QUIET IN THE WINGS: A NARRATIVE EXPLORATION OF

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES WITH TECHNICAL THEATER

A doctoral thesis presented by Kevin B. Held

to the Graduate School of Education

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education

in the field of

Education

College of Professional Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts February 11, 2021

Copyright by Kevin B. Held 2021

1 Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Technical theater is a term that encompasses the lighting, set, sound, and costume design, stagecraft, stage management, and all related tasks essential to a theatrical production. Scholars have concluded that involvement in high-school theater positively impacts students’ personal growth and development, their sense of collaboration, and their empathy towards others (Catterall et al., 1999; Brown & Urice, 2003; McCammon & Østerlind,

2011; McCammon et al., 2012). Secondary educators and theater practitioners have insufficient data and supporting literature to provide insight and understanding of the high-school technical- theater experience, its educational value, and its impact on adolescent personal growth.

Conducted within the theoretical framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory, with additional analysis using Saldaña's dramaturgical coding, and a deductive analysis using the Wisconsin

Standards for Theatre 2019, this study gave a voice to the silent technicians working behind the scenes by hearing and learning from the narrative voices of high-school student technicians relating their own stories. This study uncovered three main themes: confidence, communication, and camaraderie and the participants confirmed the themes themselves. In addition to the three major themes, some other notable commonalities emerged from the shared stories, including the value of the material culture to the crewmembers, the importance of shared food and drinks, and the significance of flexibility and adaptability for the stage crew members.

keywords: technical theater, drama education, high school, secondary education

2 Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to Antoine “Tony” duBourg, who passed away on May 12,

2011. Tony was my dear friend, and he constantly challenged me to question the world, think critically, and enjoy life to the fullest. From “Electricity 101” to countless hours spent over meals or sailing aboard Unda Maris, Tony helped sharpen my mind and hone my intellect. He was a larger-than-life figure with tremendous energy for his countless students at Pingry School and St.

George’s School. His generous and irreverent spirit and legacy will live on in all of us who were fortunate to have known him.

3 Acknowledgements

Writing a dissertation is definitely harder than I thought and more rewarding than I could have guessed. This research would not have been possible without the 10 participants and their time, candour, insights, and willingness to share stories of their adolescence spent working quietly in the wings. Their generosity of spirit, ability to articulate perceptions of their own development, and reflections on their involvement behind the scenes were both remarkable and invaluable. Their voices are the narrative heart of this study.

Secondly, I want to thank my own teachers and mentors, especially my advisor Dr.

Shapiro and my committee members Dr. Sanders and Dr. Vineberg. Thank you for all your efforts reading and commenting on my drafts and revisions. You all helped shape this final dissertation. I also wish to acknowledge all those who taught me along the way. From the steps of St. Joseph’s School in Collingdale to the hallways of St. Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia, all of my teachers helped me grow and develop. I am indebted to Professor Bill Rynders and Kurt

Hultgren at the College of the Holy Cross, who helped me first explore stagecraft and design at the collegiate level. I also want to thank Barbara Butts and Dominic Missimi at Northwestern

University, who guided me when I was studying for my master’s degree in Arts Management and Musical Theater History, and Professor Dean Panttaja and Ann Hoste at the University of

Idaho, who served on my M.F.A. committee.

A very special thanks to Patricia Lothrop, my friend and colleague from St. George’s

School, who read every draft of this dissertation as an alert and dedicated copyeditor. Any error or omission left in this final thesis is clearly my own fault and I take full responsibility.

I also have colleagues over the years who have shaped my views of theater and teaching.

I would like to thank Betsy Durning, Clare “Doc. G” Harrington, James Wallace, Charles

4 Thompson, Steve Dubé, AnnieLaurie Tuttle, Ilona Tipp, and Kathy Smith. I was fortunate to work closely with them at St. George’s School in the performing arts. I would also like to thank other colleagues from the Hilltop including Ellen Minor, Betsy Hollins, Alex Myers, Wendy

Drysdale, Pierre Yoo, Kim Bullock, Amy Neilson, and Pat Moss. Additional thanks to my theatrical colleagues across the pond at the Felsted School, Charles Lee and Hannah Grace.

I would also like to express my gratitude for my colleagues at Oxbridge Academic

Programs, who helped me see the world in new ways, including Michael McKinley, Simon

Dyton, Richard Michaelis, Elizabeth Weinfield, Paul Lora, Stacy Davidowitz, David Stern,

Aigerim Saudebayeva, Matt Gregory, Clémentine Bobin, and especially Megan Fifer.

I would also like to thank my current colleagues at TAS, starting with Stephen

Abernethy, an inspirational and supportive department head; Cory Edwards, Kari Jensen, and

Georgina Christou in drama; Deb Flemming, Cheryl Lagerquist, Andrea Dethy, and Diane

Prophet in dance; Grace Ku, Andrea Blough, Stella Chang, Joan Pipkin, Laura Cipriano, Vivian

Huang, Jennifer Anderson, Betty Chang, Bill and Carol Hoehn, Pamela Stout, and all the other colleagues in music. Most especially, I would like to thank the TAS tech team, Chris Bryant,

Jessica Huang, Joan Ho, and Atzu Chen. You all help me continue to learn and grow with each production and new challenge.

I would like to express my appreciation for my family, especially my mother, Patricia

Givigliano, for always believing in me and supporting me. I would also like to thank my dear friends, including Geoffrey Chan, Rusmir Musić, Rob Gerhardt, and Janine DiFranco

Michaelson. Finally, I would like to thank all my students, both in theater and classics, at St.

George’s School, Oxbridge Academic Programs, or TAS; getting to know you has enriched my life tremendously.

5 Table of Contents

LIST OF TABLES ...... 10

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ...... 11

Statement of the Problem ...... 12

Significance of the Research Question ...... 12

Research Problem and Research Question ...... 16

Definition of Key Terminology ...... 17

Theoretical Framework ...... 17

Critics of Weick’s Sensemaking Theory ...... 23

Rationale for Utilizing Weick’s Sensemaking Theory ...... 24

Conclusion ...... 26

CHAPTER TWO: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...... 28

Quantitative Overview of Theater in U.S. High Schools ...... 34

Conclusion ...... 37

Theater Education in Current Practice ...... 38

Theater and Its Role in the Academy ...... 38

Theater in High Schools ...... 42

Theater-Teacher Training: Artist and Educator ...... 52

Conclusion ...... 54

The Performing Arts, Empathy, and Adolescent Development ...... 54

Summation ...... 56

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN ...... 58

Qualitative Research Approach ...... 59

6 Narrative Inquiry ...... 60

Role of the Researcher ...... 62

Protection of Human Subjects ...... 63

Participants ...... 63

Procedures ...... 65

Data Collection and Storage ...... 65

Data Analysis ...... 66

Criteria for Quality Qualitative Research ...... 68

Transferability ...... 68

Internal Audit ...... 69

Self-reflexivity and Transparency—Researcher’s Positionality Statement ...... 69

Personal Background ...... 69

Conclusion ...... 73

Limitations ...... 75

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS OF THE STUDY ...... 77

Description of Data-Collection Process ...... 77

Participant Profiles ...... 79

Brendon, departed TAS in December 2019 ...... 80

Mike, Class of 2020 ...... 80

Patricia, Class of 2018 ...... 81

Joy, Class of 2017 ...... 81

Jordan, Class of 2017 ...... 82

Melissa, Class of 2017 ...... 82

7 Erik, Class of 2016 ...... 82

Alec, Class of 2015 ...... 83

Noel, Class of 2013 ...... 84

Micah, Class of 2013 ...... 84

Research Methodology Applied to the Data ...... 85

Analysis of Key Emergent Themes ...... 86

Major Theme of Confidence ...... 86

Major Theme of Communication ...... 87

Major Theme of Camaraderie ...... 88

Additional Findings and Observations ...... 89

The Importance of the Material Culture of Stage Props ...... 89

The Importance of Shared Food and Drink ...... 90

The Importance of Adaptability and Flexibility ...... 91

Weick’s Sensemaking Theory ...... 92

Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding ...... 99

Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019 ...... 103

Create ...... 105

Perform ...... 105

Respond...... 106

Connect ...... 107

Summary ...... 107

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND

RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 109

8 Key Findings and Implications for Practice ...... 110

Findings in Relation to Weick’s Sensemaking Theory and Recommendation for Theory 114

Findings in Relation to Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding and Recommendations for

Theory ...... 115

Findings in Relation to Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019 ...... 116

Findings in Relation to the Literature Review ...... 116

Recommendations for Future Research ...... 118

Limitations of this Study ...... 120

Policy Recommendation/Advocacy Statement ...... 120

Conclusion ...... 123

FINAL REFLECTION ON THE STUDY ...... 125

REFERENCES ...... 128

APPENDIX A: NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY IRB APPROVAL ...... 150

APPENDIX B: INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A RESEARCH STUDY ...... 151

APPENDIX C: CONSENT LETTER ...... 152

APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ...... 156

APPENDIX E: WISCONSIN THEATER PRODUCTION STANDARDS 2019 ...... 158

APPENDIX F: RESEARCH SITE LETTER OF CONSENT ...... 159

APPENDIX G: NIH CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION ...... 160

9 List of Tables

Table 1 Participants’ Technical Theater Problems/Critical or Revelatory Incident

Description ...... 96

Table 2 Dramaturgical Coding Data by Participant ...... 99

Table 3 Data Samples of Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding ...... 101

10 Chapter One: Introduction to the Study

Theatre is an art that people make not out of canvas and paint, or marble or musical instruments, but out of themselves. Theatre is made by people, for people, and is about people. It engages its people in two-way interactions -- both across the footlights with its audience and among those on and backstage themselves. Cohen, Working Together in Theatre, p. 23

Theatrical productions have been a mainstay of the American high-school experience for decades. Through a multitude of studies, scholars have concluded that performative involvement in high-school theater positively impacts students’ personal growth and development, their sense of collaboration, and their empathy towards others (Catterall et al., 1999; Brown & Urice, 2003;

McCammon & Østerlind, 2011; McCammon et al., 2012). Theater, by its very nature, is a highly collaborative activity that engages the cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and communication skills of all participants. However, the principal focus of study has been the performers’ experiences, either actors or musicians, including their rehearsal process. Pitts (2007) lamented the “lack of qualitative investigation of extracurricular shows and their impact on the greater school community” and not simply on the participants (p. 145). Little has been written about high-school technical-theater students’ experiences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Many high- school students participating in theater as an extracurricular activity report an increase in their self-efficacy, ability to focus, and motivation (Gamwell, 2005; Shulruf, 2010; Marsh &

Kleitman, 2002). Other studies have focused on the development of cognitive and affective empathy in theater students (McEnery, 2018; Raimondi, 2017). However, no studies have

11 focused exclusively on the technicians and their motivation, self-perception, self-efficacy, development of empathy, and the feeling of belonging to this subgroup.

Statement of the Problem

Feldman and Matjasko (2005) noted that extracurricular activities such as involvement in theater are a key setting in understanding adolescents’ development as they explore their identity.

This problem is centered on the lack of access to the narrated experiences of high-school students involved in technical theater. Currently, secondary educators and theater practitioners have insufficient data and supporting literature to provide insight and understanding of the high- school technical-theater experience, its educational value, and its impact on adolescent personal growth. As a consequence of this lacuna in prior research, the impact of the lived experiences of high school technicians on their personal growth and identity has not been the focus of prior research. This problem of practice centers on the narrative evidence and analysis of the storied experiences of high-school participants involved in stage management, the costume and make- up, lighting, sound, and/or props crew, and any other students who are not performing on stage but are still part of the story-telling aspect of theater. This study gave voice to high-school student technicians’ experiences by hearing and learning from their own stories. This study provides helpful perspectives to educators who work with high-school technicians and could also lead toward a more fully developed and articulated pedagogy of technical-theater teaching and learning at the secondary level.

Significance of the Research Question

Technical-theater education at the secondary level is a virtually unexplored topic in academic literature. The two principal publications for high-school theater, published by the

Educational Theater Association (EdTA), are Dramatics Magazine and the Teaching Theatre

12 Journal, which are neither peer-reviewed nor research-based, but full of practical advice usually centered on acting and performance. The United States Institute for Theatre Technology

(USITT) is a U.S.-based professional technical-theater organization with one member of their education commission representing the secondary-education level. The international equivalent of USITT is the International Organisation of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians

(OISTAT) and their education commission also has only one member representing the secondary level. No current publications or white papers from USITT or OISTAT specifically address secondary education. O’Toole (2010) noted that drama education can be read as “a series of arguments over dichotomies: process and product, theatre and classroom, artist and teacher, and so forth” (p. 271), but even he did not address the dichotomy of onstage or off, leaving the technicians in the dark. Omasta and Snyder-Young (2014) noted that much drama research falls within the “comfort zone” of researchers and more attention must be paid to the gaps and silences in the literature (p. 7). Omasta and Snyder-Young also noted that less than 2% of published drama-education research from 2002 through 2012 includes scenography, the umbrella term under which all technical- and design-related elements would fall (p. 13).

Research in theater education itself is still in its infancy in academic circles. The Youth

Theater Journal started publication in 1995, Research in Drama Education printed its first issue in 1996, Applied Theater Researcher first published in 2000, Theater Research in Canada entered the academic journal world in 2002, and the newest contributor, Drama Research: The

International Journal of Drama in Education, has printed seven volumes since 2010. However, none of these journals have included focused research on technical theater. In addition to the typical library database searches, the researcher conducted searches on all publications listed by the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), which includes publications in Asia,

13 Australia, and New Zealand. The results of the systematic search for the keyword terms high school or secondary school, combined with technical theater, scenic design, lighting design, costume design, sceneography, TiE (theatre in education), applied drama, a/r/tography, theater safety, theater pedagogy, and other related terms in these databases returned little data of substance, making it clear that little has been written about technical theater at the secondary level. Technical theater at the secondary level is a prominent research gap, an area with more questions than answers and insufficient information to guide further research. Defining the backstage area as the “practitioner’s space,” McAuley (2000) noted that this space “is significantly the least documented, least analyzed, least theorized area of theatre space” (p. 26).

Therefore, this study addressed the gap at the secondary-education level.

Current studies focus on the impact of K-12 arts education, but this overly broad "arts education" category encompasses everything from visual arts and design, to dance, theater, and even media/film, failing to recognize the heterogeneous nature of these art forms. Omasta (2012) found that 95% of American high schools offer theater-related extracurricular activities, mostly focusing on the production of a play or a musical (p. 13). Fredricks et al. (2002) noted that participation in extracurricular drama programs has multiple benefits for adolescents, including limiting their time for at-risk behaviors, teaching them values and competencies that will be useful as adults, and situating the individual inside a peer group within a positive social network.

Like many researchers (Gamwell, 2005; Marsh & Kleitman, 2002; McEnery, 2018; Raimondi,

2017; Shulruf, 2010), Fredricks et al. focused on the performers’ experiences and not the stage crew.

The narrative stories of high-school student technicians should have their time in the research spotlight. The benefits of participating in drama, from social group acceptance to

14 improved empathy, accrue not exclusively to the performers but to the whole production team of which they are a part. Empathy development in adolescence through the medium of theater has been the focus of multiple research studies (Anderson & Wilkinson, 2007; McEnery, 2018;

Kosnik, 2014; Sechrist, 2016). This study illuminates the voices of high-school students who are neglected and excluded in current literature. High-school performers (McCammon & Østerlind,

2011; McCammon et al., 2012) and musicians (Parker, 2020) have both been the focus of scholarly research, but the only research conducted to date for high-school technical-theater students centered on safety and liability (Stuart, 1994; Pyfrom, 2015) without considering their identity, empathy development, or personal growth. High-school theater technicians’ identities are grounded in their role as a "techie" even if that diminutive does not do them justice. Malik

(2016) asserts that the label "techie" greatly undersells their creative input in performance- making and also undermines their learning (p. 164).

When the curtain falls in professional theater, there are enthusiastic fans waiting for the performers, but the stagehands can slip away quietly into the night. According to Rayner (2006), technical-theater study is confounded by the very nature of theater and its divisions into true/false, real/unreal, and visible/invisible. In other words, the proscenium frames the audience’s focus; anything beyond that framed picture is invisible and unknowable. In the hidden hierarchy of the stage, the visible performer is always superior to the invisible technician and that paradigm holds true at the high-school level as well. This study provides those behind-the-scenes students a chance to tell their story and a new dimension to the educational value of being part of the technical crew for a theatrical production in the context of secondary education.

Adolescence is a critical stage for identity development, as the childhood self learns to integrate with peers as well as with adults (Erikson, 1968). Belonging to a peer group is

15 paramount to an individual’s social identity (Newman et al., 2007; Tarrant et al., 2006).

Woodworth and Osborne (2015) noted that theatrical performance tradition foregrounds the performers' visibility, and scholarly traditions often privilege the written text; however, hidden backstage and without a written record, the technical crew remains absent from literature.

Students behind the scenes appear to benefit from theatrical participation; however, because their voices are not considered, there is an opportunity for research in this area to provide data for improved and effective pedagogy in secondary-level technical theater.

Data on high-school technical theater could produce guidelines for schools' technical- theater programs by examining the high-school production context as a place of development and growth for adolescents using qualitative approaches and involving students active behind the scenes. Studies could also produce recommendations for preservice and in-service theater and technical-teacher training and standards. Technical theater as a medium of self-efficacy, personal growth, and discovery has yet to be explored. This study has implications for American public and private schools with curricular or extracurricular drama programs, as well as other high- school theater programs. This study also offers a starting point for developing new pedagogies for teaching technical theater at the secondary level.

Research Problem and Research Question

One main question guided this study in its attempt to address the research problem of understanding the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes through their own voice: How do high-school students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at Taiwan American School (TAS)?

16 Definition of Key Terminology

Stage crew: High-school students who handle the technical elements of curricular or extracurricular productions.

Technical theater: The lighting, set, sound, and costume design, stagecraft, stage management, and all related tasks essential to a theatrical production.

Theater: A performative event with live performers and a colocated audience. This study focused on the technical elements of theater, which are the same for scripted drama, devised drama, and musicals, as well as for dance concerts or dance productions.

Weick’s sensemaking theory and its components guided this study. The following section provides a brief introduction to the theory, its critics, and the rationale for its use in this study.

Theoretical Framework

Weick's sensemaking theory guided this study of technical theater at TAS. Sensemaking theory is emergent and was a suitable framework to study how high-school students narrate and contextualize their experiences of working backstage on productions, to assess the twenty-first- century skills and competencies developed there, and to give those students a voice in expressing how technical theater impacts their personal development. According to Weick (1993), sensemaking is the idea that “reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” (p. 635). Weick (1995) discusses seven properties of sensemaking, summarizing it as follows: (1) grounded in identity construction; (2) retrospective; (3) enactive of sensible environments; (4) social; (5) ongoing- continuous; (6) characterized by symbols of sensemaking; and (7) valuing plausibility over accuracy. Utilizing these sensemaking properties offers insight into how students involved in

17 high-school technical theater make sense of their involvement in a production, and it gives them a voice to express their experience.

Weick (1995) noted that investigating sensemaking processes starts from, or at least relates to, an important organizational event. This event or critical incident acts as the narrative’s focus to evoke the sensemaking response. Weick focused his own research on the Mann Gulch fire and the Tenerife Air disaster. Following Weick’s investigations of these tragedies, Bott and

Tourish (2016) noted that investigating the critical-incident approach facilitates collection, analysis, and theorization at a broad macrolevel for organization-wide events, and also at a microlevel of organizational actors' interpersonal and personal experiences (p. 293). The focus of this study was the performance through the eyes of those working behind the scenes. Months of rehearsals and planning for the performers and crew comes down to the critical incident of the interaction with the live audience. Woods (1993) noted that critical incidents have a parallel in education that he termed a “critical event” (p. 357), and he illustrated his points about critical events using the school production of Godspell. Secondary-school students’ experiences in that

"magic" moment of performance—while important for the individual and group levels—provide lessons that could fit within other secondary-school production contexts. “Analytic generalization in qualitative research occurs most keenly at the point of analysis and interpretation,” according to Polit and Beck (2010), who noted that “qualitative researchers can arrive at insightful, inductive generalizations regarding the phenomenon in relation to a field of understanding” (Thorne et al., 2009, as quoted in Polit & Beck, 2010, p. 1453). Lincoln and

Guba (1985), who used the term fittingness to refer to “the degree of congruence” (p.124) or similarity between two contexts, suggested a similar idea. As Lincoln and Guba (1985) noted,

‘‘The trouble with generalizations is that they don’t apply to particulars’’ (p. 110). However,

18 because the process of mounting a theatrical production is similar at many secondary schools, leading to the same “magic of performance” for the participants, some findings of this study have implications generalizable to other technical-theater programs in high schools, suggesting themes, ideas, practices, and conclusions that resonate with other contexts and serve to inform practice.

McCammon et al. (2012) noted that adults looking back on their experiences in high- school theater always commented on "performance magic," the elusive feeling experienced during high-quality play production that goes beyond the self into a whole new world of

"epiphanic flow" (p. 15). However, McCammon's research focused solely on the performers and not the technical crew. This study aimed to fill that gap, giving the technical crew the chance to tell their story of performance magic when the audience is present, as well as their participation in the rehearsal and performance process before the curtain opens.

The following paragraphs outline in greater detail each of the seven sensemaking qualities and preview their application to the study. Utilizing these sensemaking properties offers insight into how students involved in high-school technical theater make sense of their involvement in a production and gives them a voice to express their experience.

Sensemaking is grounded in identity construction. The first property in sensemaking is a very complex process focused on one’s self-identity and self-concept. It is who we understand ourselves to be in relation to the world around us. Schall et al. (2016) noted that "fitting in," or gaining peer acceptance, is a primary objective of youth in the high-school context. Many high- school students who do not find success in the classroom find success and acceptance on the stage crew (Stuart, 1994, p. 87).

19 Sensemaking is retrospective. The second property requires the ability to look to the past and determine the meaning of what occurred. We shape experience into meaningful patterns according to our memory of experience. McCammon and Østerlind (2011) surveyed high-school performance students in Arizona and Sweden to discern their motivation for taking theater classes. Reflecting on their experience, the students had three main answers: fun, fellowship, and family (McCammon & Østerlind, 2011, p. 92). The production process has highs and lows for all students involved. Finding out who was selected to be stage manager can be as stressful as auditioning. Long rehearsals can be draining, but the thrill of live performance usually leaves the cast and crew bonded and connected through their past experiences. McCammon et al. (2012) studied the lifelong impact of drama participation and found “residual, positive, lifelong impacts throughout adulthood” (p. 5). Grounding their research in the testimonies of performers’ lived experiences, McCammon et al. (2012) interviewed over 200 participants who had graduated up to 60 years before and found that many people were willing to share their stories and fond memories of participating in high-school theater.

