Signature pedagogy in theatre arts

What is critique?

Critique, very simply, is the process of giving feedback (first oral and sometimes written) to a performer immediately after the performance ends. It is the basic way that acting, voice, and movement skills are taught in the academy and elsewhere. In the undergraduate context, critique is part of actor training, and like that training, it is scaffolded from the basic skills classes to those that are more targeted, rigorous, and advanced. In the course of an academic career, students will take multiple classes and their maturation will be measured, in part, based on critiques of their work—in the classroom, in the rehearsal hall, in production, and in talent reviews. These critiques are usually first done by faculty, then by more senior students, and then by peers. Depending on the students’ level and the type of course, the critique will vary, but as they mature in their learning and development of their craft, the critique process is more frequent, more rigorous, more specific, and performed by a broader group of instructors, peers, and finally professionals.

I practice critique as a methodology of questioning, listening, and providing clear reasons for acting choices. As a student, I was often asked to prepare a monologue or scene, or to take on a specific task, with absolutely no understanding of why I was doing it or what I was working toward. That kind of situation, even when something wonderful happens, makes it difficult to capture as a learning experience. As in any other field, instructors should be clear with performers about the goals of the assignment. I usually start a critique by asking students the following questions:

What were you working on? What were your personal goals in this piece?

I want them to describe their feelings about their performance, but I want them to start by reminding themselves and the class what they were working toward and how effectively they think they met those goals. After this self-reflection and self-assessment, we can then enter into a far better discussion, with many questions and responses, because we know what the student was attempting. Though I may challenge those goals and work with students to align them to the assignment, by starting with what students were trying to do, I can help them determine if their personal goals were met in the performance itself.

In a basic acting class, students will get an overview of theory, craft, vocabulary, and methodology. Exercises will be general, with broad goals in place. In every case, the first and most serious critique is produced by the instructor with only some feedback from the student-actors’ peers. But critique becomes more focused as the students advance in their studies in classes, and as one would expect, those courses will demand the honing of more specific skills. An advanced class in 19th-century acting styles, for instance, will have a very clear and somewhat more sophisticated set of criteria, with expectations that students come to the class having a basic foundation and having mastered a certain level of expertise with basic acting skills. As students advance, their integration and understanding of critique is expected to mature. In short, while the framework and the way critique is handled may vary widely from instructor to instructor, as students mature in their educations, the stakes get higher, the critiques get more specific, and students are expected to be more insightful and use the language of the discipline more and more clearly as they assimilate critique and learn to critique themselves and their peers.

The feedback loop of performance and critique

Theatre performance is the telling of stories typically taken from a written, two-dimensional text in which a world has been developed with varying degrees of detail and inhabited by characters who must become three-dimensional on the stage. The artist must choose to tell that story as authentically and truthfully as possible, within a collaboratively developed framework. Actor training uses critique to help students learn to deploy the theory and practical skills they are learning and to make choices that are clear and justifiable. Performance functions through empathy: we hope to teach students to understand human behavior and to link their skills, analyses, emotional responses, and experiences to improve their performance. Performance requires first analyzing a text, and researching and understanding its world. All choices need to be rooted in the text and an understanding of the author’s intent, the play’s themes, and the multiple social, historical, and stylistic aspects that influence the text. Actors then use their bodies, voices, experience, understanding, and imagination to capture the essence of a character and enact the world of the play—within the context of the visual representation of that world through scenery, lighting, costumes, sound, and/or music.

Performance and critique represent a fluid and collaborative process. Students develop research skills in class and then apply them in performance, after which they are given feedback from peers, teachers, and/or professionals, and then they rework their performance in response to the critique. Through this feedback loop, students develop the skills to make strong choices, to justify those choices, and to begin to find the process that will work for them as professional artists. They learn to evaluate the choices of others in productive ways that can then be applied to their own work. They also learn to develop their own aesthetic, as they learn about themselves and their own responses to the work and the world.

In effective critique, the criteria for evaluation must be clear and be used as a reference point by all. Controlling the conversation and keeping it focused on those criteria is the job of the instructor. For example, when evaluating a monologue in a voice class, all critique should agree in the relatively straight forward assessment of pitch and breath control. This is not to say, however, that critique is ever strictly objective or that everything an actor does can be codified and measured. Variation of opinion comes in considering how these choices impact believability. Most performances will produce conflicting responses from evaluators, but even as others disagree, critique opens discussion. The great richness in that diversity of opinion makes for important learning opportunities. Additionally, when a performance may not be particularly effective, the actor may have shown great improvement in the use of a particular tool or skill. When instructors acknowledge the student’s growth and hard work, this creates a respectful atmosphere for the student to hear the critique and grow further.

Through critique, the student artist grows and improves, both through performance and process. A student might, for example, work on the monologue in Macbeth that begins, “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” Shakespeare provides information in that speech about what is happening and how Macbeth makes the decision to commit murder, but the actor must analyze these passages and the play as a whole to make choices about how to “play” the speech. Right at the beginning, there are choices to make in response to an interpretive problem: does Macbeth really see a dagger? Is this a dagger of/in the mind only? What does the character see and believe in that moment of the text? What does the character know, and when does he know it? After the performance, the instructor asks what motivated the student’s choices. Making them transparent at the beginning of the critique leads to a rich discussion with the class about how the actor presents the moment. If the student actor elected to see this imaginary dagger as real, then discussion might center around how believable that precise performance was and what tools the actor could use to bring more truth and immediacy to that moment. After the specific choices are critiqued, the student reviews them outside of class and responds with new choices. After rehearsing the revised piece, the student brings it back to class with more specificity, more depth, and more understanding—for more critique.

