"It's been a guiding principle of mine throughout my teaching career that every child wants to be heard."
Julian Schlusberg
Summer's here and many Connecticut kids are heading off to camps and summer enrichment programs.
This year marks the 36th summer that The Foote School in New Haven has hosted an educational Summer Theatre program for students entering middle school and up. This year, they'll present "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
Julian Schlusberg has been the program’s artistic director since its start. He’s won numerous awards for excellence in the art and teaching of theater, and is the author of several books on educational theater.
We met on the school’s campus to talk about the summer program.
Schlusberg said his emphasis is less on the final production and more on the process, and on using a play as a vehicle for learning.
WNPR's Diane Orson: So, to start, in the interest of full disclosure, I just want to say that years ago my son participated for a number of summers in your theater program. And what was striking to me, year after year after year, was the balance that you seemed to achieve between nurturing kids at all levels, but at the same time challenging young people to reach really high for very high artistic standards in the theater. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Julian Schlusberg: Well, it’s been a guiding principle of mine throughout my teaching career that every child wants to be heard, wants to be listened to, and sometimes we have to listen to them even when they’re quiet. I think that every child wants to be discovered, and I really believe that people have enormous potential inside of them. And so, helping them bring that out, nurturing them, making them feel confident, and valued, I think that’s a real major theme of this program.
When you’re casting a show with young people, what are you thinking about as you select which kid will play which part?
Ironically, it frequently is not the student who seems most like that character. I think that there’s more to learn when a student attacks a role that may be very different from him or herself, and find the qualities within ourselves that we may not even know are there. I think that’s the most successful performances..when we realize, “Wow, I can identify with that,” when previously they may have thought, “That’s the most foreign idea I’ve ever heard.”
So, when we go to see professional theater, there are certain yardsticks by which we measure a successful experience, and I think actually it can be quite personal. One person can go see a show and experience one thing, and another can have quite a different reaction. But I wonder, as a theater educator and a serious director, how do you determine a successful production with young people?
I think a successful production is one that’s collaborative, where all students work together and respect each other. I’m not speaking specifically of performers. I value the technical end as much as performers, and goodness knows through the years I’ve had people who really could not get on the stage and perform, but were magnificent stage managers, or scene painters, playwrights, dramaturgs, you know? I think that the success of a production is getting young people to create a product that comes from themselves and their own backgrounds.
You’ve been doing this for a long time. Have the kinds of considerations or challenges of teaching and directing young people changed over time?
I think the challenge is more for me, because I’m not up with all of the technical jargon that young people are. But, you know, the one consistent thing is that we’re human beings performing and creating the roles of other human beings, and so that stays the same no matter how quickly technology changes. Emotions are still the same, our human relationships are the same and have been for thousands of years.
Our hopes and desires, our fears, they’re all the same. And when we can kind of tackle those things and make ourselves vulnerable, to really explore them, I think that makes for the best kinds of performances. But more important than that, it makes for the best learning experience because we’re learning about ourselves, and that’s what education should be about.
Julian Schlusberg is the artistic director of the Foote Summer Theater program in New Haven. He’s also the author of several books on educational theater.