Sensemaking is enactive of sensible environments. The third property of sensemaking focuses on the term “enactment.” In other words, once someone takes a certain action, they must react to the environment they created as a result of their initial action. People have an active role in shaping their environment because the results of their actions “become the constraints and opportunities they face” (Weick, 1995, p. 31). Because the student technicians literally build the show’s temporary world, they are invested in how they, the cast, and the audience perceive that world. Weick (1995) emphasized that sensemaking is about context: periphery and center define one another (p. 104). Weick’s analysis of the Mann Gulch disaster noted that without looking critically at the role system and the value of wisdom, it is not possible to find the root cause of

20 collapse (Weick, 1993, p. 639). The theatrical world’s environment is a fertile ground for exploration since the role system means student technicians’ work can often fall into the peripheral category compared to the star performers who hold the audience’s attention and focus.

Enactment is a property that covers the physical realities and social connections between the groups working on a theatrical production. The theater’s role system places performers in the center and technicians on the periphery, hidden in the wings; but their work together, along with the audience, forms the totality of the theatrical experience. Woodworth & Osborne (2015) noted that performance tradition foregrounds performers’ visibility and scholarly traditions often privilege the written text; however, hidden backstage are workers who built sets, costumers who ensure actors make their entrance appropriately garbed, and crew who operate the fly rail.

Sensemaking is social. The fourth property highlights the importance of sensemaking’s social aspects. Where we grew up in the world, in what cultural and socioeconomic context, and how we were taught to be in the world impact how we make sense. Socialization and the social setting are keys to understanding roles, prototypes, and stereotypes (Weick, 1995, p. 42). Those roles flow from the social connections of cast, crew, students, teachers, and their audience.

Sensemaking is ongoing. The fifth property conveys the important fact that one is constantly engaging in the meaning-making process—there is not a defined beginning and end.

Sensemaking is perpetually emergent. The design process is often diagrammed as linear, and the timeline of production is also linear, but the conversations about the show, the new insights of character, and the empathy developed by the cast and crew have an ongoing impact well beyond the closing curtain of a show. Theater is an experience both in the moment and in retrospect that continues to have a lifelong impact.

21 Sensemaking is focused on and by extracted cues. The sixth property of sensemaking illustrates the significance of simple cues that one takes note of and utilizes to make sense of one’s environment. The search for the cues is bounded by the organizational environmental context, and that context helps dictate which cues are noticed, ignored, or extracted and then embellished (Weick, 1995, p. 49). The sensemaker tries to interpret the cue to derive some meaning. The word "cue" has special significance in the theater for the performers and crew, but the word “cue” is used differently in both contexts. Campbell (1999) defined “cue” for the theater as anything that happens at a particular point in a show, such as a change of scenery, lighting, or other technical elements, or the verbal command given to make that change (p. 217).

The organizational context of theater comes with its own conventions and symbols, as well as a rich vocabulary to describe not only the actions of the play but the connections between the performers, directors, and stage crew.

Sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. Weick’s final property of sensemaking indicates it is more important to focus on plausibility rather than accuracy. No one person can master all the details. McAuley (2012) defined theater as "how a group of artists with very different skills, working in a range of different media, come together for an intense period and produce a single work of art" (p. 4). Collaborative energies stir together "diverse and idiosyncratic talents" in a production, and the director’s leadership aims this "coalescence of artists" toward its artistic goals, integrating the relationships and creativity of the whole creative team (Cohen, 2011, p. 7). A theatrical production is a community event; each person involved contributes, makes sense of the process, and makes their own story of their role in the process in their own way, including providing room for embellishment and fun. For Weick, accuracy is both pragmatic and project specific (1995, p. 59) and not the heart of sensemaking, which favors

22 plausibility, which Weick defines as a necessary quality that is “reasonable and memorable” and allows for embellishment as well as the potential to be “fun to construct” (p. 61).

Each of these seven properties alone could be its own focus in a study, but taken together, they provided a lens through which to view technical theater in high school. The interview questions addressed one or more of these properties to gain insight into how high-school students made sense of their involvement in technical theater. Narrative inquiry is a good frame for sensemaking because people engaging in hindsight are filtering and not duplicating their experiences (Weick, 1995, p. 128). Weick noted that people try hardest to build meaning and make sense around those actions to which their commitment is strongest (1995, p. 156). Theater is an extracurricular activity that requires a strong commitment from all participants, so this theory provided a solid framework for inquiry.

Critics of Weick’s Sensemaking Theory

Weick himself noted that sensemaking is grounded in the constructivist worldview and he observed that the prefix “sense” in sensemaking is “mischievous”—that is, combining notions of a realist ontology, as in sensed accurately, with an idealist ontology, as in constructed in a way that seems plausible (1995, p. 55). According to Craig-Lees (2001), sensemaking remains an “ill- defined, nebulous term,” which encompasses individual understanding and meaning-making (p.

517). In the social sciences, sensemaking is acknowledged and studied via “thick descriptions” obtained from the individual, usually via a narrative. Geertz (1973) defined “thick descriptions” as the “multiplicity of complex conceptual structures” which must be both grasped by the researcher and then rendered (p. 314). Craig-Lees asserted that “unreified, nonreplicable, noncomparable, narrative-based knowledge” is not valuable (p. 519) and that sensemaking’s grounding in a particular institutional context is its main flaw. In addition to the problem of

23 context, Mills (2008) cautioned that sensemaking, unless approached critically, runs the risk of reinforcing the gendered and patriarchal order.

Others have taken issue with the investigation of Weick’s critical incident, noting that the term “incident” often “trivializes the diversity of critical experiences” (Cope & Watts, 2000, p.

112). Claiming that Weick’s term “critical incident” implies a discrete event as well as a crisis,

Norman et al. (1992) recommended the term “revelatory incident.” For Weick, the critical incidents worthy of sensemaking are those “novel moments in organizations which capture sustained attention and lead people to persist in trying to make sense” (1995, p. 86).

Allard-Poesi (2005) criticized Weick’s sensemaking theory, noting that, in seeking to disengage itself from subjective experience and objectify it, “sensemaking research undermines, and may even lose, the fluid, tensional, and fundamentally problematic view of sensemaking and organizing it attempts to convey” (p. 12). Allard-Poesi offered two paths of sensemaking:

“engaging against” sensemaking or choosing to “engage in sensemaking with” the members of the organization, and in doing so, reaffirming the sensemaking activities’ socially constructed nature (p. 32). This study aligns with the latter participative route and the next section explores the rationale for selecting this theory.

Rationale for Utilizing Weick’s Sensemaking Theory

Weick’s sensemaking theory was selected to guide this study because each of its core tenets has a kernel of insight into the narrative of high-school students engaged in technical theater. According to Weick, a narrative provides a plausible frame for sensemaking (1995, p.

128). This study illuminated the lived experiences of high-school students working behind the scenes of a theatrical production. Sensemaking as an analytical construct requires the individual be the unit of analysis and that the data are collected via narratives, relying on identifying shared

24 meanings and common patterns of thought across individuals (Craig-Lees, 2001). The above outlined approach stresses that understanding an individual’s actual experiences can happen only by engaging in some way with the individuals involved (Ponterotto, 2005). Robinson (1981) urged researchers to investigate “noteworthy” narratives in which the actions are difficult, the situation is not routine, the predicament cannot be handled in a routine manner, and unexpected events happen that stand out in the narrator’s experience. Like Robinson’s approach to narrative,

Weick’s sensemaking theory is focused on vivid, tellable, and interesting stories because “a good narrative provides a plausible frame for sensemaking” (1995, p. 128).

Drazin et al. (1999) noted that the primary contribution of Weick’s sensemaking theory is the way it looks critically at multilevel influences in organizations, namely that the subgroup and individual both influence and are influenced by cross-level effects (p. 302). Drazin et al. focused on creativity, as expressed by an organization’s technical and administrative frames. They pioneered the use of Weick’s sensemaking theory to analyze creativity. Weick’s sensemaking theory gives researchers a tool to examine assumptions about an organization and the individual’s role in the organizational community. Weick provided a map to analyze how high- school students make sense of their participation in technical theater through their narratives.

Narratives and storytelling are at the heart of Weick’s sensemaking theory; he noted himself that

“what is necessary in sensemaking is a good story” (1995, p. 61). Weick also noted that “a good story holds elements together” (2012, p. 149). This study provides a forum for high-school students involved in technical theater to tell their stories and narrate their lived experiences behind the scenes.

25 Conclusion

From Plato’s rejection and disparagement of theatrical practices (Barish, 1985, p. 5) to modern America’s views of theater as mere entertainment (Goldstein, 1982, p. 28), theater education has struggled to find a place at the academic table (Omasta & Synder-Young, 2014, p.

19). Nevertheless, magic happens when that curtain rises. As Fowler states in Strong Arts, Strong

Schools, "Art is an invitation to figure out, to evaluate, to revise, to continue to imagine and solve problems - in a word, to create" (2001, p. 21). Technical-theater students are constantly creating; they construct scenery, costumes, and props, focus the stage lights, and operate spotlights—building the production’s very world; thus, they are an integral part of the production team, and the successful audience reception of a show is as dependent on their work as on the work of the performers themselves. Theater education can offer an imperfect but crucial means to help students, both onstage and in the wings, engage with empathy, and theater education also offers a mirror to help students reflect on their own personal development; however, theater education must be grounded pedagogically in sound research. Weick’s sensemaking theory provided a framework to investigate technical theater at the secondary level, as lived and experienced by the students of TAS. Student technicians must be given the opportunity to narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences participating behind the scenes to increase the understanding of technical theater’s value from high-school students' perspectives. This study turned the spotlight onto the student technicians and brought their voices directly into the conversation. Sofer (2013) highlighted that which is

“unseen” as indeed “a critical complement to theater’s visible dimension” (p. 15). It is now time to shine a light on the unseen high-school stage technicians’ work and give them the chance to make visible their story, bringing to light the value of technical theater in the secondary-school

26 experience. The following chapter offers a comprehensive review of the extant literature about high-school theater education, as well as a review of the current practices to train high-school and college-theater practitioners to provide an academic context for this study.

27 Chapter Two: A Review of the Literature

Theater withholds permanence through performance. Forcing us to give way to the unfolding of appearances in time, theater shows us to be more like the Wizard than Dorothy. We are unable to return to the comforts of Kansas and to imagine that we can wake up to reality, for the dream is endless. Rather, we take off in the balloon of time, shouting back, "I can't come back. I don't know how it works." The technicians backstage, however, do know how it works. They build the balloon in which the Wizard takes off. Alice Rayner, Ghosts: Death's Double and the Phenomena of Theater

Technical theater education at the secondary level is a virtually unexplored topic in literature. Little has been written about high-school technical-theater students’ experiences; thus, their voices remain silent in academic literature surrounding adolescent development and performing-arts education at the secondary level. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. This literature review first attempts to elucidate the reasons technical theater has not been the focus of formal academic study. Since the days of Aristotle’s dismissal of “spectacle” in favor of the power of tragedy, the material stuff of the stage has received short shrift (Sofer, 2003, p. v). This review explores three existing strands of literature, starting with the quantitative overview of theater in U.S. high schools, moving on to an examination of theater education in current practice, and ending with a strand exploring the connections between the performing arts, empathy, and adolescents' personal growth. The literature review grounds this study in the field and context of the current understanding of technical theater in secondary education.

Research in theater education itself is still in its infancy in academic circles and much recent literature focuses on the impact of arts education (Bamford, 2006; Catterall, 2009;

Catterall et al., 1999; Deasy, 2002; Fleming et al., 2016; Fowler, 2001; Gibson & Ewing, 2011;

28 Jensen, 2001; Stride & Cutcher, 2015), but this reductive category of "arts education" encompasses everything from visual arts and design, to dance, theater, and even media/film, failing to recognize the heterogeneous nature of these art forms. According to Dworkin et al.

(2003), certain learning-experience domains may associate with positive youth development, including opportunities for exploration and identity formation, such as participating in the performing arts. High-school students spend a considerable amount of time producing a play/musical, and this experience helps shape their identities (Elliot, 2006, p. 31). Nakkula

(2003) clearly explained why self-understanding is crucial to adolescents and how schools play a role in shaping identity, emphasizing that activities “in which youth are most invested and through which they experience the deepest gratification and most meaningful reinforcement” are the ones that most impact their identity (p. 9).

Technical theater is a broad term that encompasses the lighting, set, sound, and costume design, stagecraft, stage management, and all related tasks required for a theatrical production.

Schott (2013) noted that production work in technical theater can be “extensive and elaborate, requiring extensive skill sets in diverse areas” (p. 13), as is apparent in the brief list above. In addition to the work leading up to the production, which includes constructing and painting scenery, buying, pulling, and/or making costumes and props, and hanging and focusing the lights, technical theater also encompasses the activities of the stage crew, beginning with lowering the house lights and raising the curtain at the beginning of the show (Kaluta, 2003).

These activities include, but are not limited to, running the spotlights, cuing sound effects, shifting scenery, assisting with costume quick changes, stage management, and any other ancillary tasks to make the performance run smoothly.

29 Technical theater and its specializations are often lumped as "craft" and not considered an art form of their own because they are viewed as ancillary components of a live theatrical production (Essin, 2015; Hunt & Melrose, 2005). In an interview for the school paper, Robert

Edmund Jones urged high-school students in Ohio to become the best craftspeople they can be with the following words: “I think we can honestly, if we are good craftsmen, we can be proud of that” (Jones & Crepeau, 1967, p. 130). Schools have traditionally exalted playwrights' contributions to the canon of literature and ignored the more ephemeral design elements (Hunt &

Melrose, 2005). Woodworth & Osborne (2015) noted that performance tradition foregrounds the performers’ visibility, and scholarly traditions often privilege the written text; however, hidden backstage are workers who built sets, costumers who ensure actors make their entrance in the appropriate attire, and crew who operate the fly rail. These artists, whose labor has been deliberately obscured from the audience’s view, are rarely part of the critical conversation and have certainly been excluded from academic literature even though their backstage performance is every bit as choreographed as the onstage performance.

Essin (2015) likened the spotlight operators’ work to a kind of choreographed performance in their study of the materialist production history of A Chorus Line. Essin focused on how the paid technicians narrated and made sense of their work, giving them a voice in telling their story in much the same way that this study focused on high-school technicians making sense of their involvement, giving them a voice to narrate their story. Hunt and Melrose (2005) noted the complete absence of the technician from literature on theater and performance studies, even though both fields make extensive use of technicians, designers, and crews. Hunt and

Melrose maintained that theater technicians need a balance of technical rationality and reflective practice, as Schon (2001) advocated for in the training and practice of architects and for schools

30 of architecture. Schon (2001) categorized theories related to math and science as technical rationality and advised that reflective practice is necessary for a holistic approach to the design work of architecture to counterbalance technical rationality. Rotimi and Ramanayaka (2015) noted that technical rationality and reflective practice are also important for construction projects due to their complexity, dynamism, uncertainty, and uniqueness. These characteristics of architecture and construction have direct parallels with the world of technical theater. They also fit into the framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory and its analysis on the enactment of the sensible environment, which guided this study.

The extant literature for technical theater at the secondary level has significant gaps in the area of pedagogies associated with the teaching and learning of the theatrical-design process, and participants’ narrated voices are absent from the literature. While there are some parallels between technical theater at the collegial and secondary levels, there are limitations to this comparison. Fredricks et al. (2002) noted that participation in extracurricular drama programs in high school has multiple benefits for adolescents, including limiting their time for at-risk behaviors, teaching them values and competencies that will be useful as adults, and situating the individual inside a peer group within a positive social network. Fredricks et el. (2002) produced a quantitative study that included a wide range of extracurricular activities from sport to music, but their study did not look for individual narratives about the experience.

Technical theater never stands alone: it exists to support the work of performers and directors. A stage set without the cast is an empty space; a costume without the context of the show is simply clothing. A play on the page is merely a blueprint for that play on the stage, even if schools tend to elevate the text. Zimmerman (1994) studied the “beautiful, riotous chaos” that arises from moving from the page to the stage and noted wryly that they had lost “once and for

31 all the illusion that performance text could be completely imagined before performance practice; and further, that anyone would want it to” (p. 63–64). This study focused on technical theater and the student-technician experience and allowed these students the chance to narrate their own story, instead of the playwright’s tale.

However, in theater, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, and an ephemeral magic exists in live production. This magic dissipates when the curtain closes. It is challenging to measure the effect of participation behind the scenes and it is equally difficult to adequately put the experience into words. As with other arts-based studies, it is difficult to assess students’ growth and the impact of participating in technical theater. However, this study offered the students themselves the opportunity to narrate their own story of involvement behind the scenes.

Many studies have examined the arts and their value to secondary education (Bamford,

2006; Catterall, 2009; Catterall et al., 1999; Deasy, 2002; Fleming et al., 2016; Fowler, 2001;

Gibson & Ewing, 2011; Jensen, 2001; Parker, 2020; Stride & Cutcher, 2015), but those studies focused almost exclusively on the visual or performing arts. However, outside of a few unpublished dissertations (Crocker, 2003; Morey, 2014; Pyfrom, 2015; Ross-Clausen, 2010;

Schott, 2013; Stuart, 1994), no other study has explored high-school technical theater, certainly not as narrated by the participants themselves.

Technical-theater students are constantly creating; they construct scenery, costumes, and props, focus stage lights, and operate spotlights, thus creating the production’s visual world

(Schott, 2013). Technical-theater students are an integral part of the production team and a show’s successful audience reception is as dependent on their work as on the work of the performers themselves (Jones, 1976, 2004; Malik, 2016; Rayner, 2006). Technical-theater

32 students are collaborators and artists working in an environment that Lave and Wenger (1991) acknowledged as a "community of practice." Malik (2016) asserted that the label "crew" or

"production team" greatly undersells their creative input in performance-making and also undermines their learning. Stage lighting, like live performance itself, is ephemeral: for example, it leaves traces only in paperwork and production photos and videos. However, what students learn by hanging, focusing, and programming lights remains long after the curtain has fallen.

Robert Edmund Jones (2004) urged us to think of the light in theater as alive and to keep vision and passion on our minds even as we shout at electricians on ladders. Sound design, like stage lighting, leaves little trace after a production. Costumes and scenery leave more vestigial remains, but they also lose their performance magic when the curtain closes.

Stagecraft is more than the study of effects and illusions, but according Rayner (2006), technical-theater study is confounded by the very nature of theater and its divisions into true/false, real/unreal, and visible/invisible. Audiences are watching real action unfold before their eyes, but they are also aware that it is not real. The audience’s focus remains on the visible; when a character leaves the stage, the audience does not think of characters as waiting in the wings for their next entrance. Rayner noted that technical theater falls into the category that challenges the limits of dualistic thought patterns and is therefore a "ghost" that can only be understood metaphorically in the fundamentally human space of the theater where people confront their own mortality (p. 8). Rayner further noted that the “designated space of representation excludes the technicians and keeps them out of sight and mind” (p. 182). Sofer

(2013) elaborated on Rayner’s thought and defined theater as an “invisibility machine” (p. 13), noting that “hidden in its wings, we find…. designers, stagehands, carpenters, and lighting technicians” (p. 14). For Rayner and Sofer, the crew is “working” but not “signifying” and that

33 explains why audiences and academia have continued to ignore them. However, this study gave student technicians the chance to star in their own drama, to narrate their experience during their high-school years.

This literature review first examines the background of theater as a subject and extracurricular activity in U.S. high schools, the current state of theater education in secondary institutions, the current models for theater-teacher training, and finally, the empathy and cognitive development of adolescents through the arts. Ravitch and Riggan (2017) emphasized that “the scope of the literature review should be confined to those works that are most relevant to the study’s research questions” (p. 29). This literature review situates this study of the narrated stories of high-school students’ technical-theater experiences at TAS into its fuller academic context, connecting the significance of each piece of literature that informed and guided this study.

Quantitative Overview of Theater in U.S. High Schools

Theater, both cocurricular and extracurricular, has been shown to increase students' understanding of the world and help them grow in self-confidence and creativity (Seidel, 1991;

Omasta, 2012). To date, there have been three major published quantitative studies of theater in

U.S. high schools using large samples surveying high-school administrators and drama teachers, and several other unpublished master’s and doctoral theses with quantitative studies of theater in secondary schools (Evans, 1928; Waack, 1983). All three major published studies relied on public high schools that self-reported the information requested in the surveys. The trends are positive: Theater courses and extracurricular programs are now offered in more and more schools, and plays are produced for their school community. These studies are significant for the

34 current study because they expose the foundational understanding of theater in U.S. secondary schools.

The first major published quantitative study of theater in U.S. high schools was undertaken by Peluso (1970), who reported that, in the 1969–1970 school year, 63% of U.S. high schools offered some theatrical performance. Peluso surveyed public schools with enrollments of

200 or more students in all 50 states with a survey for the principal or their designee and the drama teacher (if there was one on the faculty) to fill out. The data set for analysis included the surveys of 1,352 schools randomly selected to account for geographic distribution and funding sources. Peluso proved money is not the most significant factor contributing to the strength of drama programs; rather, school size is the single most important factor, coupled with a teacher who is formally trained for the task. Principals and teachers agreed with two major goals for their theater program: (1) enable students to grow in self-confidence and self-understanding, and (2) provide experiences that help increase the students' understanding of others. A few statistics buried deep in the report provided telltale signs of the state of technical theater in U.S. high schools in 1970: 86% of schools that staged performances had no dedicated space to serve as a scenery shop, and 40% of schools had no lighting control besides the ability to black out the stage and turn the lights back on. Peluso did not include any questions about how technical theater was taught or practiced in secondary schools in the 1970 survey.

Building on that initial survey, Seidel (1991) produced a six-part report for the EdTA.

Part 1 provides an overview of high-school theater programs; Part 2 looks at theater teachers and their demographics; Part 3 looks at high-school theater curricula; Part 4 describes the available production facilities; Part 5 redefines effective theater programs, and Part 6 looks at the changes in high-school theater since Peluso's 1970 report on the same topic. Parts 2 and 4 of the report

35 are of particular interest to the topic of technical theater. In the findings of Part 2, according to

Seidel (1991), most high-school theater teachers rate classwork and productions as having roughly equal potential for teaching self-discipline, creativity, communications skills, and critical thinking. Part 4 includes ratings of theater facilities and questions about what other spaces are available for theater use. According to Seidel (1991), only 27% of schools had a dedicated space equipped as a costume shop; 32% of schools had a scenery shop; and 91% of schools had some form of stage-lighting control. Seidel reaffirmed Peluso's hypothesis that the teacher is the most significant factor in high-school theater programs. Seidel found that students involved in educational theater were disproportionately White and affluent and had better access to drama programs in their schools as a result. Their drama teachers were also predominately White at

96.7%. The EdTA acknowledged this problem and sought ways to connect high-school theater to more racially diverse student bodies. However, this problem is not easily addressed if it is not a priority for individual school districts.

Matt Omasta (2012) conducted the most recent survey of theater programs in U.S. schools, sponsored by the EdTA in partnership with Utah State University. Omasta opened with some encouraging news in Chart 1: 95% of high schools in the United States reported the availability of either theater courses or extracurricular theater activity. This number climbed from 63% of schools in Peluso’s 1970 study, and from 79% of schools in Seidel's 1991 study.

