Glorious Words of Wisdom

One of my teachers from the MT Immersion (ie Theatre Camp) is a dedicated writer adn I look forward to her writings on a daily basis. The following comes from her latest blog detailing the Immersion experience from the faculty's point of view. It's hard to put into words what the experience was, but here she does it beautifully:

...core faculty met last night at the wonderful Diane Wondisford's apartment...there we were, our doughty little group of dedicated core faculty: the brilliant Nova Thomas, the wise and dear Chuck Maryan, the energetic and creative Keith Buehl, Diane (ever patient and focused) and me....some 6 weeks after the end of the Musical Theater Immersion this past June, ready to discuss it, dissect it, analyze, and visualize its future....a great meeting. A productive meeeting.

The thing I was most pleased about was: little annoying strings that were left hanging got tied up and cleared away...vague disagreements about procedure, small discomforts about time and schedule, varying points of view about approaches to the students,etc...all bases were covered, and as a true testament to the group, the result was a larger sense of ourselves as a core teaching group, a stronger dedication to next summer's possible program, and a genuine sense that we did indeed accompllsh something this summer, on our first outing of the Immersion!!!

Looking back, and remembering what the group of students was like at the start of the 15 days, we all were pretty much amazed by what was presented at the finish of those days: a group of confident, focused, wiser and far more interesting performers than when they began....we all sat there that final day, I recall, either awash in tears, or stunned into a sort of awed silence, as scene by scene, song by song, they got up and bravely showed themselves to us...and that was no illusion, no mere trick of our self-congratulatory egos...no....those students had palpably grown and improved...they had indeed "shown up" and we were thrilled.And grateful.

Keith kept using the word "magic" at the meeting last night..well, yes...indeed.
Diane is more a fan of the "immersion" process than ever before.
And the other three of us felt deep comraderie, because we knew how delicate the teaching balance was between the three of us, made strong by the mutual trust and respect we do all feel for each other. The mere "getting along" of three strong creative experienced egos is, in itself, no small task....and the open-ness, the willingness to learn from each other is rare. All these elements were present and, no doubt, partially responsible for the end product of this virgin voyage!

To read more from Evalyn please visit: http://compostmoi.blogspot.com