Revise and Resubmit

"Revise and Resubmit" is not exactly the comment that a writer wants to receive after submitting a manuscript for publication. I've had my own experiences with this over the summer that I am still trying to parse out (thank you, Reviewer #2), but it helps me to remember that revision is a process of improvement. It is similar to the Stoics' reminder that "the obstacle is the way" and that every challenge, or difficulty, offers an opportunity for improvement. 

I've done a lot of curriculum writing and lesson plan revision this summer. Most of this is for the theatre classes in middle school and high school (some are new, but some is for the potential need to adapt to online learning again). This week, I have turned my attention to the TYA course that I teach for the Program in Educational Theatre. I've been teaching this class since 2014 when I inherited it from a long line of influential people in the field: Dr. Lowell Swortzell, Laurie Brooks, and Jonathan Shmidt Chapman. The course structure has evolved over time and I have continued that tradition by adapting Jonathan's syllabus and making adjustments and tweaks to the course every year since.

About two years ago, I incorporated the 25 year anniversary anthology from the New Visions/New Voices Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. New Visions/New Voices is one of three major new play development programs in the field of TYA currently in existence in the United States (along with Write Now and NYU's New Plays for Young Audiences Series). The anthology was a way to focus on current scripts while emphasizing the importance of new play development in the field. Perhaps most importantly, using the anthology reduced textbook costs for students. The NV/NV plays are serviceable and the last two classes have enjoyed them; however, one of the strongest suggestions received from the classes was a desire to delve into even more current and relevant scripts. I have made that my goal while preparing for the fall.

When constructing the syllabus, it is also important to recognize the variety of students on the class roster and their varied perspectives. The class is typically made of students from freshman to doctoral candidates, Educational Theatre majors to performance majors from Tisch, as well as students from outside the arts who are interested in exploring the world outside of their math and business majors. The students are, or plan to be, theatre praticioners, educators, and producers, or are simply interested in story from a teller and/or audience point of view. All of these perspectives inform my planning and I plan to balance the reading list with scripts that are of historical significance to the field and that are often produced in professional venues and schools. The EdTA 2020 Play Survey was helpful here. I am including some of the titles on these lists with those from the NV/NV anthology.

One text that has not changed from my first courses at both Manhattanville College and NYU is Moses Goldberg's collection titled TYA: Essays on the Theatre for Young Audiences. This is an EXCELLENT book that I could not do without!

I am excited by this changes and look forward to exploring the works with a new group of students and to seeing and hearing their reactions and insights. There are still some areas of the field that I can't quite cover in the time provided for the class. I plan to ask students to explore those topics in their midterm project and see what may come out as the most important aspect to incorporate in the revision for next year.

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Is it Essential?

Teaching at home (both my students and my children) has been, to put it simply, an adjustment. No major crises to report, however. Perhaps, in some ways, the fact that both my wife and I are teachers has contributed to quicker adaptation to the new normal in the time of social distancing. We are finding it not just a complicated time where common errands are now accompanied with mild anxiety and masks, but also an opportunity to reflect on everything: our well-being and work, but also on what is and isn't important to us as a family. Or, to use a phrase we hear everyone right now, the "essential".

That word "essential" is all over the news (well, last I checked... I've made it a point to stop following the news and found it refreshing). I've noticed the word used as a divisive term, but have also found it to be a lens through which to reflect on all aspects of life from work to family, Boiling down curriculum to the essential was a matter of necessity and my wife and I find our teaching all the better for it. In fact, I am eager to see how these revisions will further adapt my work to once we are able to return! Before everything was shut down in mid-March, we were a family constantly on the move - home to school to activities to extra work to other activities to family events to home, etc. With no where to go but home, there has been time each day to reflect and seek out ways to spend our time once school work is complete. For me, that time has been for reading and writing... which really means time for reflecting. It has meant time to seek out, and finally focus on, what is truly essential.

This all leads me to the work I have been doing over the last three weeks leading up to this post. Since 2015, I have managed an online resource of writing and contest opportunities for young playwrights (ages 8-18) around the world. This was a side project during my doctoral research that compiled basic information about the field of work being done that had ancillary relevancy to what eventually became the dissertation. It has been difficult to gauge who is behind the over 3,500 hits that the Young Playwrights Map has received in that time, but someone is finding their way there and using its information. About two years ago, I considered shutting down the Map, but a news article announcing that a young writer in New Jersey would have readings of her work in young playwrights festivals in Arizona and New York (both of which were listed on the site) prompted me to keep it going. It was not until social distancing that I had the time to do a proper update of the information listed, which I completed in mid-April. A conversation with a graduating senior from Niagara University (my alma mater) sparked my curiosity about the potential for the Map to do more than just be a listing of information. I have since embarked upon a series of changes that will transform the site again.

On May 1, the Young Playwrights Map will officially become the Young Playwrights Guide. I have a schedule of insights, advice, and video-recorded conversations that will soon populate the site with a renewed purpose to provide tools for young creators to embark upon, and eventually share, their works. I am so excited by this shift and it has been difficult to keep things under wraps. However, in order to maintain our new family schedule, I am beginning to roll out these changes with small updates to the existing online platforms. The Map website got a makeover this afternoon; social media platforms will follow. I'm also putting together the first few video conversations on a branded YouTube channel and will delve into the world of Instagram, too.

It is interesting (and perhaps a bit morbid) to think that if it were not for a global pandemic, I may not have the time to do the work that I have done. (And I am certainly empathetic to the opposite reality that others may face right now). Reflection is an important part of my work as an educator, artist, and researcher, but also having the time to read Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way launched me into the right mindset to re-brand the Map into the Guide. As Holiday notes in the book - and in other articles about the idea - It is a matter of how we use crisis, or failure, to reflect on what is essential to revise and to keep moving on.

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Bred for this

Oops! It is a little past midnight on what would be Day 4 of my writing challenge, so technically I missed the third day. However, since I am still up and working through some other projects I will let this one count.

It was a frustrating day today. Thankfully, I had The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holliday, to meet me at the end. Today's quote for reflection was from Seneca's On Providence, in which he wrote: "Why then are we offended? Why do we complain? This is what we're here for." Holliday's commentary is a reminder that each of us comes from an "impressive tradition" of people who had to bear more difficult struggle. We are "capable of what they are capable of. You're meant for this. Bred for it" (p. 170).

Interesting to put things into that perspective. It seems that the Stoics frequent meditation on struggle is to say something to the effect of "it could be worse". And it certainly could be. Good to acknowledge that in order to more quickly get back to moving forward.