The theater teachers were asked about their training in acting and directing, but also—for the first time—about their training and familiarity with set and lighting design, stage management, and all other areas of technical theater. Omasta noted optimistically that, of schools with theater classes, 29% have discrete courses in theater tech and design. It is unclear from the data if these courses are taught by the drama teacher or a specialist. In the facilities supplement to the study,

36 Omasta noted that 13% of schools had a technical staff member responsible for venue management. In 2012, 51% of schools with theater programs had a scenery shop while 23% had an adequate costume shop. The evidence for the growth of technical theater is readily apparent, even if it was not the focus of the study.

Conclusion

These three major quantitative studies of theater programs in U.S. high schools laid the foundation for further study. These studies provide a snapshot, but no descriptive program depth.

The trends are clear: The number of theater courses offered and program budgets have increased, and there is now a space at the table in high-school drama curriculum for technical theater alongside traditional acting courses. Advocates of theater-arts education have concrete data they can take to policymakers, administrators, and school boards. The EdTA offers an established model of excellence to judge theater in U.S. high schools. Theater, both cocurricular and extracurricular, can increase students' understanding of the world and help them grow in self- confidence and creativity. Further examination is necessary to guide the differentiated instruction on and off stage. Cousins (2000) criticized the way the tradition of the high school play perpetuates mainstream culture, but acknowledged that participation as the lead, in the ensemble, or even behind the scenes leads to “personal development, [and] also builds confidence, discipline, and teamwork skills” (p. 86).

This first strand of inquiry focused on drama teachers’ reports of their students’ experiences in curricular and cocurricular drama programs, but offered a bird’s-eye view of these programs without differentiating between the performer and the crew members. The next strand of inquiry examines high-school and collegiate theater education in current practice.

37 Theater Education in Current Practice

The theatre is a school. We shall never have done with studying and learning. In the theatre, as in life, we try first of all to free ourselves, as far as we can, from our own limitations. Then we can begin to practice "this noble and magicall art." Robert Edmund Jones, The Dramatic Imagination, p. 2

In reviewing qualitative case studies for theater in the educational context, it becomes clear that most practitioners and researchers agree on the power of theater to positively impact the lives of students and teachers; however, we must be careful to interpret these studies critically and distinguish between legitimate research and arts advocacy and intervention.

Belfiore (2009) called on fellow scholars and argued that a discourse of "bullshit" permeates rhetoric around the alleged transformational powers of the study of the arts and the corollary positive social gains. Almost all researchers in this field have a deep connection to performance; thus, active steps must be taken to avoid overestimating the strength of the conclusions to be drawn. The researcher's bias cannot predetermine the study’s outcomes. In their study of Danish high-school students, Rasmussen and Rasmussen (2015) noted that students involved in talent programs generally have high amounts of the following three forms of capital: educational, cultural, and social. Saldaña & Omasta (2018) offered the following direct suggestions for researching this field: avoid the dramaturgical approach and focus on the individual acting, reacting, and interacting with the five "R"’s of routines, rituals, rules, roles, and relationships (p.

3). It is possible to study theater by focusing the research carefully, and by logical extension, technical theater, with the same analytical lens as in the study of psychology, sociology, anthropology, healthcare, business, or government.

Theater and Its Role in the Academy

Theater as a whole is accepted as an art form; however, components such as scenic and lighting design struggle to find recognition as arts forms. Theater is founded on an artistic-

38 aesthetic dimension grounded in the humanities (DeCoursey, 2019). There is much academic debate on "drama" versus "theater" in higher-education circles. Bailin (1993) offered the following useful distinction for academic discourse: Drama focuses on the learner’s experience while theater focuses on audience communication. This dichotomy between drama and theater is not useful in examining technical theater in high schools or colleges because there is a focus on the students' learning and personal growth through technical theater and less focus on the audience and their experience. Recent studies have examined theater's impact on drawing on cultural reference points, political beliefs, personal histories, and immediate preoccupations

(Bailin, 1993; Dinesh, 2015; Essin, 2015; Hughes & Wilson, 2004; Kalliopuska, 1989;

McCammon & Østerlind, 2011). Kushner (2003) urged for further study of the liminal space where the public’s demands and the performing artist’s needs meet.

Schonmann (2005) argued that the real appeal of theater education is the power to express the human spirit via the "magic" of theater. Schonmann asserted that theater is an art form and simultaneously a tool for holistic inquiry into the self, as well as a tool for building community (p. 38). Berkeley (2008) questioned what place theater should have in higher education and what outcomes are expected from a study of theater. In reviewing the development of current higher-education theater models, Berkeley concluded that theater education is currently caught between craft and culture and must "legitimize" its usefulness in the political order. Berkeley (2009) credits the 1925 opening of Yale’s department of drama as the beginning point of theater in higher education. Oenslager at Yale viewed the designers and technical crew as the “necessary workman . . . to let the director and actors be praised for the final product” (as cited in Bisaha, 2015, p. 241). At the secondary level, the first classes in theater and stagecraft were already offered back in 1915 (Waack, 1983, p. 23). Fliotsos (2004) charted five

39 pedagogical approaches to directing that are attested in the literature but did not mention the related fields of stagecraft or technical theater. Omasta and Synder-Young (2014) noted that scenography, a term that combines set, lighting, and costume design, appears in under 2% of academic journals in the field of drama education. Omasta and Synder-Young also highlighted the difference between gaps in the literature and what he termed “silence in the literature” (p. 7).

Omasta also admits that, for technical theater, there is still much to be researched at all levels of study (personal communication, November 3, 2017) and the literature is silent.

Essin (2016) articulated the frustrations and rewards of collaboration on the construction of a campus pageant wagon in connection with their introductory-level college theater-history course. Essin's research focused on theatrical labor as a complex web of physical, intellectual, and social skills inherited from a long genealogy of mentors who have shaped the design aesthetics and stagecraft practices of university theaters in the United States. Essin’s research is especially relevant to this study because they incorporated direct student feedback on their hands-on labor in building the pageant wagon. Essin’s focus here is on the actual physical labor of college-student technicians, using that as the means to teach theater history. Essin’s work is significant to this study because it helps give voice to student technicians.

"Learning by doing" rather than "theorizing" is most technical-theater practitioners’ approach, which is one way to account for the literature’s silence since practitioners are busy with “messy, real situations” in theatrical productions (Malik, 2016, p. 162). In a phenomenographic study, Shreeve (2010b) explored the link between teaching in a college part- time and working in the arts, noting that there are five categories that are most commonly used to describe how an individual approaches straddling those two worlds of teaching and practice: dropping in as a guest teacher; moving across the two worlds; approaching it as two camps;

40 balancing the demands; and finally, holistically integrating the roles of teacher and practitioner.

Malik (2016) looked closely at the intersectionality of the vocational/practical side of teaching costume design and the personal/artistic side. Malik articulated the tenets of technical-theater pedagogy, adapted from the model Shreeve et al. (2010a) explicated. Shreeve stated that, in art and design education, learning involves uncertainty and has a material, physical, and visual dimension, and that process is important and developmental. To Shreeve's four tenets, Malik added a fifth tenet specific to technical theater: the audience matters. This approach honors the open-ended nature of creative production and celebrates its inherent ambiguities. Malik (2016) argued that the study of costume design and construction, considered vocational by some, actually requires students to enter into a "community of practice" (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where a deeper understanding of context and meaning working toward the common goals of a production are as important as one's sewing and designing skills. Malik’s study focused on giving their students the opportunity to reflect, and on prioritizing helping the students find their voice to express themselves.

Vandenbroucke (2016) insisted the serious study of theater boils down to our responsibility to help students encounter and struggle as they prepare for a life ahead, a life

"vastly enriched by their immersion in making theater" (p. 360). Theater is a rare human pursuit that can use every piece of knowledge and talent, including painting, sewing, and drafting plans.

Vandenbroucke noted that technical-theater teachers explicitly "hand down" their knowledge and students implicitly extend that knowledge to their fellow students, sometimes with a crescent wrench up on a ladder.

Many scholars agree the inquiry around technical theater is important in academia

(Morey, 2014; Omasta & Snyder-Young, 2014; Ross-Claussen, 2010; Stuart, 1994), but further

41 investigation is necessary to articulate a clear pedagogical approach. Further study is also needed to assess technical theater from participants’ vantage points.

Theater in High Schools

The study and practice of theater, both during the academic day and as an extracurricular program, has been well established in American school curriculum (Evans, 1928; Omasta, 2012;

Peluso, 1970; Seidel, 1991; Waack, 1983). However, the impact and importance of the study of school performance at the secondary level is a “neglected area of research” (Schonmann, 2000, p. 59). Leonard (1933) noted that the Alice in Wonderland production at the Kern County High

School in Bakersville, CA in October of 1926 was staged by a “dramatic department consists of two beginning classes, one advanced class, and a class in stage shop (including artists, carpenters, stage crew, and electricians)” (p. 23). Leonard offers one of the earliest references to a stagecraft course at the secondary level and noted that it is in the stagecraft “of play production that much of its educational value lies” (p. 47). Viewing Smalley as the expert in high-school technical theater, Leonard quoted Smalley extensively: “What the youth may lack in skill it makes up in spirit and fresh enthusiasm. Stagecraft, concerned as it is, in depicting the visual elements of life in general, embraces elements taught in all the various departments of the high school” (Smalley, 1925, as cited in Leonard, 1933, p. 48).

Lazarus (2000) highlighted the need for K-12 theater education to shift in conjunction with the artistic and educational practice worldwide to engage multilingual, multicultural learners in a relevant and humanizing dialogue. The scale of decisions high-school theater teachers face comes nowhere near that of professional theater, but the essential dichotomy of artistic and economic considerations becomes a trichotomy in the school setting: the consideration of the students’ education must also align with artistic and economic

42 considerations. Working with Arab and Jewish drama teachers in Israel, Schonmann (2000) used the school performance to explore the shared value of peace. Collaborating across schools in

Canada, India, Taiwan, England, and Greece, Gallagher and Jacobson (2018) examined theater- making practices for their artistic, political, and educational value. Gallagher & Jacobson discovered great potential for political and ethical engagement through theater education, calling on students to “hear multiple truths” and engage fully in the world around them (p. 53).

Wright (1991) was an early advocate for mandating the inclusion of drama education in elementary and high-school curricula to help students explore their identity. In 2014, the

National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) published the first revision to the national arts standards since 1994, and for the first time, the standards addressed technical theater. The

NCCAS (2014) provided four anchor standards for the arts: creating; performing/producing/presenting; responding; and connecting. These new arts standards set out to improve student learning and achievement in the arts by defining artistic literacy; shaping policy and research; influencing teacher training, practice, and evaluation; and clarifying connections between the arts and 21st-century skills. With three articulated levels for secondary schools (proficient, accomplished, and advanced), the main goal of the new standards is to produce artistically literate students capable of creating: conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work; performing: realizing those artistic ideas through presentation; responding: understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning; and connecting: relating artistic ideas with personal meaning and external context.

The standards for technical-theater education are included in the theater strand and are notably absent from the dance strand. The EdTA (2016) expanded on the standards presented by the NCCAS and defined the full range of technical-theater options in their Opportunity-to-Learn

43 supplement to the NCCAS. The EdTA (2016) defined exceptional-level high-school theater curriculum as those programs that "provide increased opportunities, time and resources for more in-depth and diverse study of theatrical elements, including technical theater and design"(p. 15).

No longer hiding in the wings, technical theater is now center stage in the definition of an exceptional high-school program. The EdTA, which published these new standards, also conducted the quantitative studies of the theater programs in U.S. schools.

Utilizing the new standards put forth by the EdTA, Haddad (2018) conducted a phenomenological study of what it means to rehearse and perform in a high-school musical by profiling and interviewing five high-school actors starring in the musical South Pacific, but the actors’ only comments about the technical crew concerned the combined rehearsals and disagreements with the student stage manager. Haddad (2018) noted that a major limitation of the study was the lack of the ensemble members’ lived experiences (p. 187) and suggested widening the participant pool to include a diverse range of students for further research on high- school musicals.

Crocker (2003) explored the characteristics of successful high-school theater programs in

36 Texas high schools and found that directors have the biggest impact on high-school theater programs. Crocker also based their definition of “successful high school theatre program” on the earlier EdTA standards that guided Seidel and Omasta, as well as the Texas State theater curriculum. Crocker (2003) noted that “many districts did not offer the technical theatre and theatre production courses” (p. 47) even though the surveyed principals frequently mentioned the expenditures on lighting and sound equipment and other facilities-related expenses. Crocker solely relied on phone interviews with drama teachers and principals for the data set analyzed in their study and did not give the students a voice.

44 High-school theater is often classified as an extracurricular activity because productions are usually rehearsed and performed after typical school hours. Several psychologists have conducted multiple studies to measure the effect of extracurricular activities on school climate, student retention, and student absenteeism in secondary schools (Fredricks et al., 2002; Hansen et al., 2003; Larson & Brown, 2007; Marsh, 1992). Quantitative studies have explored high- school theater, although usually as a smaller part of studies of high-school athletics and music participation (Dworkin et al., 2003; Fredericks et al., 2002). Marsh (1992) investigated extracurricular participation through two basic models: the zero-sum model and commitment-to- school model. The zero-sum model views high-school students’ academic, social, athletic, and artistic pursuits to be in competition for their time. Thus, more time spent in the theater means there is less time for academic work. Marsh debunked that older model and put forward the commitment-to-school hypothesis. Participation in extracurricular theater programs—"even though not obviously associated with academic achievement" (p 560)—leads to increased commitment to school and school values. Marsh credited this commitment to an increase in academic success, but only though indirect evidence.

Yassa (1999) examined Canadian high-school students and the perceived benefits of participating in creative drama, targeting the social skills of democracy, communication, respect, empathy, flexibility, and tolerance. Yassa interviewed six students from two schools and established clear connections between what students learn in theater classes and their personal development. Given the correlation between theater classes and effective social interactions, it was clear to Yassa that the self-knowledge and self-confidence gained from studying theater facilitates the entry of students into adulthood. Unfortunately, Yassa interviewed and observed only acting students, but mentioned that, in class observations, students who pulled props and

45 costumes were acknowledged as being part of the group and they contributed to the assignment of presenting visual tableaux of the theme presented by the teacher. Yassa noted that drama class

“targeted social skills comprised of democracy, communication, respect, empathy, flexibility and tolerance” through projects such as presenting visual tableaux (p. 38).

To build on the connection of theater education to soft skills, Catterall et al. (1999) conducted a quantitative analysis that also looked at the depth of involvement in theater using the data of a study of 25,000 typical American high-school students. They concluded that involvement in the arts and academic success are connected. The connection is more apparent when viewed over time and there is a greater impact if the students are "intensively" involved in the arts. They found theater arts correlate with human development. Sustained student involvement in theater arts associates with a variety of youth developments such as gains in reading proficiency, self-concept, and motivation, and higher levels of empathy and tolerance for others. Catterall et al. introduced the following three hypotheses for why theater arts help students develop: (1) theater-arts students assume the perspective of the characters they portray,

(2) theater-arts students have more sustained social interaction with peers, which develops their empathy, and (3) students with these traits self-select to involve themselves in theater programs.

However, the report lacks sufficient evidence to directly say that students’ involvement in theater

"caused" their personal growth.

Society tends to believe children are not artists and teachers are not scholars (Brown &

Urice, 2003; Gallagher & Jacobson, 2018). Addressing four major misperceptions of the K-12 theater-education world, Omasta and Chappell (2015) attempted to describe the rather large void between the practices of theater in K-12 education and theater in higher education.

Misperception 1: Theater education focuses on public high-school teachers. While many higher-

46 education students who study education work toward a public-teaching certification, many end up in private, independent, or even international schools later in their careers. Misperception 2:

Theater education as a focus is less rigorous and not geared toward future professionals. This myth hinders theater-research developments. Misperception 3: Those majoring in theater education lack the training and experience needed to be artists and researchers. Omasta posited that solid research is necessary for all levels of inquiry, both for K-12 and higher education.

Misperception 4: Theater education is uninterested in the rigors of the professional theater world.

To say that those who decide to enter education are somehow "not good enough to hack it" is a disservice both to the professional world and academia. Omasta reviewed all articles published in the official journals of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) and ATHE, including

Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Topics, up through early 2015 and conducted email interviews with the editors to determine why no articles addressing K-12 theater education have been published. Is there room at the table for K-12 educators' voices in the discussion of theater pedagogy? Is the table big enough for the student technicians to also have a voice?

Whitaker (2016), a high-school music teacher, conducted a qualitative case study of the process in which high-school students wrote and produced their own musical during the school year’s 9 total months. Through the "community of practice" lens (Lave & Wenger, 1991), this case study examined how students who wrote and designed a show grew intellectually and artistically, compared with the growth of students working only on curricular performances. Four teachers, two of whom were technical-theater teachers, were involved in the process of devising a musical. This case study focused on the need in music education to go forward from the conservatory model with its focus on the individual and move toward divergent multiple creativities. The technical-theater teachers involved did not guide the process; rather, the students

47 drove the process. This study looked closely at one school's tradition and it would be challenging to replicate this type of project in a different school setting. However, Whitaker focused on the primacy of their students to drive their own learning processes, which offered implications for this study since this study sought to give voice to the students behind the scenes.

Zdriluk (2010) interviewed four former students who had graduated a decade earlier.

Zdriluk's data analysis revealed that students’ involvement in high-school theater produced wide- ranging and enduring developmental benefits across personal, social, and cognitive domains.

Zdriluk attempted to capture the “educational value of secondary school theatre and to privilege the voice of students previously involved” (p. 111). This study clearly shows the value of retrospection and the narrated voices of those involved. The two male and two female students

Zdriluk interviewed were all principally performers, but three of them worked behind the scenes as well. One male participant was a lighting designer for a production where he played the lead; the other male was also involved in hanging and focusing lights and served as the set designer once in his high-school career. One female student was active in props construction and costume coordination. All three participants drew no distinction between the lessons learned as a performer and as a crew member, but Zdriluk conducted these interviews as the drama teacher who taught and directed these former students, and made no mention of other teachers involved in the cocurricular productions.

McLauchlan and Winters (2014) conducted a study focused on the opinions of ninth- grade students in their first high-school drama course at a Canadian public high school, using a mixed method approach that combined class observations, questionnaires, and 12 interviews lasting between 15 to 25 minutes. Their study is one of the few centered on students’ perceptions. These researchers found that students chose to study secondary-school drama for

48 diverse reasons and that students value drama’s differences from other courses, especially its capacity to enhance personal growth. McLauchlan and Winters (2014) noted the role of gender differences in students’ reasons for studying drama: Girls chose drama out of curiosity or interest, followed by recommendations from friends and the teacher’s reputation, while boys viewed drama as a potentially easy, enjoyable course and a chance to engage in a physical learning environment (p. 56). According to McLauchlan and Winters, drama class enhances student growth across five broad learning categories: (1) skills and concepts of performance and production, (2) empathy and perspective taking, (3) social and collaborative skills, (4) confidence, communication, and creativity, and (5) success in other courses and interview preparation (pp. 55–56, 58–59). This study gave voice to the stories of participants in drama class and is therefore relevant to the design of a similar study with the participants backstage working on a high-school production.

Through participant observation of six plays produced over the course of 2 years, Schott

(2013) drew the connection that teaching and learning happened through technical theater in a nontraditional classroom environment. By means of experiential learning, apprenticeship, mentorship, and collaboration, high-school students are thinking about complex problems and solving them with creative and physical skills (Schott, 2013, p. 296). Using multimodal learning and art-making theories, Schott offered direct observations of the technical-theater work in progress. Schott examined high-school technical theater as a place of embodied learning and conducted semistructured interviews with the technical director, artistic director, and four technical-theater students. Schott concluded that technical theater is a place of embodiment, situated learning, and multimodal literacy. Schott’s highly theoretical work adds context to this

49 study at TAS, since the pitfalls Schott noted, such as the lamentable lack of time for teaching (p.

69), are a common occurrence at all levels of theater production.

Theater research is rarely quantitative, but some scholars are trying to find empirical evidence for theater’s role in helping make the value of the arts clear to those who control the purse strings. Sampling 160 high-school students at two schools with good theater programs and

142 high-school students from two schools that lacked theater programs, Santomenna (2010) conducted an empirical study that attempted to credit linking the greater levels of social and emotional functioning at the schools with theater programs to the impact of such programs. The students who participated in theater fared better than the control group, but it is not clear if that was due to the school’s greater resources or the individuals who chose to be involved in theater.

Santomenna focused on the performers and left out the technical-theater students.

Weltsek (2014) noted with despair that the U.S. government dropped dance and theater from "The Nation's Report Card" in 2008, citing budget constraints coupled with the small percentage of schools with these programs. The most recent NAEP reports have sections for visual arts and music but have completely dropped all mention of dance or theater. The perception of theater is that it is a subject unworthy of quantitative study on the national level and thus it remains marginalized (Weltsek, 2014, p. 63).

Studying high schools where theater classes are optional, McCammon and Østerlind

(2011) surveyed high-school students in Arizona and Sweden to discern their motivation for taking theater classes. When the students' true voices were heard, they had three main answers: fun, fellowship, and family. The study of theater is transformative in their lives. McCammon and

Østerlind concluded that theater teaches emotional resilience and specific theater skills.

50 However, even though their studies crossed geographic boundaries, they continued to focus solely on the performers in acting classes.

Taylor (2011), an educator recognized by the USITT, highlighted the main problem of how high schools approach technical theater. Taylor argued technical theater too often serves the production’s needs without addressing the students’ well-rounded technical education. Taylor surveyed college programs and developed a list of their expectations for students entering as technical-theater majors. Taylor found that colleges look for students with basic skills including the ability to work with fractions and scales, the ability to tie knots, and the ability to use manual and power tools. Taylor referred to this list as "1950s tech," and contrasted these low expectations with the exponential growth in lighting control, video projection, and effects.

Currently, only Arizona and New York offer high-school technical theater comprehensive exams. Taylor warned educators to avoid the trap of teaching only what is needed for the show currently in production. Taylor's assessment echoed Bellman et al.’s (1994) appraisal of balancing the production’s needs with the students’ needs so they have an opportunity to integrate their knowledge to make live theater a collective, collaborative, and reciprocal act.

Taylor shared with the researcher the upcoming technical-theater addendum to the State Arts

Standards that his home state of Indiana is reviewing (personal correspondence, August 25,

2017). The addendum can serve as a model for other high-school technical-theater programs and reflects the growing trend to think critically about how technical theater is taught in high schools.

Noting the general lack of opportunity for high-school theater-tech students, Kincman

(2008) decided to make some policy changes at the University of Arizona to allow advanced high-school students the opportunity to work with college students on their summer stock productions. Kincman followed the program for three summers and collected student reflections

51 and high-school teachers' comments. Apprenticeships were available in scenic construction, stage management, lighting, and costumes. The program continues to be a successful model for bridging high school with college for those interested in technical theater. Kincman’s work centered the research on the student’s narrated voice about their experience behind the scenes and has direct parallels with this study at TAS.

