? 4 Young Designers Have Some Ideas
This 2020 article is about how the Willa Kim Design Scholarship recipients expanded their work with painting and drawing classes during the pandemic.
