This pandemic is taking its toll on everything. I have no idea what things will be like on the other side of this, but it will be different. There are some things that will benefit from this pause, but I am deeply worried about the performing arts. There are some creative solutions out there: This production of Godspell was the only show Actors' Equity approved, and a group of ten young designers and directors called New Phase Collective created a lovely immersive piece of time based art that is running this weekend.
But I'm worried. I'm worried about my family, the performing arts, higher ed. And more. The one thing I am 100% in control of right now though is how my fall class is shaping up. While so many other things are unknown, this...this I can control. And I have "controlled" the hell out of it! We'll see how much it needs to change once students engage with it. I've been teaching THTREMUS 263 Design Rendering for...15 years? Yikes. It's 4 years of art school crammed in to 14 weeks, taken by first semester first year students in our BFA program. Things have morphed over the years and soon we will really need to decide how much should be digital, but for this fall, I needed to really circle back to the the actual teaching goals and figure out how to teach the class in different modalities. Close "shoulder coaching" isn't really an option. But one of the things I learned in my puppet class this summer, as a student, is that if the teacher gets out of the way, sometimes the students do more than just fine on their own. Not sure how many alums will read this, but know that every single rendering exercise has now been captured for all time in time lapse demo videos (or will be before the semester starts in 3 weeks!). I'm taking requests if you need something to watch to help fall asleep. I made every single gray square. I really don't understand what everyone was grumpy about.
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