As noted by Woodson (2004), theater is a dialogue, meaning it always requires at least two parties to engage. All parties, from the technicians to the performers to the audience members, are part of that dialogue, which spans the rehearsal and construction process to the actual performance with the audience and continues after the curtain falls. This study allowed the students to narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew, adding their voices to the dialogue of theater.

Theater-Teacher Training: Artist and Educator

The voice of a trained secondary-school technical-theater teacher and practicing scenic and lighting designer guided this study. Every theater teacher must constantly balance their role as both a teacher and an artist (McLauchlan, 2011). Artists are creative people. McCammon et al.

(2010) attempted to categorize what makes individuals creative and how those creative qualities can apply to theater teachers. Creative people are both playful and hardworking; they take risks and break rules, but first they understand the culture and reasoning for the rules. Play production involves students working collaboratively as both actors and designers, and all are involved in the play’s production so as to feel the satisfaction of the collective experience. Play production is, by its nature, student-centered learning. However, most teachers who responded to

McCammon's survey felt their training as educators did not adequately prepare them to assess

52 creativity in drama classes. This survey included teachers in Canada, Jamaica, the United States, and Norway, so it has a broader global perspective.

There is a disconnect between the training of artists to become artists and the pedagogic training to become educators. Anderson and Risner (2012) noted that theater and dance rely more heavily on artists to deliver specialized educational programs, as contrasted with mainstream academic subjects in high schools where the content was usually provided by someone with educational training. Anderson and Risner identified the following three capacities to be an effective teaching artist: understanding and training in one's art form, understanding pedagogy and human development, and understanding the collaborative school environment.

Most high-school drama teachers (78%) have completed an undergraduate degree in theater that did not include a teacher-preparation program (p. 9), which presents a problem for the pedagogy of this field. Only 8% of theater teachers who have a master's degree have completed coursework in theater education (p. 10) and most M.F.A. programs require no coursework at all in theater education. Anderson and Risner recommend that colleges develop a teaching-artistry track to balance the paradox of "highly trained yet less than prepared" secondary-school theater and dance teachers. Brown & Urice (2003) noted that the overarching emphasis in theater-teacher training is play production, and high-school theater teachers are often judged on the basis of their shows’ qualities. Theater teachers need extreme organizational skills coupled with a knowledge of their craft; simultaneously, they must be masters of theater advocacy with students, parents, colleagues, and school administrators, as well as being familiar with adolescent psychology. As long as arts education places emphasis on the product (productions, concerts, recitals), theater teachers' efforts will be seen as part of the entertainment; however, if students’ artistic processes

53 and growth drive the curriculum, theater teachers’ efforts will be seen as a greater service and of a more serious and lasting nature.

Klein (1993) laid the groundwork for discussing the role of preservice training and certification for secondary-theater educators. Looking at Kansas’ standards and comparing the music programs with the theater programs, Klein challenged policymakers to think about the way we train people for the arts. According to Klein, the world does not need more actors: it needs more practitioners with a Doctor of Education in theater education.

Conclusion

Theater’s elusive and ephemeral nature makes it extremely difficult to pin down its impact on students, teachers, and audience members. This strand focused on schools’ current practices in theater education. The next strand of inquiry presents technical theater through the lens of its potential benefits to those adolescents involved in the process.

The Performing Arts, Empathy, and Adolescent Development

"For that is what the title of artist means, one who perceives more than his fellows and records more than he has seen." Edward Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, 1911, p. 86

Scholars have concluded that involvement in high-school theater positively impacts students’ personal growth and development, their sense of collaboration, and their empathy toward others (Catterall et al., 1999; Brown & Urice, 2003; McCammon & Østerlind, 2011;

McCammon et al., 2012). Scholars have also concluded that performing artists generally have increased empathy, whether as a result of their upbringing or introduced and augmented during their training (Jeffers, 2009; Kalliopuska, 1989; Verducci, 2000; Wollner, 2012). The expressive nature of theatrical performance may provide youth with additional opportunities for perspective taking and emotional development (Best, 1978; Wright, 2006). Parker (2020) noted that

54 adolescents involved in the performing arts experience “cognitive, physical, and intra- and interpersonal growth” (p. 2). According to Dworkin et al. (2003), certain learning-experience domains may associate with positive youth development, including the opportunity for exploration and identity formation, development of initiative and emotional self-regulation, peer relationships, teamwork, and social-skills formation. For many high-school students, participating in theater leads to positive youth development (McLauchlan & Winters, 2014, p.

61).

Empathy is an important term in the study of psychology, defined by Kohut (1959) as

“vicarious introspection” and later expanded into the view that empathy is “the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person” (Kohut, 1984, p. 82). While researching dancers and their development, Kalliopuska (1989) defined empathy as a process combining “the affective, the cognitive, the physiological, and the kinaesthetic components” (p. 1228).

Kalliopuska (1989) noted that adolescent participation in ballet classes leads to emotional growth. Kalliopuska's four empathy components could also measure the empathy of secondary- school students involved in technical theater since the focus on kinesthetic components would account for their work behind the scenes.

Views on empathy development through theater center on the actors and their exploration of character development. Because students’ life experiences may be quite limited at their age, high-school students may experience difficulties confronting their feelings and emotions, but they may find insight within characters from a given production. Goldstein (1982) noted that adolescents doing theater have the chance to try on new roles and experiences without being accused of insubordination (p. 29). Empathy may be shared from gaining this insight into themselves and others (Hylton, 1981, p. 287). Scholars have focused their efforts on the concept

55 of portraying a role in the safety of the educational-theater context, but no scholars have investigated the impact of theater participation as a crew member. Yassa (1997) noted that all students who participate in drama increase their personal skills, delineated as self-confidence, assertiveness, and their ability to regulate their emotions, as well as their interactive skills, delineated as democracy, communication, respect, empathy, flexibility, and tolerance.

Thomson and Jaque (2017) researched how schools’ arts-education programs influence the maturation of creativity, especially in areas such as knowledge, problem identification, problem solving, evaluation, and contextual awareness of their theatrical talent. Larson and

Brown (2007) used a high-school production of Les Misérables to “develop theoretical concepts about processes of adolescent emotional development and how settings can facilitate these processes” (p. 1084). The researchers formed three theoretical propositions pulled from the data.

First, adolescents can be agents in their emotional development. Second, repeated exposure to

“hot emotional episodes” throughout the production process contributes to development. Third, young people develop abilities to understand and manage emotions in part by drawing on the setting’s emotional culture. The directors of this particular production of Les Miserables noted the “antagonism” between the cast and crew in the final rehearsals before the first performance, but they explored little more than that dynamic (Larson & Brown, 2007, p. 1090).

Summation

The extant literature proves that theater education is an important part of adolescent development for the high-school students involved. However, the students themselves must be allowed to share their voices and express what technical theater has done for their development and growth. Theater education occupies a “liminal space in the academy” (Omasta & Chappell,

2015, p. 186) caught between the performativity of theater and the traditional notions of teaching

56 and learning to transmit knowledge. The purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. This literature review includes all relevant studies of theater in high schools, connections to personal growth and empathy, and the value of participation in theater at the secondary level, as reflected in personal narratives and retrospective views. Therefore, it is time to shine the research spotlight on those students behind the scenes to uncover the value of technical theater for those who participate in it.

57 Chapter Three: Research Design

A drama is not a picture. It is not a symphony, it is not a lecture or a sermon. It is a show of life, lived out in our presence, acted out by players who hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to Nature. As we are in life, so the theatre is. And as life moves and changes, so the theatre moves and changes with it. Robert Edmund Jones, The Theatre Today and Tomorrow, p. 46

The purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Data accrued from semistructured interviews from a subset of students who have not been the subject of substantial prior academic inquiry, providing greater context on the value of technical theater at the secondary level.

Many high-school students participating in theater as an extracurricular activity report an increase in their self-efficacy, ability to focus, and motivation (Gamwell, 2005; Shulruf, 2010;

Marsh & Kleitman, 2002). Other studies have focused on theater students' development of cognitive and affective empathy (McEnery, 2018; Raimondi, 2017). However, no studies have focused exclusively on the technicians and their motivation, self-perception, self-efficacy, development of empathy, and the feeling of belonging to this subgroup. This study gave those students the chance to tell their story by hearing and learning from their personal experiences and offers a greater understanding of how participating behind the scenes impacts adolescent development. This study provides helpful perspectives to educators who work with high-school technicians and can also lead toward a more fully developed and articulated pedagogy of technical-theater teaching and learning at the secondary level.

58 Qualitative Research Approach

Selecting a qualitative research methodology to frame this investigation greatly influenced the overall research design and suggests appropriate data collection and analytic methods were used (Saldaña & Omasta, 2018, p. 180). This qualitative study sought to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes and was grounded in the constructivism-interpretivism paradigm. The nature of qualitative research is primarily inductive, building toward theory from a combination of communication, observation, reflection, and intuitive comprehension (Creswell, 2005, 2012;

Merriam, 2009; Riessman, 2003). Qualitative research allows for more than one reality and more than one truth. This study focused on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew using narrative inquiry as its primary method. The researcher in this qualitative context is one who relates the experience through the participants' words and perspectives (Creswell, 2013).

Creswell (2012) defined a central question as the overarching question explored in a research study. A qualitative methodology aligns well with this study’s central question: How do high-school students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at TAS?

The qualitative interviews provided a more thorough understanding of the students’ lived experiences (Creswell, 2013). The themes that emerged through the interviewing process and data analysis allowed the researcher to gain a more complete understanding of the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, which led the researcher to understand the students’ unique experiences and how they narrate,

59 characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew.

The goal of a researcher operating in accordance with a constructivist-interpretivist paradigm is to understand the participants' lived experiences, even ones that may not be immediately or consciously known to the individuals (Ponterotto, 2005). The general qualitative research method using the constructive-interpretive lens guided this study to the rich, deep insights found in narrative study. The study was conducted within the theoretical framework of

Weick’s sensemaking theory. Anfara & Mertz (2006) defined theoretical frameworks as

“empirical or quasi-empirical theories of social or psychological processes which exist at a variety of different levels and apply to the understanding of phenomena” (p. xxvii). By utilizing the seven properties of Weick’s sensemaking theory to study students’ perceptions of technical theater in high school, the researcher hoped to achieve what Morse and Richards (2002) refer to as “methodological congruence,” that is, where the purpose, research questions, and corresponding methods of research appear as a cohesive whole.

Narrative Inquiry

Connelly and Clandinin (1990) defined narrative inquiry as “the study of experience as story, then, as first and foremost a way of thinking about experience” or as “the study of the ways humans experience the world” (p. 2). Narrative inquiry is a way of thinking about experience and building knowledge together with the participants situated in relational practice, in which the experiences are understood in the three dimensions of temporality, sociality, and place (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Narrative inquiry falls into the broader category of qualitative research, which focuses on human experiences. The nature of qualitative research is to explore and understand how people make sense of their lives, to delineate the process, and

60 then to accurately and honestly describe how individuals interpret their experiences (Creswell,

2005; Merriam, 2009). Narrative inquiry is especially useful for the collection, exploration, and analysis of the stories from the vantage points of participants themselves (Josselson, 2006;

Riessman, 2003), and this study sought the stories of high-school theater students working behind the scenes. Narrative research "...strives to preserve the complexity of what it means to be human" (Josselson, 2006, p. 3); therefore, it may be considered the quintessential form of qualitative research (Riessman, 2003; Seidman, 2006).

Zatzman (2006) alluded to one aspect of the complexity of human storytelling while discussing narrative inquiry within the context of theater, stating that drama education and narrative inquiry enable us to comprehend that “identity is situational and narratives of the self are embodied” (p. 111). Embodiment refers to one’s experiences and knowledge about the world of others as well as one’s own results from these bodily encounters by looking, touching, and speaking. An individual's world and the shared social worlds are realized through the body

(Gallagher, 2005). Within narrative inquiry, narrative truths are coconstructed, evolving, incomplete, and always situated within context (Riessman, 2008). These distinctive qualities of narrative inquiry reached the heart of this study, giving high-school students the chance to share their narrative truth.

The main weakness with narrative inquiry is that individuals view their experiences and offer their insights and understandings through the window of their own lived experiences

(Chase, 2011; Riessman, 2003). Also, each researcher may view the same emerging data differently than others and might draw different conclusions (Josselson, 2006; Riessman, 1993).

Anfara and Mertz (2006) noted that research is not an atheoretical process: researchers hold theoretical positions prior to conducting their research. Weick’s sensemaking theory as the

61 study’s theoretical framework mitigated the weakness of narrative inquiry by scaffolding this study in established theory and validating the significance of the personal narratives. Weick’s sensemaking theory is focused on vivid, tellable, and interesting stories because “a good narrative provides a plausible frame for sensemaking” (Wieck, 1995, p. 128). Because the individual is the unit of analysis for Weick, narrative inquiry as a conceptual framework dovetails neatly with the seven properties of sensemaking. Each of Weick’s seven aspects interact and intertwine as individuals interpret events; their interpretations become evident through narrative, which in turn conveys the sense they have made of events (Currie & Brown,

2003). Clandinin (2013) noted that “narrative inquiry begins and ends with a respect for ordinary lived experience” (p. 11). Narrative inquiry contextualized the high-school students’ experiences working backstage on productions and gave those students a voice in expressing their story of personal identity development during adolescence.

Role of the Researcher

For narrative inquiry to be successfully utilized for research, the researcher must be someone who is accessible and trusted so participants can openly and easily share their personal experiences. In the case of this particular field (high-school technical theater), the researcher is a member of the community in which these former students were educated, is personally knowledgeable about the field of technical-theater education at the secondary level, and previously developed a trusting relationship with participants. Each of these is an important trait for the researcher to successfully conduct qualitative research within a constructivist- interpretivist paradigm.

62 Protection of Human Subjects

Every researcher must pass an online course on the protection of human subjects through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with oversight by the U.S. Department of Health &

Human Services. The researcher presented this certification along with their dissertation proposal for approval by Northeastern University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) before they initiated contact with potential participants. The researcher followed Northeastern University's IRB guidelines to ensure the protection of all human participants in this study.

Participants

The participants in this study were recent graduates of TAS who were involved in the school’s theatrical productions behind the scenes in any capacity. The participants were given the opportunity to narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. This sample size was commensurate with current studies that used narrative inquiry as a methodology. Twelve participants were initially recruited, which aimed to yield six or more people to be interviewed. Baker and Edwards (2012) noted that narrative inquiry lends itself to a smaller number of participants and that smaller number is appropriate when researchers engage straightforward research questions to address local problems of practice in applied fields. Ferguson’s (2013) dissertation, “A Narrative Inquiry into Critical Learning Strategies in the Ontario High School Dramatic Arts Curriculum,” relied on only one narrative—their own—drawn from journals, lesson plans, and prior reflections.

Burrow (2012) based the exploration of theater-arts-education offerings on the narrative of three participants. Palkki (2020) gave voice to three transgender participants active in their high- school choir. Wang (2013) analyzed the narrated voices of nine dance teachers initially trained as

63 performers. This study had adequate participants to successfully conduct the study and complete the analysis.

The study ultimately relied on semistructured interviews of those former high-school students who were involved behind the scenes in theatrical productions to see how they made sense of their experiences and gave them a chance to narrate their story. These alums were able to look back reflectively and with a distance from their experiences to see what they retained without any pressure to give the right answer to a teacher who previously graded their work.

Participants were given the opportunity to validate their interview transcription and oversaw the process of coding and analyzing the data collected from them. These 10 former students represent purposive sampling. Abrams (2010) defined purposive sampling as the "strategies in which the researcher exercises his or her judgment about who will provide the best perspective on the phenomenon of interest, and then intentionally invites those specific perspectives into the study" (p. 538). For this study, it was important to have both genders represented equally if possible, but all students who responded to the request for interview were given the opportunity to tell their story. The best perspective for this study was one developed over time, therefore participants who were involved for 4 years or in multiple productions were preferred to those who were involved in a single production. Having been a part of the stage crew at TAS, these students were uniquely qualified to satisfy what Creswell (2013) noted as the need to "describe what is typical for those unfamiliar with the case" (p. 207). The study centered on the high- school technical-theater context, therefore the researcher was able to include some participants who went on to study technical theater, or a related performing-arts field, in college and some participants who did not continue in college.

64 The site of this study was TAS, where the researcher has been employed as the theater manager and high-school technical-theater teacher since August 2011. Goldstein et al. (2014) noted that many researcher-artists have primary identifications and commitments to their work as either researchers or artists. The gatekeepers, defined by Saldaña and Omasta (2018) as “those with the authority to grant permission and facilitate the researcher’s entry into a particular field setting” (p. 33), included the principal and superintendent of TAS. The superintendent of TAS and the principal of the Upper School were aware of the researcher’s intentions and supported this project.

Procedures

One main question guided this study to address the research problem of understanding the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes through their own voices: How do high-school students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at TAS?

The study began in earnest in the fall of 2020 after the researcher received approval from

Northeastern University’s IRB. The researcher had access to many former students’ contact details. Former students were given the chance to volunteer to participate. Semistructured interviews conducted via Zoom were scheduled once sufficient participants were identified to collect the main body of data for this study.

Data Collection and Storage

First, prior to the start of their semistructured interview, each participant reviewed the research process, as well as the protections and assurances, with the researcher. These components comprised confidentiality, including the use of pseudonyms, the locked and secure

65 safekeeping of all transcripts, and the consent form, which had to be signed before the interview began. Second, the researcher advised all participants that participation in the study was voluntary and uncompensated, and that participants had the right to leave the study at any time and for any reason. Third, additional protections for all participants included their right to ask any questions and to review the researcher's responses.

Interviews were transcribed by a paid, confidential third party

(www.transcriptionpanda.com). A copy of the interviews, transcriptions, and coding are stored on the researcher’s password-protected computer. For the interview protocol, see Appendix D.

Data Analysis

The primary source of data for this qualitative study was the interviews and subsequent emergence of participants' perspectives based on the narrative stories of their lived experiences.

When appropriate, the researcher reviewed documents, such as production photos, weekly photo journals, as well as detailed production calendars, schedules, and production videos. These artifacts were one stream of data that was analyzed to ground this study in "thick description" needed for rich data analysis. The questions utilized in the interview were developed based on each stage in Weick’s sensemaking process to probe the former students on how they made sense of their participation behind the scenes. These questions, based on Weick’s seven properties of sensemaking, served as a lens through which the data were categorized. In addition, the interviews provided data for other deductive and inductive analyses.

The interviews produced a great deal of data to categorize, interpret, and code. The first part of the data analysis started with the transcription itself. After transcription and the participants’ reviews, the researcher employed in vivo coding, and then second-cycle data coding

66 with gerunds. No qualitative software programs were used in the data analysis, but multiple pertinent coding strategies guided this narrative inquiry.

Because the research question was grounded in the realm of theater, the interview data were also coded with Saldaña's dramaturgical coding using the conventions of theater and production analysis to analyze the transcript dialogue (Saldaña, 2016, p. 145). The researcher employed six codes: OBJ (objective), CON (conflict), TAC (tactics), ATT (attitudes), SUB

(subtext), and EMO (emotion). The results of the dramaturgical coding helped confirm the emergent themes.

In addition to the parallel analyses, the data were analyzed through a protocol coding analysis on the data using the standards that measure the outcomes of theater education. This protocol offered a way to validate the trustworthiness of the inductive data analysis and another reflection tool to further conceptualize the data and its implications for practice.

In addition to the inductive analyses, the researcher analyzed the data using the

Wisconsin Standards for Theatre Education 2019. This analysis is a protocol-coding based analysis. Sandaña (2016) recommends protocol-coding for qualitative studies in disciplines that have preestablished coding systems if the researcher accepts the assumptions and projections of the original code (p. 175). By using these standards, the validity and trustworthiness of the findings were confirmed for this field. These theater-education standards are the only state standards that include a complete set of standards for technical theater and are the current standards referenced in the TAS stagecraft curriculum. The Wisconsin Standards for Theatre

Education support a conceptual framework highlighting the artistic processes of create, perform, respond, and connect. These artistic processes focus on two distinct but overlapping areas: performance and production. These two strands of theater expand the description of experiential

67 theater opportunities. The Wisconsin theater standards build on the National Coalition for Core

Arts Standards in theatre (NCAS, 2014), noting and compensating specifically for the lack of standards for technical theater.

Criteria for Quality Qualitative Research

Creswell (2013) discusses at length the significance of validation in qualitative research, reminding researchers that demonstrating accuracy and credibility of findings are no less important in qualitative research than in quantitative. Member checking, prolonged engagement with participants, clarification of researcher bias and positionality, triangulation, and rich, thick description are some tools qualitative researchers use to achieve an acceptable level of validity.

All necessary steps were taken to maintain credibility, trustworthiness, and validity in this study. Data coding and emergent themes reflected the reality of participant interviews, not the researcher's bias regarding the meaning of what was shared. Finally, the researcher also disclosed any data that did not fit the patterns of identified themes or codes, a step referred to by Creswell

(2013) as a negative analysis. Acknowledging outliers in the data was important for the validity of the research.

Transferability

Conclusions can also imply deductively—through connectedness—what might be possible in other situations and organizations (Josselson, 2006). Through the lived experiences and perspectives of high-school students involved behind the scenes, this narrative study sought to understand the value of technical theater in the specific context of TAS. However, these findings could have implications for other secondary-school programs with technical-theater educational components. Lincoln and Guba (1985) noted that one can begin to evaluate the

68 extent to which the conclusions drawn are transferable to other settings by describing a phenomenon in sufficient detail, thus producing a thick description of the context.

Internal Audit

The researcher maintained paper and electronic trails of evidence documenting the whole dissertation process. This documentation includes multiple iterations of the research question and proposal, research field notes/research journal/memos, audio recordings of interviews, annotated transcripts, tables of themes, data-coding notes and paperwork, draft versions, and any other materials generated during the doctoral process.

Self-reflexivity and Transparency—Researcher’s Positionality Statement

My doctoral research centers on high-school technical theater and my career in this field has shaped and molded my views on this subject. Technical theater is a term that encompasses the lighting, set, sound, and costume design, stagecraft, stage management, and all related tasks essential to a theatrical production. This study focused on high-school students who participated in cocurricular or extracurricular drama programs and produced a public performance as their final devised or scripted product. I believe onstage performers overshadow high-school technicians who are not given their due in academic literature. There is a hidden hierarchy at work behind the scenes that favors the analysis of the playwright’s text over the analysis of the whole production as an integral work of art. Technical theater cannot stand alone outside the needs of a performance. Its ephemerality and immediacy are both its inherent strength and weakness.

