“The essence of playing is to explore without an external purpose.”

(Rob Martens)

brain

teaching the theater

From the start of my career in the arts, I have also taught courses and coached workshops. Because theater is a learning experience that goes both ways: from teacher to student and vice versa, from the art form to its practitioners and the other way around.

Playful experimentation is the basis of performing and acting, and therefore of the theater. Such playful experiments are a great vehicle for learning experiences: the open, creative and bodily nature of playing on stage can create more lasting and more profound learnings than conventional forms often can.

Dutch psychologist Rob Martens has written extensively (and in an enlightening way) about the benefits of play in educational environments. There’s only one rule, he states: the participants have to forget what they think they know and just look in wonder at themselves and all the learning and playing people around them.

Because observation and experience are main ingredients of all learnings, no matter what group you’re working with. The teacher has to stimulate the pupils by providing them with methods and techniques, which they then can explore in their own way. The results are often unforeseen and always interesting. Out of movement, improvisation and shared fascinations, texts and images emerge on stage.

This kind of teaching – my kind – uses theatrical tropes and modes to activate the students. I encourage them to learn from experience, on the theater stage, from one another. Teaching becomes a dialogue. The student is a worker, the teacher is the coach.

I have taught courses and conducted workshops for many different organisations, but educational and artistic. The slider above shows just some of the schools, theaters, and other organisations I’ve worked for and with. This PDF file (in Dutch) gives a more extensive overview of my educational experience.

The topics I taught range from stage direction to the coaching of actors, from scenography to improvisational techniques. I’ve worked with people of all ages and all walks of life.