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Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2020
Young Playwrights Guide - Conversation Series
Sunday, July 5, 2020
Theatre Design Camp
This week, I return to Monmouth County Parks to teach a newly developed "Theatre Design" camp for students in grades 6-8. I worked with the parks last year on the "Theatre Techie" camp, which had to be revamped in lieu of the current Covid-19 restrictions. It occurs to me that this will be my first time in a classroom setting with students since my school shut down on March 12th. I will also have one of my middle school students in the camp. They were in my 4th marking period class, which only met online, so while they were a student of mine for 4 weeks, tomorrow will be the first time that we meet face-to-face. Crazy!
I'm looking forward to the program as it draws from some of the design elements that I brought to my general Theatre class at the middle school this year. However, with design as the focus we can spend a LOT more time on it than we did before. We will do some text analysis, sketching, modeling, revision, and "building". The end goal is for students to create a model set out of foam core. This something that I've seen done, but have never tried on my own. I'm curious to see how it will work and look forward to creating along with the students. More to come!
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I'm looking forward to the program as it draws from some of the design elements that I brought to my general Theatre class at the middle school this year. However, with design as the focus we can spend a LOT more time on it than we did before. We will do some text analysis, sketching, modeling, revision, and "building". The end goal is for students to create a model set out of foam core. This something that I've seen done, but have never tried on my own. I'm curious to see how it will work and look forward to creating along with the students. More to come!
Follow @jimdevivo
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
The Young Playwrights Guide
The past three months have been a whirlwind! I think we all feel that way to some degree. Now that school has closed for summer, I am feeling the slower pace of the mornings, and finding ways to approach many of the projects that had been waiting in the wings.
One of these projects is the newly branded Young Playwrights Guide, a retooled version of the Young Playwrights Map that I developed during my doctoral study. The map was a great tool for documenting the existence and spread of opportunities for youth writers around the world, but I found children and their parents were looking for advice, instruction, and guidance through various videos and conversations that arose at the beginnings of Covid-19 quarantine. I spent some time reflecting on those inquiries as well as my own desire to (re)connect with artists whom I haven't been able to work with, or even see, over the last year or so.
The Conversations Series was born on YouTube at the beginning of May and is now in its 8th iteration. You can check out those videos here. I have two more conversations in the works and am looking to build another program through the Guide by the end of summer.
Additionally, I am spreading out my prep work for the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. We anticipate hearing more in the next few weeks about potential returns to school in the fall. In the meantime, I will continue to take it slow and look to ramp things up again as July rolls around.
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| http://youngplaywrghtsguide.blogspot.com @TheYPGuide |
The Conversations Series was born on YouTube at the beginning of May and is now in its 8th iteration. You can check out those videos here. I have two more conversations in the works and am looking to build another program through the Guide by the end of summer.
Additionally, I am spreading out my prep work for the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. We anticipate hearing more in the next few weeks about potential returns to school in the fall. In the meantime, I will continue to take it slow and look to ramp things up again as July rolls around.
Follow @jimdevivo
Sunday, April 26, 2020
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.
Follow @jimdevivo
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.
Follow @jimdevivo
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Holding out for a hero!
This summer has been a complicated one (with stories for future posts), but one positive side is it has given me time to work on a number of projects I've had in mind for some time. Can't share details yet, but stay tuned...
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Follow @jimdevivo
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Yard Work, Take 2
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| Garden ready! |
Completed today were the following:
- weeding the garden box
- planting vegetables and flowers purchased during last week's sale
- weed whacking the yard
- filling the hole (!)
- adding dirt and mulch to the front flower bed
- trimming the hedges
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| Two or three eggs in the hedge |
Got it all done with some help from two of three children. We saw plenty of wildlife in the yard today. Chipmunks, a groundhog (under the deck, which I hope was a hiding place and not a home), cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, sparrows, and a couple of nests complete with eggs (sparrows, perhaps?). It also seems a hawk has been feasting around our house. I cleaned that up, too.
Productive day, but my ankle is in need of some ice and rest. Happy to have gotten that work done; still much more to do. For now, I'm off to grade papers and get ready for the last full week of school.
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