Personal Background

I am an American, middle class, White, cisgender gay male pursuing an EdD at an elite institution while working as an international teacher in Taiwan. My income puts me in the top

69 10% of Americans and the top 1% of the world. These roles and attributes are not all that define me. Takacs (2002) recalled looking at his own positionality through the lens of a gay man surrounded by a heteronormative world. I can identify with these explorations and I have taken a similar path. Boykin's triple quandary, as described by Carlton Parsons (2008), includes the roles of an oppressed person, the culture of the oppressed group, as well as the contrast of the oppressed culture with the mainstream culture. As a gay man, I also face a triple quandary in navigating my personal life, public life, and the heteronormativity of American society. This triple quandary also informs my design choices and makes me a stronger theatrical designer.

My cultural identity as an American and my limitation of speaking only English fluently shape my ways of knowing. Moving forward, my efforts to learn Mandarin greatly enhance my experience of living and working in Taiwan. Gallagher (1992) noted the significance of language in hermeneutics because my language informs my reality.

My personal study of theater has been conducted at institutions that look to the commercial successes of Broadway and London’s West End as the high points of achievement, along with the classics of the theater canon in the Western tradition. Fringe theater or experimental theater, such as performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, are secondary to some practitioners and the primary focus of others. I personally enjoy the wide array of theatrical performances, from large commercial productions to more intimate experimental fare. In my formal education, I have little more than basic exposure to Asian theater traditions, but I continue to learn by watching local productions here in Taiwan.

I earned my B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in theater and classics. One of my strongest memories of my college experience was working as both the stage manager and shop foreman for an original chamber opera composed by Shirish Korde with libretto by Lynn

70 Kremer, entitled RASA. This production traveled from Worcester, MA, all the way to the Miller

Theater of Columbia University on Broadway in New York. I worked closely with a Balinese

Gamelan group for 2 years as an undergrad student at Holy Cross when Fulbright scholar-in- residence I Nyoman Cerita brought gamelan music and Balinese dance to campus.

During my summers as an undergrad, I also worked for the College Light Opera

Company (CLOC) in Cape Cod, MA as the prop master for 18 musicals. That experience was very formative for how I now approach theatrical design. I learned to be resourceful and not precious, to focus on the story and the stage picture, not the minor details. I earned an M.A. from

Northwestern University, with a focus on arts administration and musical-theater history. I worked on Northwestern’s summer festival of musicals and plays as the graduate assistant overseeing the student technicians.

Recently I completed my M.F.A. from the University of Idaho in scenic, lighting, and costume design. As a part of that M.F.A. course of study, I spent a month at the Moscow Art

Theater School (MXAT), which opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about design and theater itself. There at MXAT, theater history is taught as branching out in rhizomatic connections from their base in Indian Kathakali theater, going westward through Greek and

Roman drama, but also connecting eastward to Chinese opera and Japanese Noh theater.

I have spent my career as a high-school technical-theater teacher. From 1999 until 2011, I worked at St. George's School in Newport, RI, designing the sets, lights, and props for plays, musicals, and dance concerts. I had the great fortune of opening their new performing-arts center and working with a great team. Since 2011, I have worked as the theater manager at TAS, working with both high-school and middle-school students on dance, drama, and musical

71 productions. At TAS, I was instrumental in planning for the construction and renovation of two performance venues which serve the whole school community.

At some U.S. colleges, theater and performance art are separate departments, and the design and tech professors are associated with the theater side. Even lower on the hierarchical ladder are high-school performances, which most college programs would view as inferior in scale and artistic depth to those at the college level. However, all theaters, from the lower school musical up to Broadway, are bound by the simple interaction of audience and performer. The design choices can be approached the same way with a few dollars or with millions. Theater is storytelling and stagecraft provides tools used to aid storytelling.

I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to travel the world and that has had a profound effect on my view of theatrical design. I have seen countless shows on and off

Broadway in New York, as well as major productions at the National Theater and in London’s

West End. I have also attended the performance of the Moustache Brothers in their garage while they were under house arrest in Myanmar; I participated in a performance at the Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and I brought a student production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in

2015. All of these experiences have helped shape my views of the world and inform my practice of theater.

My research topic is technical-theater education at the secondary level, but I recognize that my background both limits and informs my research. Technical theater, at all levels, is never a stand-alone enterprise. It is a collaborative and inextricable part of the drama and dance production. Stagecraft does not exist on its own; rather, it plays a supporting role to the director's or choreographer's vision that has been guided by their culture(s).

72 In educational settings, drama is often taught as a history of play scripts or acting methods; it rarely digs deeper into the study of the culture which produced these scripts. For many high-school students and even college students, theater history revolves around the

Western theater’s major movements and innovations, starting with Greek and Roman tragedy and comedy, moving swiftly past the medieval morality plays of the Catholic Church, and then focusing on realism and European playwrights, followed by Chekhov and Stanislavski and their collaboration at MXAT. In my experience, almost nothing is taught of the innovative designers from Edward Gordon Craig in scenic design to Jean Rosenthal in lighting design, even though students may be familiar with the concepts they introduced. Eastern theater traditions are often grossly elided or omitted entirely in the study of general theater history. Fortunately, I have been exposed to these innovative designers and Eastern theater traditions.

Conclusion

Rarely is there more than a basic "how-to" understanding of tech theater at the secondary level. This approach puts the focus on the craft and not the art. Stagecraft falsely pretends to be ideologically neutral, without observing the cultural codes and artistic subjectivity inherent in the process. To account for these shifts in positionality when embarking on a study, Roulston and

Shelton (2015) suggested scholars take part in reflexive practices where researchers identify, examine, and account for their subjectivity and how it shapes their study. Before diving into the scholar-practitioner aspects, it is important to establish the general ethics that govern all high- school technical-theater teachers. To my knowledge, this is not explicated anywhere because there is no professional organization or advocacy group for this subset of educators. There are organizations primarily for high-school acting teachers, such as the EdTA and American

Alliance for Theater Education (AATE) and technical-theater teachers are welcome to join those

73 two national organizations, but few resources are provided for their needs or professional development. The International School Theatre Association (ISTA) decided 3 years ago to remove technical-theater activities from their middle- and high-school conferences in Asia and

Europe, although they occasionally include technical theater in conferences in the Americas.

Membership in USITT is available for high schools; however only four high schools in the

United States are registered members and international schools are ineligible for membership at this time. Despite the lack of professional organizations, technical-theater teachers are essential collaborators on school productions. Collaborative energies stir together "diverse and idiosyncratic talents" in a production, and the leadership of the teacher-director and technical- theater teacher aims this "coalescence of artists" toward its artistic goals, integrating the relationships and creativity of the whole creative team (Cohen, 2011, p. 7). Hartzell (2017) urged school administrators to remember the theater technicians, and I think we should all heed those wise words.

As an active scenic and lighting designer as well as a high-school teacher for almost 20 years, I have seen firsthand the growth of students who work behind the scenes on high-school shows. I have seen students with little interest in traditional academic subjects find their refuge in the scenery shop. I have seen students develop a keen eye for lighting design and go on to museum studies in college with a focus on gallery lighting. I have seen my best tinkerers go on to study architecture and set up practices. I am sure their experiences behind the scenes helped shape the trajectory of their careers, but I have no data—such as this study provides—to bolster that belief, since this is the first study of high school technical theater students and their development. I am not neutral when I talk about stagecraft, but I can be thorough and state my biases for others to see. I aim to express the goals of why technical theater is important in the

74 multimodal and rapidly changing educational landscape. In today's world, where few people pick up tools and work with their hands, it is more important than ever to activate meaningful experiential learning in secondary schools. Technical theater can claim its place in an interdisciplinary and collaborative educational environment, instead of hiding behind the curtain.

As a scholar-practitioner grounded in the field of technical theater at the secondary level,

I have an obligation to those who would choose to follow, to do my best to forge a path forward to shine the light of academic research behind the scenes, in the wings, and in the control booth.

The world continues to move more quickly, but, inside the walls of the theater, time slows down to a human pace. There is a genuine connection between human performers and human audiences that cannot be replicated elsewhere. Theater is a way to fully engage, and it has the power to make us more human. Theater in an educational setting has the power to develop student performers and technicians as well as inspire their audience to think and reflect. I am aware that I am forging new paths and breaking new ground in the nature of approaching this topic. It is time to shine a light on the work behind the scenes.

Limitations

The intention of this study was to give voice to high-school students who participated in technical theater. The study had all the limitations of narrative inquiry, as well as the limitations of Weick’s sensemaking theory as its framework. When undertaking qualitative research, the researcher engages in a number of assumptions related to ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetoric, and methodology (Creswell, 2007). These assumptions help scaffold the researcher's approach. First, from an ontological view, the researcher hoped the interviews would yield quotations to illustrate the findings. Second, from an epistemological standpoint, it is important to understand that the researcher worked alongside all the interviewees under the pressure of

75 production, from the design phase through the final strike. Third, from an axiological stance, given the relationship the researcher has had studying theater and performance, the potential for bias in this study is not small. Constructivism-interpretivism drove the study’s design, data collection, and course. The aforementioned assumptions came together to form an overall worldview that guided this qualitative study after receiving approval from the Northeastern IRB.

76 Chapter Four: Findings of the Study

Collaboration is the biggest word in the theatre. It is the most important element in theatrical success. The theatre is a welding of many arts into one. No one person can be efficient or talented in all of these arts, and if any man could write and produce and direct and act and play the music, shift the scenery, design the costumes and, in short, do everything that could be done on one stage and come up with what was literally a one-man show, he would still need one more thing: an audience. You cannot get away from collaboration. Oscar Hammerstein II, Lyrics, 1949

The purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. One main question guided this study to address the research problem of understanding the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes through their own voice: How do high-school students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at TAS?

Description of Data-Collection Process

Ten former TAS students involved in technical theater agreed to participate in interviews for this study (n=6 males; n=4 females, ranging in age from 18 to 26). The participants were contacted via the email addresses provided by the alumni/advancement office or theater- department records. Interviews for this study began on October 1, 2020 via the Zoom application of Northeastern University and concluded by November 25, 2020. Unless otherwise noted in their profile, all participants in this study were Americans of Taiwanese descent.

Interviews lasted between 39 and 91 minutes with most interviews lasting approximately

45 minutes. Scripted questions and their sequencing, approved by the Northeastern IRB, were uniform to every interview. The interview and transcription processes were detailed and

77 meticulous. Each transcription was first performed with the aid of a professional transcription service (www.transcriptionpanda.com) and the researcher manually applied any necessary final corrections for any inaudible parts on the recording. The researcher conducted over 7 hours of interviews, which yielded 139 pages of typed transcription. Clandinin (2013) wrote that field texts, such as the interview transcriptions, are cocompositions, meaning the researcher and participants create them. “Whether narrative inquirers are listening to participants’ told stories or living alongside participants as their lives unfold...there is ongoing interpretation of the stories lived and told” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 46). Because the participants discussed the productions the researcher designed, there was a special connection from having lived alongside the participants as their lives unfolded in the theater’s wings.

Aligned with a member-checking approach to triangulation, follow-up meetings with each participant reviewed the themes that emerged during the coding process. A qualitative analysis of the transcribed interview data was used to identify themes revealed among the statements given by the various participants. Textual, verbatim quotes from the interviews are included to highlight and provide greater clarity to the key concepts or common themes within these experiences. Participant answers and discussion points must reflect as closely as possible exactly what the participants said.

The coding process was equally detailed, reflective, and thoughtful. Codes and themes reflected the reality of participant responses, not the researcher's bias regarding the meaning of what was shared. According to Syed and Nelson (2015), the process of developing a coding scheme “involves the balancing of parsimony and nuance” (p. 378). In addition, remaining engaged with participants allowed for member-checking during the findings’ development, which also contributed to credibility (Tracy, 2010). Collecting and analyzing qualitative data is a

78 labor-intensive task, without a clear roadmap at the beginning, with themes emerging after several rounds of reading, coding, and rereading. The researcher’s status as an insider gave access to the stage crew’s culture on a level impossible without direct participation in the same production process. Clandinin and Connelly (2000), quoting Blaise (1993), wrote, “The events in our lives, places we have been and the people we have known, keep coming back” (p. 172).

Estrella and Forinash (2007) noted the importance of hearing the voices within each narrative as the driving force for choosing narrative inquiry in the arts. These participants’ stories are interwoven with the researcher’s principal work, which yielded rich data for analysis. Because each participant was a former student of the principal researcher, the narrative produced must be viewed in a contextual light bounded by the relational space of the student-teacher dynamic.

Participant Profiles

These profiles include a brief exploration of the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Pseudonyms have been used to protect the study participants’ identities and every effort has been made to avoid any biographical detail that would identify the participant. Issues of anonymity and confidentiality take on added importance as the public details of show productions are a part of the school’s public record. All participants signed and returned their informed-consent letters prior to the interview, as stipulated by the Northeastern IRB protocol.

Because this study is grounded in narrative inquiry, these profiles each contain verbatim text from the transcription to introduce the participants in their own words. According to

Connelly and Clandinin (1990), narrative inquiry is an approach to studying experience by examining the lives of people through their own stories. McCammon et al. (2012) noted that

“Recent trends in qualitative inquiry have emphasized the participant’s voice and his/her

79 memories—not just as data but as testimony to lived experience” (p. 3). The rich qualitative data collected in the interview process provided strong specific context for the lived experiences of their study participants and gave them a chance to tell their own story.

Brendon, departed TAS in December 2019

Brendon, a Singaporean, attended TAS in the 2018–2019 school year, and the first semester of 2019. He returned to Singapore abruptly when his father’s assignment changed. He started on the running crew for the musical Little Shop of Horrors, noting that Audrey II the plant is “bigger than me,” bragging to his friends back in Singapore, “Look at the budget they have!” When pressed about his decision to join the stage crew, Brendon stated, “Okay, I’ll try it out. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I walked on the stage, and that’s how it started.

And I guess I loved it, and I didn’t stop.” His passion for theater—especially musical theater— was one of the main highlights of the interview. For Brendon, the sense of camaraderie developed with other crew members has helped sustain him though the fall when there was a 1- month lockdown and continued frequent crowd restrictions in Singapore to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Mike, Class of 2020

Currently attending online classes at a Canadian university while still living here in

Taipei, Mike attended TAS from 2013 until his graduation in 2020. From his early days operating the spotlight in middle school to his senior year stage managing, Mike was an important member of the stage crew for musicals, dramas, and dance productions. When he was younger, he attended the Broadway musical The Lion King, which inspired him to join the crew in middle school. Mike explained, “And then to show how the young baby lion king was born with a famous holding the lion up in the air. That’s how they showed that scene, just like the

80 movie… All the sets, and then also costumes and props as well, were really well designed.” It was evident from Mike’s awestruck tone that he longed to be a part of that kind of theatrical magic and theater gave him the confidence to become the person he is today.

Patricia, Class of 2018

Currently working as a filmmaker, Patricia was instrumental in bringing projections to the stage at TAS. She layered videos to have the Romanov ghosts appear in the dilapidated ballroom during Anastasia, using QLab just like a professional theater would. Patricia is currently a film major learning to be a director, studying at a large private college in California.

She reminisced, “I always say that, in TAS specifically, I think the theater community when I was there was very loving and very accepting, especially when I was there, when I was in the crew.” In addition to the sense of camaraderie with her peers, Patricia credits her time on the crew as the source of her confidence in all the different areas of film production she needs to pursue her artistic goals.

Joy, Class of 2017

Joy attended TAS for only 2 years, her junior and senior year of high school, graduating in 2017. Determined to get involved and make friends, Joy knew she needed to join activities at

TAS to meet new people. She is now studying stage management at a college in New England.

Joy encapsulated the sense of wonder she still feels in the theater when she stated, “You know, as a kid, you cut papers for fun and stick them in a book and it’s fun, but as we go, get older, we don’t get to do that…in my perspective, that stopped our ability to have fun and mess things up.”

Theater continues to offer her the chance to be a child at heart, to mess things up, and to “play” in every sense of the word.

81 Jordan, Class of 2017

Jordan came to TAS from an elementary school in Brazil. He started as a freshman, but after being involved in a few shows, he left the crew to work on other pursuits and hobbies. He is currently enrolled at a university in the United Kingdom, studying anthropology. His fondest memories were about the process of pulling a show together, “How a show came together and how the stage crew, the technical aspects, the lights, the sound, the set, the rigging all play a part in terms of telling a story or telling a larger narrative on-stage and off-stage.” Now, Jordan makes sense of his involvement on the crew by analyzing the storytelling aspects through an anthropological lens.

Melissa, Class of 2017

Melissa joined the stage crew a few weeks after fall productions were underway her freshman year and she continued to be involved throughout her high-school career. She is also currently enrolled as a university student in the United Kingdom, but she is home in Taiwan taking her coursework online this semester, due to the current travel problems and the United

Kingdom’s continuing struggle with the coronavirus. As a stage manager, Melissa noted, “I think

[tech is about] is teamwork and communication. From experience, you learn that the headset is something that you literally cannot live without backstage.” The stories she shared brought life to the magic of performance and highlight the importance of communication.

Erik, Class of 2016

Erik attended college at a large state school in Texas and recently graduated from college.

He started his stage-tech career as a middle-school spotlight operator and worked his way into lighting design and stage management. Erik is living in Texas, having earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering; he is planning to apply to graduate schools in the near future. Erik was

82 inspired to join the crew when he saw his older sibling perform. Erik spoke about the process of construction, stating, “I remember something that stood out to me was the feeling of being able to create something, both physically and artistically. And having that creation come to form and be used.” Unlike the solitary nature of the visual arts, the magic of theater happens only in collaboration when performers, technicians, and the audience share that moment together. For

Erik, the sense of camaraderie was one of his fondest memories of the crew.

Alec, Class of 2015

Alec attended TAS from 2005 until his graduation in 2015. He was often chosen to work with sound on productions while at TAS, but he also helped with video projections and lighting on occasion. He went to university in California, transferring from a large state school to a small liberal arts Catholic institution in his second term. He worked in the theater venue, earning money during his time at college, even though he did not study theater. Having completed his undergraduate degree, Alec has turned his focus to tech start-ups, businesses that import tech parts to the United States, and working online as a cog in the greater gig economy.

Alec shared a funny anecdote in his interview, and it is related here in his profile. As a sound technician for Bugsy Malone, Alec was responsible for waterproofing the micpacks for a show where water was used on stage. In the musical’s final scene, 50 whipped-cream pies are hurled across the stage and a foam cannon sprays down the entire chorus, saturating them all to the core. In theater sound production, the standard waterproofing method is to wrap the micpack in a nonlubricated condom and tie off the top. In his own words: “I've always told people that the first time I've ever actually touched a condom was when we were waterproofing microphone packs. And that was hilarious. That was the first time ever... I've seen a condom, but I've never touched it. So, that was the first time I've ever, you know, unrolled one, or actually, hundreds...

83 That was a wild story.” Alec noted that it was a dilemma for the sound teacher to decide what to tell the middle schoolers with the encased micpacks. In the end, the sound teacher referred to the condoms wrapping the mics as “special balloons,” but Alec knew what they really were. His story here is one of growing up and maturing, making sense of his adolescent self, and becoming more confident. It is also an example of camaraderie between the sound teacher and her crew members, who all participated in waterproofing the micpacks before each rehearsal and performance.

Noel, Class of 2013

Noel attended TAS from 1999 until her graduation in 2013. She was active as a stage manager and lightboard programmer during her time at TAS. She started college at a small women’s institution in New England after TAS, and then transferred to a large university in the

Big Apple. Now that she has finished her studies abroad, Noel has returned to Taiwan and works for a foundation dealing with international grants. For Noel, the key skill learned as a part of the tech crew was organization. She stated, “I learned really quickly to keep track of things, especially during Fiddler [on the Roof] because we just had so many props, and also during

Snow, too. Just so many things moving on and off stage.” It was clear from her tone that she gained a great deal of confidence working on the stage crew.

Micah, Class of 2013

Micah attended TAS from 2003 until his graduation in 2013. He was involved behind the scenes starting as the spotlight operator for the middle-school musical and finishing as chief of the running crew for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. After leaving TAS, he continued to be involved in technical theater as an undergrad in a liberal arts college in California. After undergraduate study, he continued to be involved in technical theater while pursuing a master’s

84 degree in the Boston area. Micah double-majored in theater with a concentration in lighting design and diplomacy/world affairs. Currently, Micah works in information technology in the

Boston area for K-12 public schools. Before the pandemic, he worked on theatrical productions in schools as well, and he hopes to return to that work in the future. Highlighting the importance of communication, Micah recalled, “And all that's happening very quickly and the best comparison: it's like running like Star Trek, like running a ship, where you have the captain in the chair and everyone else.” It was evident from Micah’s words that he was in awe of the stage manager calling the show who must be in a constant state of awareness, and the way that he made sense of that experience was to liken it to a show he enjoys. Micah grew in confidence and remembers actively seeking the camaraderie of the theater community.

Research Methodology Applied to the Data

This study provides greater context on the value of technical theater at the secondary level by giving students the opportunity to narrate their lived experiences as members of the stage crew. This study gathered data from a subset of students who have not been the subject of substantial prior academic inquiry. Emergent themes and observations were collected by reviewing the salient data from each participant. The thematic approach, concerned with the whats of a study, is “probably the most common method of narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008, p. 53). Narrative accounts “supply more than simply what happened, expressing the narrator’s emotions, attitudes, beliefs, and motivations” (Holstein & Gubrium, 2012, p. 6). The narrative accounts of these 10 participants provided a rich source of data since they each shared their stories openly and candidly.

The study was conducted within the theoretical framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory, with additional deductive analysis using Saldaña's dramaturgical coding, and a deductive

85 analysis using the Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019. This tripartite analysis or triangulation allowed the researcher to deal with the complexity in a balanced and holistic way, and to confirm themes and patterns supported by the data collected.

Analysis of Key Emergent Themes

Three major themes emerged from the participants' narratives: confidence, communication, and camaraderie. Clandinin noted the researcher’s process to find themes, or

“resonances across the accounts,” is never easy (2013, p. 142). These themes reverberated across the 10 narrative accounts and were confirmed by the participants themselves. The researcher gathered stories from the high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way the students narrated, characterized, and made sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. However, the themes emerged from the liminal space, the borderland between the researcher and study participants, induced by countless readings of each transcript. These three themes roughly correspond to the three lines of sensemaking inquiry in the guiding research question. The social experience corresponds with camaraderie; the emotional experience is typified by the increase in confidence; and the cognitive experience resonates with the theme of communication. The way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their participation on the stage crew is through confidence, camaraderie, and communication. All participants endorsed these themes as their enduring understandings from their high-school technical-theater experiences, and the value of tech at the secondary level stems from the wellspring of these three themes.

Major Theme of Confidence

Every participant noted their participation behind the scenes gave them confidence in their own abilities and agency and helped them overcome shyness. McCammon et al. (2012)

86 noted most students involved in high-school theater are “shy, introverted, socially withdrawn, not confident, self-conscious, awkward, and insecure” (p. 6). Five participants (Melissa, Noel,

Erik, Joy, and Mike) in this study described themselves as “shy” before their work on the crew.

Mike explained, “I want emphasize how timid I was, and also how shy… I was able to really learn a lot from being part of tech.” Others were less direct but expressed similar sentiments.

Brendon recalled the trepidation he felt on his first day, stating, “Meeting the running crew, it was kind of scary.” Alec observed, “I really like how we're kind of behind the scenes and people kind of don't notice you.” Patricia confessed, “When I was younger, I didn't really have the courage to do front of stage things.” Eight of the 10 participants talked about overcoming their shyness by engaging fully in the work of the tech crew.

Major Theme of Communication

McCammon et al. (2012) found high-school theater experiences empower participants to think and function improvisationally in dynamic contexts, encouraging multimodal thinking that is “instinctive yet critical, intuitive yet analytical, conceptual yet pragmatic, abstract yet solution- oriented, and holistic yet rapid” (p.19). All participants discussed how theater work, especially on the crew, relied heavily on clear communication. Devore (1977) defined communication for the theatrical-production process as that dynamic interchange established within, between, and among participants in the production group, in a complex network of “conceptual, aesthetic, observational, and social” processes (p. 114). Joy stated, “TAS is a very competitive place. Most of the time, people don’t work as a team…What I learned from being on running crew is communication…You can’t move the thing by yourself and so you need to communicate.” She later elaborated, “Communication is a skill. How you get your plans across without offending anyone, how to resolve the situation without [hurting people’s feelings].” Patricia noted,

87 I think that also it made me learn a lot about professionalism and how to work with people and how to sometimes put a lot of things aside and get to work on the show instead of just being there to hang out with people.

Melissa also noted,

Even if you want to just take off your headset for a second, you need to let people know, because something might come up. I think just being really open and good about communication and teamwork is something that I learned a lot through my experience doing backstage.

The importance of speaking up when necessary and making sure everyone is on the same page recurred in many of the transcripts.

Major Theme of Camaraderie

Camaraderie is the “communal sense of a common striving toward team goal” with bonds formed that resemble a “sisterhood” or “brotherhood” (Wilson, 2007, p. 152). All participants in this study identified a sense of camaraderie as one of their main memories from telling their stories about the lessons they learned from participating in high-school-theater stage crews.

Camaraderie is rooted in the shared purpose of people who spend a great deal of time together.

Mike noted,

We really had some, I would say ups and downs, I think…the ups were definitely just how bonded I felt like the team was throughout all four years of high school… We all knew each other pretty well, and then we could really talk to each other about anything.

Micah noted that teamwork was fundamental to his crew experience as he explained,

As much as I like to take credit for a lot of ideas and solutions, it was always a team effort. Anything that we needed to find a solution, our team worked together very well to sort of figure out how can we fix this problem, how can we make things smoother.

Erik explained it well when he said,

[Doing stage crew] can feel daunting. Technical theater people, from what I experienced in my time at TAS, technical theater people love to help each other. And if you’re not sure if you want to do it at all, just ask the people already in [stage crew]. Yeah, sure, it’s hard. It can be stressful a few times. But it’s always fun, and every technical theater person has fun stories to tell.

88 Brendon summed it up when he stated,

When you’re in the zone, when you’re alone and you’re sitting in the dark on the spotlight waiting for your cue, nothing is on your mind except for the cue. And when it happens, you just go. You go. You get it done… There’s much more responsibility to the team rather than your own success.

Camaraderie was one of the main ways these participants made sense of their involvement on the stage crew.

Additional Findings and Observations

In addition to the three major themes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie, some other notable commonalities appeared in the ways the participants narrated, characterized, and made sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at TAS. These commonalities did not rise to the level of the major themes, but they still offer insight and potential avenues for further research.

The Importance of the Material Culture of Stage Props

In sociology, anthropology, archeology, ethnography, and some other fields, the term

“material culture” refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces people use. Material culture centers on objects and “explores the intertwined, and often dialectic, relationships between people and things” (Buchli, 2002, p. 2). Six participants talked extensively about the procurement, construction, or the transport of stage properties. Micah remembered building the tables for Sabbath Prayer; Joy giggled about buying handcuffs for The 39 Steps; Erik talked about building the outhouse for Montezuma’s Gold and its trip overseas. Melissa remembered the construction of the “old timey record player” for a show and was genuinely pleased to know that it is still in the prop room, exclaiming, “Oh, wow. It's still alive. That's great.” Brendon, the most sentimental participant, vigorously waved the “Mushnik and Sons” sign salvaged from the set of

Little Shop of Horrors during the interview and talked about the water pump from The Miracle

89 Worker. Sofer (2003) noted that stage props “have many lives – practical, referential, rhetorical, phenomenological, psychological, ideological – but each begins when an object is plucked from the world and placed on the stage” (p. 29). However, for the crew, that life begins in the shop when the object is constructed for the stage and continues long after the curtain falls. This finding does not have a direct correlation to the major themes of confidence, communication, or camaraderie, but it does offer insight and opens up an avenue of inquiry for further investigation.

The Importance of Shared Food and Drink

Food is a field of study that lends itself to sharing and storytelling. Every participant except Alec shared something substantial about food or drink during the course of the interview.

Noel noted there were “Lots of meals shared just because of how late rehearsals ran.” Scholars of culture and society have examined “commensality—the act of eating together—to understand how people structure, express and experience group cohesion and belonging, and to determine the nature of a variety of social relationships and identities” (Kohn, 2013, p. 50). Nine participants turned to talk about food and drink when pressed for their best memories of working on the crew. Noel and Jordan talked about trips to the local 7-Eleven with fellow crewmates.

Mike talked about organizing the food for the tech-night bonding events. Micah stated, “I mean, it sounds weird, I liked that you'd give me money to go buy dinner. The French deli, Mos

Burger, Mary's, McDonald's? What are we doing today?” Joy noted that she really wanted to

“grab a lunch” with some theater teachers. Patricia reminisced,

Even though it's like really late or it's like after a whole day of classes, we still try to buy drinks for each other or go to go to the shop to get snacks and go through rehearsal together and I think that was really cool to me.

Brendon remembered having ice cream with the stage crew as one of the first times he started to make friends. Later, he recalled some experimental pizza toppings, stating, “We tried terrible boba pizza – regrettable.” However, in the end, Brendon noted with glee, “We ate lots of

90 unhealthy food!” The importance of shared food and drink could be considered an extension of the main theme of camaraderie, since the act of buying or sharing food helped the group bond and gave the participants who provided the food a share of the responsibility for its procurement.

The Importance of Adaptability and Flexibility

Another recurring commonality was the way participation in technical theater served to advance students’ cognitive skills by fostering adaptability and flexibility. Adaptability and flexibility were constant in the presentations of how to overcome the difficulties they faced in production. Micah summed it up by stating, “I would say the skills that I learned in theater tech, both in high school and then later on in college, makes you a very handy person.” Erik explained,

I learned a lot of practical skills doing behind-the-scenes stuff. Especially since we did most of our own prop and set making…It gives me a lot of practice with tools, that I still use every now and then today, especially to fix something that’s broken, or make my own furniture.

Both Micah and Erik were able to use the skills they learned in tech in new contexts outside the theater. Alec also noted, “But [tech] is fun because you get to troubleshoot. And I think that also kind of carries over to what I am doing now… Sometimes you have to troubleshoot on the spot.” Alec took the adaptability and flexibility he learned through technical theater into his current career as a software engineer and entrepreneur. Patricia termed technical theater “voluntary learning” and explained, “If you come every single day from the start of construction till the very end, you would learn so much.” Noel added, “There's always things to do and you kind of end up learning a bit of everything.” Erik, highlighting the need for adaptability and flexibility, explicated,

Because those things [mistakes] happen. And it’s going to happen. As things get more complicated, and as changes keep being made, mistakes happen. And it’s definitely gotten me better at accepting that. Of course, not settling. You never settle for that.

91 His remarks make it clear that adaptability and flexibility helped him overcome the mistakes without a sense of compromise.

Weick’s Sensemaking Theory

Weick delineated the seven sensemaking qualities or properties that guided this study and provided a lens through which to analyze the transcription data. Utilizing these properties of sensemaking allowed the researcher greater insight into how students involved in technical theater in high school make sense of their involvement in a production, and it also gave them a voice to express their experiences. Coding in its most basic form is the simple operation of identifying segments of meaning in your data and labelling them with a code, which can be defined as “a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence- capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data” (Saldaña,

2013 p. 3). The first round of coding was “in vivo,” using the participants' words themselves to find meaning without alteration. Subsequent rounds of coding looked for themes and commonalities as well as divergent anomalies. What follows is the deductive analysis based on the seven sensemaking tenets.

Sensemaking is grounded in identity construction. The first property in sensemaking is a very complex process focused on one’s self-identity and self-concept. Micah quipped, “If theater kids are considered the weirdos of the school, theater tech kids are the weirdos of the weirdos.”

All participants noted their time on the stage crew shaped their identities. Mike highlighted the importance of “little inside jokes” and Brendon talked about “obscure references” that only fellow crew members understood.

Sensemaking is retrospective. The second property requires the ability to look to the past and determine the meaning of what occurred. The theatrical-production process has highs and

92 lows for all students involved. Participants ranged from 6-months to over 6-years removed from their TAS theater experiences, but all of them were filled with stories of their experiences.

Sensemaking is enactive of sensible environments. The third property of sensemaking focuses on the term “enactment.” This property is rooted in the idea of role and how that role guides the interactions. Educational theater is a sensible environment because there are basic assumptions at play. The teacher-director will decide the blocking and the crew will be silent in the wings. Melissa opined that everyone should “do backstage, because only then do you realize what goes into a production. The acting and the performing is only half of it. The tech side is a complete other world, but the two cannot exist without each other.”

Sensemaking is social. The fourth property highlights the importance of the social aspects of sensemaking. Noel noted that crew members had “to learn to work together very quickly” and they “just kind of develop a vibe with everyone.” Mike stated, “That’s probably one of the biggest plusses, being able to meet as many people as I did through technical theater.”

Sensemaking is ongoing. The fifth property conveys the important fact that one is constantly engaging in the meaning-making process; that is, there is not a defined beginning and end. Alec noted that a lot of his friendships started in high-school theater and even now he pulls out his production videos. His college application essay focused on “being behind the scenes” and his efforts to work on the “bigger picture of a production.” He noted that whenever he gathers with friends, he continues to “reminisce about the stuff that we worked on at TAS.”

Sensemaking is focused on and by extracted cues. The sixth property of sensemaking notes the significance of simple cues that one takes note of and utilizes to make sense of one’s environment. The search for the cues is bounded by the organizational environmental context, and that context helps dictate which cues are noticed, but also which cues are ignored or

93 extracted, and then embellished (Weick, 1995, p. 49). Erik explained, “There are a lot of things that people do that go unnoticed…people don’t notice lights unless something goes wrong; people don’t notice a mike is working well until something goes wrong.” Erik added, “With technical theater, because a lot of it is about supporting what’s onstage, a lot of technical theater is intentionally not focused on.”

Sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. Weick’s final property of sensemaking indicates it is more important to focus on plausibility rather than accuracy. No one person can master all the details. Brendon and Mike both shared stories about the projection computer failing during the dance production of A Christmas Carol, but their stories did not agree in all details because Mike was the stage manager and Brendon was the projectionist.

Brendon’s version as the projectionist is found later in this chapter following the list of critical incidents and Mike described the same event as “one of the scariest things” he ever experienced and added, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening right now.” Joy and Melissa also shared stories of the same incident when the rigging computer crashed and the Addams Family gate did not fly out according to plan. The stage manager, Melissa, noted, “Yeah, the orchestra had to vamp for quite a while.” But in the end, it all worked out. Melissa added, “Something will always happen, but you just move on. In the long run it really prepares you for anything life throws at you…. yes, internally I'm panicking and freaking out, but you have to make it work.”

Even though the details of Joy and Melissa’s telling of the incident do not fully align, the takeaway message is the same.

Each of these seven properties alone could be its own focus in a study, but taken together, they provide a lens through which to view technical theater in high school. Weick (1995) noted that investigating sensemaking processes would start from, or at least relate to, an important

94 organizational event, using forest fires and airplane tragedies for his exploration. For this study, the focus was on the lessons learned and stories told about unexpected technical-theater issues the participants experienced. The researcher posed the question, “Looking back, what are your strongest memories of being part of the stage crew? Why do these stand out for you?” For

Weick’s sensemaking theory, “the undesirability of a situation, as sensed relative to one’s preferences, is an occasion for problem-solving (1995, p. 90).” And for sensemaking to begin, the participant’s “deliberate initiative” is required in the problem-solving process (p. 91). Table 1 presents the participants’ occasions for sensemaking, as manifested in the stories they told. Each incident description is categorized by a production area such as lighting, rigging, sound, or scenic incident.

95 Table 1

Participants’ Technical Theater Problems/Critical or Revelatory Incident Description

Name Description Area Brendon 1: projection failure during dance production – projectionist point Projections of view 2: spotlight position error Lighting Mike 1: projection failure during dance production – stage manager point Projections of view Patricia 1: mic battery died on stage Sound 2: stage prop missing Scenic 3: Barricade moved slow and prevented actor entrance Scenic Joy 1: flying gate failed to go up on cue – running crew point of view Rigging 2: wagon wheel failure Scenic Jordan 1: lightboard malfunction during rehearsal Lighting Melissa 1: flying gate failed to go up on cue – stage manager point of view Rigging 2: crew left onstage inside scenic unit when the clasp failed 3: I fell into the orchestra pit Scenic

Personnel Erik 1: lighting malfunction due to operator error Lighting 2: assembly of flats after cargo flight Scenic Alec 1: mic pack turned off by an actor Sound 2: monitor speaker failure during performance Sound Noel 1: Fistfight among crew members Personnel 2: lamp failure during show which showered the stage in broken Lighting glass shards 3: Spotlight died and needed replacing mid-run Lighting Micah 1: Death of Drama Teacher Personnel 2: Lightboard froze during Act 1 Lighting

Melissa stated flatly, “I think for every single show something will always go wrong.”

Both Alec and Noel adopted the mantra, “Expect the unexpected!” when working on a live stage production. Jordan also adopted the mindset of “expect the unexpected, so even the unexpected was expected,” and quipped wryly, “Tech is full of the unexpected, right.” Mike went even

96 further and stated, “You should be ready to expect the worst.” Alec credited his time on the sound crew for his ability to “troubleshoot on the spot.” Brendon explained, “Okay, one thing I definitely learned a lot was forgiveness for yourself or for others. Because in tech, when you make a mistake, forget about it. You move on. You keep doing what you have to do.”

McCammon et al. (2012) found that high-school theater experiences empower participants to think and function improvisationally in dynamic contexts, encouraging multimodal thinking that is “instinctive yet critical, intuitive yet analytical, conceptual yet pragmatic, abstract yet solution- oriented, and holistic yet rapid” (p. 19). The data collected for this study support a similar assertion about the students on the stage crew.

Weick’s sensemaking theory is focused on vivid, tellable, and interesting stories because

“a good narrative provides a plausible frame for sensemaking” (Wieck, 1995, p. 128). Each participant in this study shared their own vivid, tellable, and interesting story of how their initiatives addressed an undesirable situation. Brendon, a naturally gifted storyteller, shared the following incident from his final show:

I remember when I was doing A Christmas Carol, and the scene was about to come on where the ghost, Marley is about to come on, and it was the chain scene. And I was going to project this image on the stage—It’s a bunch of moving chains, and it’s very dramatic…. And it’s very impressive. And in the previous shows, no issue…. And suddenly everything started going wrong. [The dance teacher] decided to stop the show. She announced we were having technical difficulties, and it was like “I am the technical difficulty.”

Brendon learned to troubleshoot quickly, reboot the faulty video processor, and continue with the show. Through tech theater and the same incident, Mike, the stage manager of A

Christmas Carol, learned “to develop the skill of dealing with situations under pressure, and how to resolve them as quickly as possible.” Communication is foundational in problem solving, and these students had the confidence to act, even with a full house, and the sense of camaraderie to

97 laugh about the mistakes after the curtain closed, without pointing faults. This story illustrates all three themes that resonated across the stories participants so generously shared.

Weick was primarily concerned with the resilience of an organization in the face of disaster and offered four tactics to improve that resilience. The high-school stage-crew members illustrated all of Weick’s tactics. The first of which is bricolage, which involves normalizing unpredictability so that improvisation becomes a routine part of one’s job. Noel stated,

I think with tech, because there's so much to be done and I remember when I was at TAS we never really had quite enough people, and even working in theater after TAS we still never really had enough people, so there's always things to do and you kind of end up learning a bit of everything.

Second, Weick highlighted the need for virtual-role systems in organizations: the ability of any member of an organization to run the organization and to step into any vacated role. This tactic is rooted in communication and the ability to react. Weick’s third tactic is an attitude of wisdom characterized by “an overabundance of neither caution nor certitude” (1993, p. 642).

Participants could discount past experiences while also retaining the lessons from those experiences. Speaking about the failed Christmas Carol projections, Mike exclaimed,

One of the scariest things! ... I was like, “Oh my God, can’t believe this is happening right now.” But it was the last show too, and I felt like everything went so well before, and then just the last one everything just broke down. I was really scared.

Acting with neither caution nor certitude, Mike made sure the audience barely registered the mishap and got the show back on track. This tactic is ultimately rooted in the theme of confidence. Finally, Weick suggested respectful dyadic interaction built on trust is an important resource in crisis (1993, p. 643). This tactic has been explored in the theme of camaraderie, the source of that level of trust.

In addition to the framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory for this first analysis, two more analytical processes occurred: one used Saldaña's dramaturgical coding, and the final one

98 was a protocol coding analysis using the educational standards for theatrical-production training at the secondary level.

Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding

The interview data were also coded with Saldaña's dramaturgical coding using the conventions of theater and production analysis to analyze the transcript dialogue (Saldaña, 2016, p. 145). The researcher employed the following six codes: OBJ (objective), CON (conflict), TAC

(tactics), ATT (attitudes), SUB (subtext), and EMO (emotion). The results of the dramaturgical coding confirmed the key emergent themes from earlier iterations of data coding. Dramaturgical coding is inherently an interpretive approach that attempts to analyze life, as expressed in the transcripts, as a performance.

Table 2

Dramaturgical Coding Data by Participant

Name Objective Conflict Tactics Attitude Subtext Emotion TOTAL Brendon 0 1 10 1 2 10 24 Mike 1 0 8 2 0 13 24 Patricia 0 2 10 2 1 8 23 Joy 0 2 10 12 2 2 28 Jordan 1 0 9 1 2 5 18 Melissa 0 0 9 0 2 6 17 Erik 0 1 23 2 1 10 37 Alec 1 1 15 6 2 11 36 Noel 2 3 23 6 4 5 43 Micah 7 3 18 5 8 19 60 TOTAL 12 13 135 37 24 89 310

The coding was done by hand on data in an Excel document, unaided by a computer- assisted qualitative data-analysis software program (CAQDAS). One to three sentences could

99 constitute datum and some sentences were categorized into two overlapping codes. Saldaña's dramaturgical coding is used to analyze a body of text in much the same way that drama directors analyze a script for the stage, focusing on interpersonal and intrapersonal participant experiences. Saldaña and Omasta (2018) noted that use of this coding is particularly pertinent for narrative inquiry because “detailed analysis of these six interrelated facets provides the researcher multidimensional insight into some of the core drives of being human” (p. 220).

Due to the nature of the interview questions, focusing on technical theater, it is unsurprising that tactics—participants’ actions to achieve their objective—were the highest frequency. The objective for each participant remained unstated in the data but was typically “to successfully mount a theatrical production” in the subtext. Subtext allows the researcher to view the participants with greater depth and fullness, but the nature of the interview questions did not press much into this field and the researcher did not carefully make note of pauses or changes of inflection in the transcription, so this code appeared in the data infrequently. Attitudes as a coded construct are similarly hard to identify due to the nature of the questions the researcher asked.

The conflict code was employed whenever the tactic failed to achieve the objective, namely when something went wrong and the crew scrambled to fix this issue. This confirmed the list of critical incidents found above in Table 1. Emotions were frequently expressed and ran the gamut from positive to negative. Positive emotions included happiness (7x), excitement (7x), and amazement (6x). Negative emotions included feeling stressed (3x), scared (5x), angry (4x), and filled with regret (4x). No new themes emerged as a result of this coding process, but the themes identified earlier were reinforced and highlighted. Therefore, this coding successfully helped triangulate the data and an adequate level of saturation was reached to develop themes and interpretations. Table 3 below lists typical examples of the data coded into each category.

100 Table 3

Data Samples of Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding

Objective Jordan - I think working in technical theater has really, I do think it has truly influenced me from an academic standpoint actually. Noel - if we had a bunch of props going onto stage at once, sometimes someone would forget something or props weren't left where they should have been. Alec – “Hey, those are the sound guys. Those are the light guys. Why is there an orchestra in there? That's so cool." And I get to notice more and more things. Conflict Patricia - during Les Mis when the barricade couldn't come off the stage, when we had issues with moving the barricade off. I think that was also pretty memorable because people were very frustrated over that. Micah - Ah, this is super dangerous, we could probably get kicked out of school if we did this nonsense. Noel - I remember Emma's spotlight died and you ended up rigging up a source 4 for it. Tactics Noel - And whoever did lights, we also took turns, well, there were two of us, but we were kind of stage managing alternately. Patricia - You're just going to have to finish something in a certain amount of time. Jordan - But if that happens, then what I did was, if I had a headset, I would just communicate calmly. Attitudes Micah - I think we're Taiwan, we're scrappy that way. So, a lot of our theater tech solutions was not exactly up to code, but it always took a lot of creative thinking to get things done. Joy - I didn’t know theater is a career. I mean, why would an eight-year-old know what a career is. Brendon - You can do stuff on your own, but you can’t make it work on your own.

101 Subtext Jordan - Being a stage manager, so calling some of the shots, running crew, running around, getting some exercise in a sense. But also, people who really enjoy create...some of the physical creative sides. Joy - I don't remember much of the actual show. I only really remember the beginning when they were setting up and at the end when they were cleaning up. Micah – “You wait for the teacher to tell you what to do," but then I think when that happened and we were sort of like, "Okay, how do we do this?" it sort of became incumbent of us to sort of learn, "Okay, how do you do this? How do you figure things out?” Emotion Mike - I think the downs would be how stressful, and I guess anxious some of us got. Jordan - I think why I remember these experiences, I think a lot of time is like I said, it made me mad, associated with strong emotions. Patricia – My art passion lies in storytelling. It lies in kind of trying to have a vision for a film or a story, right. I think also being in theater helped with that as well because theater is very bare bones in terms of storytelling.

Dramaturgical coding is often used to help analyze the sociological, psychological, and cultural constructs found within data. As noted by Saldaña (2013), “Dramaturgical coding attunes the researcher to the qualities, perspectives, and drives of the participant. It also provides a deep understanding of how humans in social action, reaction, and interaction interpret and manage conflict” (p. 124). After the initial coding into Saldaña’s six categories, a second subcode was employed to reveal the participant’s perspective or motive. These subcodes helped generate categories or patterns based on shared points of reference, something akin to a “gut reaction” to the data.

The theme of confidence was evident in the emotion and subtext codes, with 23 emotion codes for a feeling of pride in accomplishments, and nine examples of subtext related to confidence. The theme of camaraderie was found in multiple coded data segments spanning different categories, from 16 examples of feeling loved or accepted in the emotion code, to three examples of subtext related to camaraderie (i.e., “this [tech] is for certain kinds of people”; “I get

102 why others would not want to join”; “people don’t know how much work there is”). Camaraderie was also present in 12 data coded under tactics. The theme of communication was the focus of eight identified tactics and four objectives. Those tactics included communicate clearly, communicate where you are going, communicate before the lights turn on, and communicate calmly under pressure. Adaptability and flexibility were also significant in the data for the tactics code, with the subcode “figure it out” appearing nine times in the stories of five different participants. In the parlance of Saldaña’s dramaturgical coding, confidence, camaraderie, and communication emerged as the superobjectives or the primary themes of the majority of study participants. These superobjectives characterize the essence of participants’ complex and rich stories, the core impetus for their journey through technical theater at the secondary level.

Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019

The Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019, based on the NCAS released in 2014, support a conceptual framework highlighting the artistic processes of create, perform, respond, and connect. These four overarching standards unite all the arts disciplines, including drama, dance, music, and visual and media arts. Curriculum content standards provide an outline of what students are expected to know at certain stages of their education career; more than a list of skills, content standards provide a vision of expected outcomes. Content standards serve three purposes to guide curriculum structure: to publicly identify what is important for schools to teach; to guide instruction, curriculum, and assessment in an organized, meaningful, and coherent manner; and to guide the allocation of instructional resources (McLaughlin & Shepard,

1995, p. 20). The deductive analysis here offered the researcher a lens through which to view the technical-theater program’s successfulness by measuring the outcomes as expressed by the participants.

103 The data collected from the interviews were examined for examples of these four artistic processes of creating, connecting, performing, and responding found in the production strand standards. The following two tracks are unique to the Wisconsin standards: the “performance strand,” which includes standards for acting, directing, playwriting, and classroom drama activities; and the “production strand,” which focuses on behind-the-scenes activities, including lighting, sound, stage management, and design with its realized execution. Wisconsin, home of

ETC, the largest manufacturer of theater equipment in the United States, is the only state whose standards address production directly. The NCAS (2014) was written by a team of 176 committee members, including 19 educators on the drama committee; however, no technical- theater specialists were involved in the writing of those national standards. The NCAS lists 312 standards and three of those apply to technical theater. The Wisconsin standards are evenly split between the performance and production strands, with both strands listing 68 standards total across all grade levels. The data collected were analyzed with the standards listed for high-school theater, available as Appendix E.

The Wisconsin Standards for Theatre are intentionally broad and open ended, with plenty of room for individual schools to meet the standards in different ways through experiential theater opportunities. The standard “focuses on the what (and not the how) a learner will know when they reach the identified performance indicators” (Wisconsin Standards for Theatre, 2019, p. 8). All participants met the standards when they were involved in cocurricular production work in high school, but this analysis focuses on their stories of that involvement, and highlights the connection to and reinforcement of the main themes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie that are more fully explored and developed in the next section on the key emergent themes.

104 Create

This production strand focuses on the artistic process of design, and the coloration necessary to generate an artistic work. Erik recalled, “In terms of just the technical theater itself,

I remember something that stood out to me was the feeling of being able to create something, both physically and artistically.” He went on to illustrate this with a story that combines confidence, communication, and camaraderie. Erik told the following story about a screwball western comedy that played in Taipei and Bangkok:

A story I like telling is what we did for the set of Montezuma’s Gold…Your blueprint for that was amazingly simply… It was simple and ingenious. Just the fact that I can say that we packed a house, an outhouse, a fricking yard fence, and all the props and costumes in suitcases, took them on a plane to go to a different country, we unpacked it… No, we moved a house and an outhouse and a yard in suitcases and moved it on a plane. I love telling that story, just because it’s so ridiculous what we accomplished.

From his tone, it was clear Erik gained confidence in this building process; the blueprints or plans were the medium of communication; and the fact that he still tells this story speaks to the camaraderie with the other production crew members, the cast, and the crew at the Cultural

Convention host school in Bangkok.

Perform

This production strand asks students to analyze, develop, and convey meaning through the presentation of an artistic work. Expressing confidence, Mike said, “I was able to develop the skill of dealing with situations under pressure, and how to resolve them as quickly as possible.”

Erik also noted with great personal reflection,

[Technical theater] helped train my insight into looking deeper into more of the how of things. It’s also helped me be a lot more flexible. Because something I remember as a kid was, I was very stubborn as a kid, unless I’m just remembering wrong.

105 With the confidence gained by being involved in theater, Mike expressed the importance of communication and camaraderie with the following story of the lessons he learned on the stage crew:

I think something that crew really helped me out was to develop my skill as a leader, especially being able to see role models and how they lead really helped me build my leadership as well… As I grew older, especially my senior year of high school, I realized how important it is to be a quality leader … Through tech, the quality of being a leader really helped me. And it also helped me improve, and also to be able to put myself out there more, and then help out others when they needed to do. When people might get too shy, and then how I might be able to help them more openly express what they think. I think those are some good qualities that I was able to benefit from through tech.

His lessons learned reflect the Wisconsin standard TD.P.18.h: Design & Management

Documentation and TD.P.20.h: Protocol. They also reflect the themes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie.

Respond

This production strand asks students to engage in critical analysis and reflection to evaluate artistic work. The researcher included an interview question about the participant’s first exposure to theater, and that reflection fulfills the tenets of Standard TD.R.12.h: View

Performance. Expressing confidence, Brendon stated, “Most people don’t really look at what’s going on behind the scenes until you’re there yourself, and you’re feeling like, ‘Wow, this is how it works out.’” Joy was first bitten by the theater bug at the age of 8 and told the story of how it happened:

Do you know that theater company Paper Windmill Theater in Taiwan? They do kids’ shows mostly. Their main target audience are kids. They did this thing where the Animals of the Zodiac—you know how there’s 12 animals for each year, right?—so each year, they use the animal of the year and then make a show about that character. The Year of Pig, the characters are pigs, and pig village, and chicken village, or dog and stuff. And I remember, in this show, there is this actor, actress, they have this helmet thing that kind of looks like alien. They're supposed to be not earth creature, but they do shows with kids outside after the show, so I remember seeing their costume very closely. It’s like a helmet, but with two things on the side… but I was like, wow, that’s so cool. They made the ear out of aluminum foil, which is really cool… thinking back, I remember that image

106 vividly. I was staring at this girl’s aluminum foil helmet and I thought that was really cool.

After the interview, Joy emailed a photo of herself as an 8-year-old standing next to the foil-clad pig. Her reflection analyzed the effectiveness of the design choices (TD.R.10.h:

Analysis) and reflected on the production using theater vocabulary (TD.R.11.h: Reflection).

Connect

This production strand asks students to engage across the traditional disciplinary lines, research production choices, and make career connections to this industry. Joy noted, “I didn’t know theater is a career. I mean, why would an eight-year-old know what a career is.” However, now that she is a stage manager in college, she noted how well TAS prepared her for tertiary education. Erik made connections between the work behind the scenes and his current field of engineering, stating,

I learned a lot of practical skills doing behind-the-scenes stuff… It’s gotten me into engineering, actually… Being behind the scenes in plays and musicals and dance productions, it gave me the perspective to be able to look at something, take a step back and look at something for how it’s made, rather than just what you’re shown. It helps me think more about what goes behind the scenes with something. Like what did it take to make this movie? What were the decisions they made? Or even just what did it take for let’s say Elon Musk to start those companies?

All 10 participants expressed stories of creating, performing, responding, and connecting.

The themes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie continue to resonate in participants’ shared stories. This analysis using the Wisconsin standards supports the themes found using the conceptual framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory, and, coupled with the dramatical coding analysis, helped to thoroughly probe the data in this study.

Summary

This study strove to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate,

107 characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Conducted within the theoretical framework of Weick’s sensemaking theory, with additional analysis using Saldaña's dramaturgical coding, and a deductive analysis using the Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019, this study gave a voice to the silent technicians working behind the scenes by hearing and learning from the narrative voices of high-school student technicians relating their own stories. The 10 participants told their stories and shared what it was like to create props and costumes, perform their roles as light-board or sound-board operators, respond to artistic work, and connect with peers and performing-arts teachers. This study uncovered three main themes: confidence, communication, and camaraderie, and the participants confirmed the themes themselves. Secondary educators and theater practitioners have insufficient data and supporting literature to provide insight into and an understanding of the high-school technical-theater experience, its educational value, and its impact on adolescent personal growth, but this study begins to fill that lacuna. There wings are no longer silent; rather, they resound with the stage-crew members’ lived experiences and narrated stories. This study is a first step in understanding the value of technical theater from the participants’ perspectives. The next chapter presents additional implications for practice, situating this study in the context of the extant literature and offering further avenues of inquiry.

108 Chapter Five: Conclusions, Discussion, Implications, and Recommendations

Theatre is an arena where the great issues—of values, of ethics, of courage, of integrity and of humanism—are encountered and wrestled with. Ming Cho Lee, American Theatre Journal, 1990

The purpose of this qualitative study using a narrative methodology was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. This problem of practice centers on the narrative evidence and analysis of the storied experiences of high-school participants involved in stage management, costume and make-up, lighting, sound, props, and any other students who do not perform onstage but are still part of the story-telling aspect of theater. In examining the high-school production context as a place of development and growth for adolescents, this study was guided by one central question: How do high-school students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew at TAS?

The purpose of this chapter is to first discuss the key research findings that emerged during data analysis and their implications for practice; second, to review the findings in relation to the frameworks of Weick’s sensemaking theory, Saldaña’s dramaturgical coding, and the

Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019, and to the literature review; and third, to provide recommendations for future research, noting the limitations of this study. Basically, the purpose of this chapter is to situate this study in its academic context and offer the reader a reason that the answer to the central research question matters to the field.

109 Key Findings and Implications for Practice

This study provides helpful perspectives to educators who work with high-school technicians and could also lead to a more fully developed and articulated pedagogy of technical- theater teaching and learning at the secondary level. While this investigation fills a gap in the literature and successfully addresses the research question, it is beyond the scope of this study to produce guidelines for schools' technical-theater programs or recommendations for preservice and in-service theater and technical-teacher training and standards.

Humans are interdependent; thus, an individual’s self-actualization requires social actualization (Dissanayake, 2012). The stage-crew members at TAS who participated in this study were in the process of growing into themselves through their meaningful interactions.

Dissanayake (2012) explored the intersectionality of art and humanity in five categories, namely,

(1) mutuality, (2) belonging and acceptance, (3) finding and making meaning, (4) acquiring a sense of competence, and (5) elaboration. Dissanayake’s categories have parallels within the identified themes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie. Confidence is part of acquiring a sense of competence, defined as “both the knowledge of what to do and the ability to carry it out” (Dissanayake, 2012, p. 155). The theme of communication is part of finding and making meaning and elaboration. For Dissanayake, elaboration is characterized by “excessive preparation time” and the “physical effort of making” the cultural product (Dissanayake, 2012, p.

153). Finally, the overarching theme of camaraderie is embedded in mutuality and belonging and acceptance.

Assertions are drawn from the themes that emerged from the data analysis described in the previous chapter. The following are the three key assertions that appeared as a result of reflecting on the data gathered from the 10 participants:

110 Confidence: Participation behind the scenes can positively impact adolescent development and confidence.

Communication: Students who participate on stage crews frequently find and develop their voice, learning how to communicate with peers and their teachers.

Camaraderie: Students who participate on stage crews frequently experience a feeling of belonging to the group.

The findings also indicate a connectedness among the themes, a synergistic interaction of confidence, communication, and camaraderie. Themes build on and evolve from each other, interact and overlap, and circle back to each other without clear delineation. In many ways, themes are inseparable and the lines between the themes blur. Communication with peers and teachers leads to confidence, which enhances the overall sense of camaraderie, and confidence increases the student’s ability to communicate effectively.

As Maier stated, “If camaraderie is the most meaningful outcome of the play process, then future teachers must study how to develop and encourage positive student interactions”

(2003, p. 138). This study also found camaraderie to be one of the main outcomes of serving as a student technician, and with that knowledge, purposeful curriculum could be developed and implemented with the goal of camaraderie in mind.

Lazarus (2012) advocated for rethinking secondary-school theater education best practices, noting that the “operative word in best practice is practice. It implies intentional action” (p. 37). Ideally, drama teachers or technical-theater teachers, through a student-focused lens, are influenced by and support their students in their unique teaching environment. Drama teachers have acquired specialized pedagogical techniques that are innovative and appropriate for teaching drama and theater to today's high-school students, but many are less well versed in

111 theater production and could use additional professional development to deepen their capacity.

Lazarus (2012) challenged secondary teachers, noting that “much of what we discover about ourselves and about theatre occurs when we are confident enough to say to students, ‘I don’t know. Let’s find out together’” (p. 15). If secondary theater education is learner-centered, it provides students with opportunity for growth and change, and gives young people a voice and agency. In those places, a teacher-director guides the process, which provides "residual, positive, lifelong impacts throughout adulthood" (Lazarus, 2012, p. 32).

Lazarus also advocates for show selection in secondary schools that selects published works, or devises their own material, that is socially responsible in service to students’ lived experiences. In this study, it was notable that only one participant talked about the content of a show. Noting the empathy of the characters in The Miracle Worker, Brendon said, “When you do a show it stays with you, and not every show has a really grand moral, but every show says something.” The silence about the show selection could be attributed to the interview question format, or it could stem from a show selection that lacked connection to adolescent lives. Drama teachers have an opportunity to address societal issues, enhance discussions of democracy and diversity, produce compelling community-based projects, and teach empathy if they break away from the classics like Our Town and You Can’t Take It with You, which have been staples of high-school repertoire for over 50 years. The value and success of secondary-theater programs rests heavily on the quality of shows selected for production. There must be a balance struck between educational and entertainment value: secondary-school productions should ideally reveal the universalities of the human experience and develop a deeper understanding of national, cultural, and racial commonalities.

112 Theater at the secondary level can be a safe space for the greater community to engage with increasingly diverse identities regarding race, culture, gender, or sexuality. Kindelan (1999) noted that “theatre is an appropriate way to mirror society. If theatre is a reflection of society, then the discipline has found ways to study the history, issues, and psychology of humanity and incorporate its findings on stage” (p. 273). Well-planned secondary-theater curricula must include technical theater and present the study of theater as an aesthetic experience that reflects the diversity of a pluralistic and democratic society, allowing the play’s production process to unfold as a laboratory for the exploration and development of not only the students involved but also their community audiences.

There is a constant struggle in high-school theater and even college-level theater between the needs of a given show or production and the deeper dialogue needed to learn holistically about theater. This is a false dichotomy if the creative team works with purpose to make sure both are addressed throughout the production process. As USITT and ATHE (1994) noted, in all school productions, “students must be given opportunities to reflect on and learn from their creative work” (p. 1). This precept requires a careful balance of the educational and artistic mission: “learning about and learning to do theatre” are not discrete isolable activities (p. 1). If a school models its production process on the students’ agency and current research on best practices in drama education, it will lead to a product that encourages appropriate growth in both the students and faculty involved in the production. Schools that focus solely on the product are putting the cart before the horse and not making the most of the teachable moments with the student performers and technicians. Involvement in theater in high school, whether as a technician, designer, or stage manager, can and does have a lifelong impact, and this study provides the evidence needed to make that case. Theater teachers and technical-theater teachers

113 must be mindful that their work does not just end when the curtain closes. The individual lessons learned pale in comparison to the life and interpersonal skills developed by participating in theater while in high school, whether in front of or behind the curtain.

Kindelan (1999) noted that “when a student becomes involved in the production process, the student's relationship to the event of theatre is more tangible or immediate and, in effect, more memorable” (p. 273). Participation in technical theater can promote the competencies associated with 21st-century learning. If a school has performing-arts faculty who are willing to collaborate on a deep level with each other and the students, then the program will be strengthened by the collaboration. This level of commitment to collaboration rooted in communication will result in confidence and camaraderie, bringing it back to the themes uncovered in this research process.

Findings in Relation to Weick’s Sensemaking Theory and Recommendation for Theory

Weick’s sensemaking theory offers a valuable heuristic for understanding the student technicians’ responses to unexpected problems during the performance of live theater.

Sensemaking theory is emergent and provided a suitable framework to study how high-school students narrate and contextualize their experiences working backstage on productions, to assess the 21st-century skills and competencies developed there, and to give those students a voice in expressing the impact on their personal development. Sensemaking is one of the more relevant theories among the fields that use narrative analysis because stories can be accepted as a means for interpreting and bringing meaning to the events experienced (Rhodes & Brown, 2005).

Weick noted that the phenomenon in which “I am puzzled by what is going on, but I assume that no one else is” (Weick, 1990, p. 588) is an important contributor to the beginning of a crisis. The three themes of confidence, camaraderie, and communication developed in the

114 students participating on the stage crew help mitigate when a crisis arises either onstage or in the wings. Building on Weick’s sensemaking theory, Klein et al. (1996) suggested that individuals make sense of an atypical situation by a process called reframing the issue. He later developed his model of flexible execution—or flexecution—a model of adaptive replanning or, more simply, planning in stride, which was developed to describe how individuals flexibly pursue goals in the types of complex settings characterized by emergent and unpredictable challenges

(Klein, 2007, p. 80). This model has been used in the military, but never before applied to the performing arts. Further research could connect flexecution and its role in technical theater at all levels. There are connections between flexecution and the subtheme of adaptability and flexibility that warrant closer examination.

Findings in Relation to Saldaña's Dramaturgical Coding and Recommendations for Theory

The interview data were also coded with Saldaña's dramaturgical coding using the conventions of theater and production analysis to analyze the transcript dialogue (Saldaña, 2016, p. 145). This coding helped confirm the three assertions about confidence, communication, and camaraderie noted above.

The use of arts-informed approaches to disseminate research findings has gained traction in recent years. To cut through academic jargon and esoteric style, another approach to this interview data could have been the development of a theatrical work using the verbatim text of the 10 participants. The cultural function of art designates such performances as “special”

(Dissanayake, 2012), thus ensuring that these stories are indeed worthy of attention, reflection, and continued discussion. This approach would present a nontraditional form of academic communication, which might be better received by people involved in theater because they would presumably be theatrically literate and sensitive to this novel approach.

115 Findings in Relation to Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019

The data collected from the interviews were examined for examples of these four artistic processes of creating, connecting, performing, and responding, found in the production strand standards. The deductive analysis here offered the researcher a lens through which to view the technical-theater program’s successfulness by measuring the outcomes the participants expressed. All participants were involved in creating, connecting, performing, and responding during their time working behind the scenes. This analysis offered a model of judging the technical-theater program’s merits at TAS based on accepted curricular benchmarks.

McLauchlan (2011) found the secondary-level drama teacher is paramount to a theater program’s success, creating an atmosphere where students are supported and feel like a “surrogate family or emotional oasis” (p. 40). This study helps establish the role of the technical-theater teacher to do the same. The quality of theater education and technical-theater education at the secondary level is directly dependent on the development of theater-education programs in higher education responding to the needs of today’s adolescents.

Findings in Relation to the Literature Review

The literature review examined the background of theater as a subject and extracurricular activity in U.S. high schools; the current state of theater education in secondary institutions; the current models for theater-teacher training; and the empathy and cognitive development of adolescents through the arts. Theater, both cocurricular and extracurricular, is shown to increase students' understanding of the world and help them grow in self-confidence and creativity

(Seidel, 1991; Omasta, 2012). This study also found evidence of growth in self-confidence for high-school technicians. Prior studies have focused on the development of cognitive and

116 affective empathy in theater-performance students (McEnery, 2018; Raimondi, 2017), but this study helped gauge empathy, as measured by camaraderie, in high-school technicians.

The study and practice of theater, both during the academic day and as an extracurricular program, has been well established in American school curriculum (Evans, 1928; Omasta, 2012;

Peluso, 1970; Seidel, 1991; Waack, 1983). However, the impact and importance of the study of school performance at the secondary level is a “neglected area of research” (Schonmann, 2000, p. 59). This study helped shed light on the experience of high-school students working behind the scenes. The 1991 and 2012 EdTA quantitative surveys were the field standards for decades, used by researchers, graduate students, teachers, and others to help them shape their own studies of and conclusions about high-school theater education. This qualitative study focused on one school and its technical-theater students. Omasta (2012) probed the perceptions of secondary- school administrators and theater educators about the role theater plays in developing students’ skills and competencies, and found that self-confidence was the top skill, followed by interpersonal skills like communication and intrapersonal skills like self-discipline and creativity.

This research shows congruence between the stage crew’s experience and the goals stated for high-school theater programs.

McCammon and Østerlind (2011) surveyed high-school students to detect the motivation for choosing theater in their own words, and those students had three main answers: fun, fellowship, and family. This study found camaraderie as one of the main themes, which encompasses fun, fellowship, and family. Yassa (1997) noted all students who participate in drama develop an increase in their personal skills, delineated as self-confidence, assertiveness, and their ability to regulate their emotions, as well as an increase in their interactive skills, delineated as democracy, communication, respect, empathy, flexibility, and tolerance. This study

117 confirmed the theme of communication and its importance for those students working behind the scenes, and it also found evidence of the personal skill of confidence. Maier (2003) noted the students involved in a play’s production process identify camaraderie as the primary reason they chose to participate in the play and went on to note that “within the community of drama friends, students recognize their own personal growth: development of social skills, peer relationships with new people, and a stronger belief in their own abilities” (p. 137). This study confirms

Maier’s theme of camaraderie and its primacy in high-school theater participation.

The literature substantiates the assertion that involvement in high-school theater produces wide-ranging and enduring developmental benefits across personal, social, and cognitive domains (Catterall et al., 1999; McLauchlan & Winters, 2014; McCammon & Østerlind, 2011;

McCammon et al., 2012; Whitaker, 2016; Zdriluk, 2010). This study confirms that assertion by giving the students behind the scenes a chance to narrate their own story.

Recommendations for Future Research

The results of this study came from the perspectives of student theater technicians when offered an opportunity to tell their stories in their own voices. What also emerged were some gaps and opportunities for future research projects that may deepen that understanding of this subgroup and broaden the reach of future research for other theater programs. The researcher’s suggestions are as follows:

1. The study focused on participants who were all from a similar cultural and economic background. The participants were mostly Asian American and from upper middle-class, affluent backgrounds with American passports being educated in Taiwan, fitting the description of

Pollock and Reken’s third culture kid (TCK), which has its own emotional and psychological realities that come from not quite fitting into either world (Pollock & Reken, 2009). A narrative

118 study (or series of studies) that replicates this one could add additional information about other contexts if similar studies were done at public schools in different regions of the United States.

The data from such research could be compared with this study to analyze similarities and differences.

2. The subject of time and how it may be used more effectively for students' personal growth has not yet been fully explored in the literature or in this study. As McCammon (2010) noted,

The performing arts, like sports, require a large commitment of time and energy. For some students, this commitment meant balancing other activities. Meeting time commitments is a big part of the sense of responsibility that young people develop through play production. (p. 11) Several participants noted the camaraderie stemmed from long hours of rehearsal, but there is room for further exploration.

It is important to acknowledge the lack of causality and limitations in many studies on performing-arts participation. One major limitation most studies on extracurricular activities face is the inability to firmly establish a causal relationship between participation and student success.

One reason for this is that these activities are a primarily self-selected activities, which makes it nearly impossible to separate the effects from preexisting differences in the students (Marsh,

1992. Furthermore, more research is needed on the connection between cocurricular and extracurricular experiences with teens and their impact on overall development. It is possible that similar experiences could be embedded in curriculum and not relegated to after-school programs.

According to Randall and Bohnert (2009), future studies of extracurricular programs like theater involvement should be experimental, longitudinal, and control for aspects that may affect outcomes, with a special focus on ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

119 Limitations of this Study

As with all forms of qualitative research, bracketing the researcher’s biases and opinions can be a challenge that affects the trustworthiness of data. Bias can be particularly difficult to avoid when the researcher is also a practitioner. Still, researcher-practitioners also possess contextualized insights into the phenomenon of study that can also be viewed as an asset if that experience is positioned effectively. In this study, the researcher is solely responsible for the interpretation, analysis, and presentation of this data. In the positionality statement, the researcher was clear about their connections to the subject matter and advocacy for technical theater in schools. However, in an effort to mitigate the bias, the data were analyzed in three separate processes and the researcher attempted to be clear that this study was an investigation and not an intervention or advocacy study, though advocacy may result from these findings and assertions.

Sampling presents another significant challenge for researchers. All themes and findings of this study must be viewed critically in the context of this understanding. Ten participants were willing to tell their stories to the researcher, but what about the others involved who chose not to respond? Consequently, while rich data were collected on the 10 former high-school technicians who participated in this study, their experiences may not be generalizable to all other high-school technicians. The value of narrative is individual, and though these themes may also resonate with high-school technicians from other programs, these stories are uniquely theirs to tell.

Policy Recommendation/Advocacy Statement

The findings of this study corroborate comparable predecessors in theater-arts-education research and advocacy (Seidel, 1991; Omasta, 2012; Catterall et al., 1999; McLauchlan &

Winters, 2014; McCammon & Østerlind, 2011; McCammon et al., 2012; Whitaker, 2016;

120 Zdriluk, 2010). According to Weltsek et al., though research is extensive on music and the visual arts, “because of insufficient participant numbers, scientifically based data on theater and dance is simply not available. This creates an obvious conundrum, as policy-makers will not invest in theater education until there is numerical proof of its value” (2014, p. 66). The positive outcomes of confidence, communication, and camaraderie, as well as the adolescent development trajectories from theater-tech participation expressed by the participants, could just as similarly have occurred through other high-school performing-arts and athletic programs. So, in what way does this study add any value to the extant literature?

Browder (1995) noted an alternative to the traditional dissertation for education students should include the possibility of proposing policy advocacy: “the taking of a carefully conceptualized policy position intended to guide professional practice” (p. 40). Based on this study, the researcher has one major policy recommendation: secondary schools that have a drama program should have a specialized technical-theater teacher to help guide the production process.

Stuart (1994) and Pyfrom (2015) studied the safety and liability of technical-theater students in high school, and this study added the necessary components of their growth and development; however, most high schools still only have a drama teacher guiding the process without specialized costume, scenic, lighting, and technical training. In recent years, technical theater has gained a larger part of the curriculum in colleges and universities as the complexities of modern lighting and video equipment and sound technology have increasingly called for specialized training, but that training has not come down to the secondary-education level. Two participants in this study noted how much fun they had when they felt empowered to contribute to the production’s artistry. The tech students deserve to have a specialist who can guide their discoveries, just as the drama teacher guides the performers. Erik reminisced, “So me and Mr.

121 Held continued to work on it after when the school is supposed to be closed, after midnight. That was fun. It sounds terrible, but that was fun.” Talking about the cueing of video-playback effects,

Alec explained,

That was a lot of work in terms of trying to queue up things and trying to figure it out because I've never done it before. And it was a lot of learning and also just like, one on one… I still remember we would sit side by side … that was a fun time. Their stories were steeped in the theme of camaraderie, and showed their level of confidence to work with, and not for, a high-school technical-theater specialist.

There has been a great deal of discussion surrounding STEM—and, adding the A for

Arts, STEAM—in recent K-12 learning trends. Technical theater fits right in with that model, but it has not had a place at the table. Educational theater in secondary schools provides a unique crucible for student learning. Students must want to be involved as either performers or technicians and they must be challenged, but within the developmentally appropriate levels. As educators, we must always remember that they are students first, with assignments and homework for other classes. Theater programs serve as mini-business models where students can learn “adult roles” (McCammon et al., 2012, p. 18). Bandura (2006) observed that adolescent individuals must think about adulthood and taking on the roles of an adult, yet society "does not provide many preparatory roles for them" (p. 6). While performers take on the roles required by the script, the high-school technicians take on an adult role with its own level of responsibility, in a safe and supported environment.

The production process must include enough time to bond as a team and enough rehearsal so that student performers and technicians are confident and prepared for their audience. It is never acceptable to be under-prepared in academic theater. We have a responsibility to do our best for the students so they are given the chance to shine and grow. Using STEAM as a model, stagecraft can become a celebrated component of education, no longer relegated to the often-

122 overlooked extracurricular activity. Every high school must offer enough opportunities for students of all levels of experience to get involved in production. That is the only way to build a healthy and sustainable performing-arts program. Secondary-level educators are not trying to train professionals, they are trying to encourage life-long habits of theater attendance and support, as well as helping students on their adolescent journeys of self-discovery.

Few secondary schools, even those with large drama, dance, and music programs, have a technical-theater teacher. However, many private schools and international schools do have such a position, filled with people from a variety of backgrounds, some without much formal training.

It is not just the robotics students who learn collaboration and recover from setbacks, nor just the athletes on the field or the court who learn teamwork and communication. Similarly, onstage performers and crew members alike experience profound personal growth through participating in the performing arts. As evidenced by their own words, participating in technical theater at the secondary level can be a rewarding experience filled with camaraderie, which gives students the confidence to communicate both inside and outside the theater.

Conclusion

Theater education is an important part of adolescent development for high-school students. This study gave these students the chance to tell their story and led to a greater understanding of the role participating behind the scenes has on adolescent development. The study focused on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew using narrative inquiry as its primary method. In this study, the students themselves expressed what technical theater has done for their own development and growth. This study sought to uncover the value of technical theater for those who participate in it by hearing and learning from the narrative

123 voices of high-school student technicians through their own stories. There is no longer quiet in the wings: The students working behind the scenes have been given the chance to tell their story and experience their moment in the spotlight.

124 Final Reflection on the Study

In drama, the mirror is both dimpled and broken, obscured in places, operating as a concave or at other times a convex lens. As such, it throws unexpected and distorted images back. It does not imitate what looks into the mirror but deliberately highlights some things and obscures others. It is deliciously … unpredictable in terms of what might be revealed and what might remain hidden. Peter O’Connor, Reflection and Refraction, 2003, p 261.

Much as in O’Connor’s above description of drama, the research process is like a mirror, both dimpled and broken, with some themes brought to light and others left obscured by the researcher’s distortions and narrators’ omissions. Also akin to drama, the research process is unpredictable in terms of what might be revealed. For me, the process was highly personal and motivated by my perceived lack of research in this field. O’Connor (2003) takes delight in the

“dappled half-truths that spring from distorted reflections” (p. 262) and so do I, as an educator, as an artist, and now as a scholar-practitioner. I am inspired and moved by the adolescents involved in TAS’ performing arts. I feel privileged to work in the arts and fortunate to have found a home in Taiwan. Sinek (2009) proposed that successful and inspired organizations or individuals focus on why they do what they do. Why did I undertake this dissertation process? I believe strongly that the ripples of participating on a high-school crew are felt across one’s lifetime. I have been a teacher for over 20 years and I still occasionally hear from some former students. This dissertation gave me the opportunity to reach out and reconnect with recent alumni. All participants spoke with great candor and eloquence. They also spoke reflexively and reflectively. The reflexive responses included a litany of shows and their titles, but the reflective responses included some hidden truths that came to light after closely analyzing the transcripts.

But, at the same time, as I write this dissertation from the comfort of my study in Taipei,

Taiwan, my heart is heavy knowing that London’s West End, Broadway theaters, and countless

125 other stages and venues around the globe have been dark since March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The ephemerality of theater means you must be there to see it, in a room full of strangers, breathing the same air as the performers and technicians, and now that is not safe in most parts of the world. As I write this—despite the vaccine being a quick shot in the arm—no one knows when theater will be back to “normal.” Of course, plagues have closed theaters before. Many Greek and Roman stages fell into disuse for centuries. In Shakespeare’s day, the Globe was closed for months on end between 1603 and 1613 for fear of spreading the bubonic plague. I have no doubt that theater will return, but I am anxious to know what new forms it will take. The old rules no longer apply, so this is an opportunity to write new rules and be more inclusive in our storytelling to help imagine a better world and a better theater environment. There are lessons from the past, including lessons from Peter Brook’s The Empty

Space and Jerzy Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theatre, although I think both of these visionaries do not leave enough room for technical theater to fully flourish.

Uncertainty for the future of theater, like the sword of Damocles, was always hanging over the interviews with the participants conducted throughout the fall of 2020. Joy lamented,

“Because of COVID, a lot has changed in a lot of places… I was going to have an internship with this company doing 1984, but now everything’s cancelled…We are not allowed to have a real audience.” Mike stated, “It’s just so much harder to be able to interact with people. Because you can’t physically meet them.” Mike had plans to get involved in technical theater in college, but as a freshman doing classes online, that is not a possibility now. Micah, now working in secondary education, noted that all his upcoming productions have been cancelled for the foreseeable future.

126 Although the coronavirus has left the ghost lights to guard the stage and has left the wings of most theaters even quieter than before, I hope this craft will come back to continue helping audiences and participants grow in their shared humanity and empathy. At the secondary level, being involved behind the scenes helps students become themselves and helps them learn to contribute to a complex and ever-changing world.

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149 Appendix A: Northeastern University IRB Approval

NOTIFICATION OF IRB ACTION APPROVED Date: September 29, 2020 IRB #: CPS20-08-12 Principal Investigator(s): Harvey Shapiro Kevin Barton Held Department: Doctor of Education College of Professional Studies Address: 42 Belvidere Northeastern University Title of Project: Quiet in the Wings: A Narrative Exploration of High School Stdents Eperiences ith Technical Theater

Participating Sites: Taipei American School permission in file Human Subject Research DHHS Review Category: Expedited #6, #7 Protection Mail Stop 560-177 Informed Consents: One (1) signed consent form 360 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 ANNUAL CONTINUING REVIEW OF THIS RESEARCH STUDY IS

617.373.7570 NOT REQUIRED fax 617.373.4595 Revised Common Rule 45CFR46.109(f)(1) research.northeastern.edu/hsrp/ Investigators Responsibilities 1. The informed consent form bearing the IRB approval stamp must be used when recruiting participants into the study. 2. The investigator must notify IRB immediately of unexpected adverse reactions, or new information that may alter our perception of the benefit-risk ratio. 3. Study procedures and files are subject to audit any time. 4. Any modifications of the protocol or the informed consent as the study progresses must be reviewed and approved by this committee prior to being instituted. 5. This approval applies to the protection of human subjects only. It does not apply to any other university approvals that may be necessary.

By NU IRB at 11:00 am, Sep 29, 2020

Northeastern University FWA #4630

150 Appendix B: Invitation to Participate in a Research Study

My name is Kevin B. Held. You may know me as the theater manager and technical director of Taipei American School, but I am also currently a doctoral student at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, USA. I am conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on understanding the value of technical theater from the perspective of high school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experience in their participation on the stage crew.

You are one of the former students whom I am inviting to participate in this study. If you volunteer to participate, you will be asked to participate in one online interview on Zoom web- meeting platform and a follow-up interview. The first interview will be approximately 60 minutes in length, and the follow-up will be about 15 minutes.

The questions asked will focus on your story of working behind the scenes. Your true name will not appear in my doctoral dissertation: you will be identified by a pseudonym. During the interview session, you do not have to answer any questions that you do not wish to answer. If you decide to participate, you are free to discontinue your participation at any time. There is no compensation for participating, but your story will help further research in this unexplored field.

After reading this email, if you wish to participate in my study or have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. I will contact you through email to arrange the interview time. All correspondence related to the dissertation should go through Northeastern University’s email system so that there is a paperwork trail for the process.

If you have any question, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]. If you have any concerns about the research, please contact the primary investigator Dr. Harvey Shapiro, [email protected]. This study has been reviewed and approved by Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (# CPS20-08-12) and it has also been reviewed and approved by the administration of Taipei American School.

Thank you for considering participating in this study. I look forward to hearing from you and listening to your story.

Kevin B. Held Candidate of Doctor of Education Northeastern University – College of Professional Studies

151 Appendix C: Consent Letter

Northeastern University, College of Professional Studies

Name of Investigators: Dr. Harvey Shapiro, Principal Investigator Kevin B. Held, Student Researcher

Title of Study: Quiet in the Wings: A Narrative Exploration of High School Students' Experience with Technical Theater

Informed Consent to Participate in a Research Study

We are inviting you to take part in a research study. This form will tell you about the study, but the student researcher will explain it to you first. You may ask this person any questions that you have. When you are ready to make a decision, you may tell the researcher if you want to participate or not. You do not have to participate if you do not want to. If you decide to participate, the researcher will ask you to sign this statement and will give you a copy to keep.

Key Information Your consent is being sought for participation in a research project and your participation is voluntary. The purpose of this research study is to to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high school students involved behind the scenes. To take part in the study, you must over 18 years of age and have been involved in the technical theater at Taipei American School for one or more productions during high school. In the study, we will conduct an online interview about your experience behind the scenes at TAS. It will take about 60 minutes or less to complete. There will also be a follow up interview, which will take about 15 minutes to complete. There is no foreseeable risk in participating in this study. Information you provide will help us learn more about how students make sense of their experience in technical theater while in high school.

Why am I being asked to take part in this research study? You are participating because you were involved in one or more productions in some technical capacity, either as a stage manager, costume crew member, construction crew member, or a member of the lighting crew.

Why is this research study being done? The purpose of this research study is to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experience in their participation on the stage crew.

What will I be asked to do? If you decide to take part in this study, we will interview you over the Zoom web-meeting platform to discuss your experience and hear your story about participating in technical theater.

152 About one week after the initial interview, we will email you a transcript of the interview discussion, and follow up with a short additional interview to verify the accuracy of the transcript, or clarify any information that may be unclear.

Where will this take place and how much of my time will it take? The interview will take place online over the Zoom web-meeting and will take about 60 minutes. The follow up interview will take about 15 minutes.

Where there be any risk or discomfort to me? There is no foreseeable risk or discomfort in participating in this study.

Will I benefit by being in this research? There will be no direct benefit to you for taking part in the study. However, the information learned from this study may help us gain an understanding of the high school technical theater experience, its educational value, and its impact on adolescent personal growth. By hearing and learning from the narrative voices of high school student technicians through their own stories, this research would give voice to their experience. This research could provide helpful perspectives to educators who work with high school technicians and could also lead to a more fully developed and articulated pedagogy of technical theater teaching and learning at the secondary level.

Who will see the information about me? Your part in this study will be confidential. The research team will be the only people who will see the information about you. No reports or publications will use information that can identify you or any other individual in any way as being part of this research. You will be identified by a pseudonym in the research.

We will record the audio and video of the online interview. The recordings will be transcribed by a professional transcription service. Any data you provide will be coded so people who are not the investigator cannot link any personal information to you. Any name or identifying information you give, interview transcriptions, hand-written notes and documents will be securely kept, and will also be destroyed after three years. The recording files will be stored on cloud storage with password protection and will be destroyed after three years.

In rare instances, authorized people may request to see research information about you and other people in this study. This is done only to be sure that the research is done properly. We would only permit people who are authorized by organizations such as the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board to see this information.

If I do not want to take part in the study, what choices do I have? This study is not required and there is no penalty for not participating.

What will happen if I suffer any harm from this research? No special arrangements will be made for compensation or for payment for treatment solely because of your participation in this research.

153 Can I stop my participation in this study? Your participation is greatly appreciated, but we acknowledge that the questions we are asking are personal in nature. You are free at any point to choose not to engage with or stop the study. You may skip any questions you do not wish answer. If at any time you experience a negative emotion from answering the questions, we will stop asking you questions.

Who can I contact if I have questions or problems? If you have any concern or questions about this research, you can contact:

Kevin B. Held Dr. Harvey Shapiro (Student Researcher) (Principal Investigator) Phone: +886 970 541 444 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Who can I contact about my rights as a participant? If you have any questions about your rights in this research, you may contact:

Nan C. Regina (Director, Human Subject Research Protection) Mail Stop: 560-177, 360 Huntington Avenue, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115. Phone: +1 (617) 373-4588; Email: [email protected]

You may call anonymously if you wish.

Will I be paid for my participation? No, there is no compensation for participation in this study.

Will it cost me anything to participate? There is no cost involved to participate in this study.

This study has been reviewed and approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (# CPS20-08-12).

I have read the above information. I asked questions if I had them, and my questions were answered. I hereby agree to take part in this study.

Signature of person agreeing to take part Date

Printed name of person above

Signature of person who explained the study to the Date participant above and obtained consent

154

Printed name of person above

I agree to be contacted for follow up or for future research studies

Contact Information (email or phone)

155 Appendix D: Interview Protocol

As you may know, I have worked at Taipei American School for the past decade serving as the theater manager and technical director. I am also a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University pursuing a doctorate in Education. As the final part of my doctoral program, I am required to conduct research and write a thesis paper.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of my dissertation research is to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high school students involved behind the scenes.

In order to gain this understanding, I will be conducting an interview today that should last approximately 60 minutes. Before we start, I want to remind you of a few important points:

1. This research project is completely confidential and you will only be identified by a pseudonym in the dissertation. There are no foreseeable risks for participating in this research. 2. Data that could reveal your identity will be stored in files accessible only to the researcher. 3. Your participation is completely voluntary and as such, you can choose to withdraw at any time. I may or may not ask to schedule a follow-up interview to dig deeper and check some of my conclusions. 4. I would like your permission to record this session. Doing so will ensure that I have an accurate reflection of our conversation today. [Pause to give participant time to respond]. Only the researcher and transcriptionist will have access to this data. After the interview is transcribed in about a week, I will give you back a copy of the transcript for your review. Do you have any questions before we begin? Can you please sign the consent form and send it to me by email?

DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS

What years did you attend TAS? What shows did you work on behind the scenes? What specifically was your role on the stage crew for those productions? Stage manager, spot op, running crew, wardrobe, etc. Did you take any classes in theater or in tech at TAS? If yes, what classes? FOLLOWUP: What do you remember best about those classes? This question is not connected to TAS: What was the first show you remember seeing live or stage? What was most memorable about the experience for you?

RESEARCH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

156 Do you recall what first prompted you to get involved in technical theater? FOLLOWUP PROMPT: Who were some of your friends involved in the performance, either onstage or off?

Looking back, what are your strongest memories of being part of the stage crew? (Weick’s Critical Incident) Why do these stand out for you? What do you remember about the social aspects of working on a show? FOLLOWUP PROMPT: Do you remember anything special from the bonding events or the cast parties? Do you remember any stories of working with performers? Musicians? Teachers?

Did being part of the crew help you identify with others? If yes, how so? FOLLOWUP PROMPT: Do you still keep in touch with anyone else from the cast or crew?

Think about a time when something unexpected happened while working on a show? How did you handle it? How did everything end up?

What are the stories or anecdotes from working on the production that you have shared with your family or friends?

What are the main things you learned from involvement behind the scenes? What were the main ways you learned as part of the crew?

What advice would you have for current students deciding whether or not to join the stage crew? What stories would you share with them, if given the chance?

Do you have any other stories of working behind the scenes that have come to mind that you want to share with me for this research? Either at TAS or in other theaters?

Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. If you think of anything else you want to tell me about being on the crew, feel free to contact me. If you have any questions about this research please let me know. I will be in contact with you as soon as I have the transcripts for you to review, probably in about a week, and follow up with you after that. Thank you again for your time and for opening up!

157 Appendix E: Wisconsin Theater Production Standards 2019

Artistic Process Performance Indicator for high school students CREATE: Students will generate, develop, and refine artistic Standard 1: Create work. Create a selection of documents and/or artifacts for three or more TD.Cr.13.h: Design design elements for a production. Devise required major production and management elements of a TD.Cr.14.h: Text/Script script that support a directorial concept. Create a timeline for executing production elements for a TD.Cr.15.h: Management Plan hypothetical or realized show. Collaborate as a creative team with specified roles to make artistic, TD.Cr.16.h: Collaboration interpretive choices in a devised or PERFORM: Students will analyze, develop, and convey meaning Standard 2: Perform through the presentation of artistic work. Execute a specific production role safely and within overall TD.P.16.h: Design Execution script/technical requirements for a school or public performance. Operate machinery/tools and/or control boards safely and as TD.P.17.h: Tools & Technology directed under supervision of a teacher/professional technician to Use support production elements of a theatre work. Assemble documents, renderings, and artifacts in a portfolio that TD.P.18.h: Design & Management includes design concept and working within the parameters of a Documentation production. Execute a production element in a classroom or public TD.P.19.h: Public Presentation performance. Exhibit developmentally appropriate stage etiquette for public performances; adhere to copyright laws, including rights, royalties, TD.P.20.h: Protocol and recording. RESPOND: Students will critically interpret intent and meaning in Standard 3: Respond order to evaluate artistic work. Critically analyze the effectiveness of design and technical TD.R.10.h: Analysis elements for a theatrical production. Assess personal participation in a production through constructive TD.R.11.h: Reflection critique using precise theatre vocabulary. Demonstrate developmentally appropriate audience etiquette at a TD.R.12.h: View Performance professional performance. CONNECT: Students will relate prior knowledge and personal Standard 4: Connect experience with theatre to cultural and historical contexts. TD.Cn.13.h: Cultural Social Compare and contrast how two or more cultural and/or historical Context traditions impact production, text, or script. Explain production choices based on the “given circumstances,” TD.Cn.14.h: Research environmental and situational conditions of a theatrical work. Explain what knowledge or training is required for theatre production careers, and how theatrical skills translate to other TD.Cn.15.h: Career Connections fields. Evaluate the historical and cultural relationships between theatre TD.Cn.16.h: Cross Disciplinary and other disciplines and how it can impact society.

158 Appendix F: Research Site Letter of Consent

159 Appendix G: NIH Certificate of Completion

160