The goal is to use professional tools to choose what is appropriate and believable in the context of any interpretation. Student artists must find solutions to interpretive problems immersively, trying and sometimes failing, evaluating the possibilities, “trying on” different approaches, and choosing what both suits their own understanding and serves the play. Critique pushes actors to delve deeper, to be as specific in the moment as possible, and to reflect on and explore their choices and reinforce or expand on them.

The many faces of critique

In an acting class, common texts teach the relationship between play analysis and the development of a character. The class builds a common understanding of the play, using critique to evaluate each individual’s performance in the context of class discussion, of the play itself, and of the practical techniques the assignment explores. All students, therefore, enter the critique from a similar vantage point: the context and the basis for understanding where the actor’s choices began and can watch the process unfold. Particularly at an introductory level, this common ground can create a rich peer assessment of student performances. In another assignment later in the semester, a student may bring in a monologue or scene that others are not familiar with and then have to develop ways of describing his or her goals without this common context or this process. The role of the instructor in leading that evaluation may change over these two examples. In the first case, there is a lot of support from everyone participating in the process; the second more effectively models the professional situation in which actors have to understand, justify, and critique themselves. Eventually, this kind of scaffolded approach to critique over time helps students understand how they can develop their own process without the support of external critique as they move from the classroom to the profession. They have critiqued others, have been critiqued, and can now (hopefully) provide that balanced assessment of their own work as they move forward.

Critique also occurs when a student meets individually with a faculty mentor to help polish a piece of work. Because it is private and allows for the most bold, focused, and straightforward critique, such conversations can be rich. The relationship is collaborative and the goal is clear: to work the piece to a finished point. Students are often more comfortable in these settings, even if the assessment is harsher and more intimidating at first, because they have the full attention of the coach and hopefully understand that this is helping to prepare them for that specific goal. Performance is the culmination of all of this work.

Bringing in well-respected professionals is another effective practice in critique. For example, our program holds yearly “Talent Reviews” during which classes are suspended for a day and professional designers, technicians, casting directors, directors, and actors evaluate the students. Faculty sit with the professionals and observe, which allows us to help students process the feedback they receive. Students come in individually, introduce themselves, present their resumes, and produce their work to be critiqued by the professional artists. They are evaluated on their presentation of self (including dress and demeanor) and their performance pieces. They receive a brief written critique as well. The idea is to mirror, as much as possible, the audition and interview process that students will encounter when they enter the professional world. This is tremendously beneficial to students. They may not like what they hear, but the fact that professionals are giving them honest feedback really helps prepare them and gives them some insight into how they present themselves and their work to strangers. They have been preparing for professional life, and these sessions offer the opportunity to experience it in the safety of a learning process.

This graduated process of being critiqued in class, through production work, in individual coaching sessions, and in professional reviews allows students to develop their skills, their presentation, their maturity, and their ability to receive and learn from feedback. Outside of class, then, critique is not a separate or formal part of the process but instead happens throughout the work of putting the show together. Actors focus on their individual work, of course, but more importantly on the relationship of their characters to the whole story. They strive to understand where they fit and how they serve the play. A director will give individual and collective feedback to the cast during and following rehearsal. Actors learn to discriminate what is directed at them and what is part of their collective responsibility. Critique thus shifts from individual contribution to collective problem-solving, from being solely about the actors to fitting into a larger whole.

Whereas the critique during production provided the formative feedback that allows for development and correction, critique also occurs in performance—summative feedback supplied by an audience. Reviewers, friends, family, and strangers laugh, clap, gasp, hold their breath, even cry, and sometimes do the unexpected. Moreover, this feedback changes with the audience and the context. Learning from critique can help students prepare for this larger response to their performance. Instructors and students may attend theatrical events to prepare students for this level of evaluation and to frame it as further critique, not merely something that seems to be praise or feels like an attack.

Theatre is collaborative by nature. While competition is often intense and brutal, professional preparation should instill in students a way of working and being in that world that allows discussion of individual and collective responsibility and creates a positive collaborative process. The best theatre training creates a community of learners, with free expression of ideas and the freedom to take risks, experiment, and then engage in response to that expression. The tone of critique is thus crucial to the learning process. Students learn, in part, by modeling their instructors and by paying attention to how they are being critiqued. If students are given aggressive, unconstructive, unfocused critique, this is what students will mimic. Critique needs to be honest and direct, with criteria that are clear, transparent, and understood by all. The tone must be appropriate to the task, the student, and the purpose of the critique. In the early years of an undergraduate’s career, that can be done best by an instructor who has built trust and respect and will provide necessary support or clarification following the critique. A sound critique can allow students to take risks, fail, and be bold and make stronger, clearer choices. It encourages creativity, imagination, and a willingness to learn and even fail. A good instructor creates a community in the classroom and opens conversation in a supportive and clear way, structuring the critique so that the student actor isn’t overwhelmed by negative criticism, but is rather led through a discussion of honest critique that can be heard and processed without the student feeling personally attacked or shamed. Even if the content of the feedback is negative, students must understand and accept it, which requires careful attention to tone in a context of community and mutual respect. If the instructor is modeling rigorous and constructive critique of individual work, not only may students accept feedback better, they may come to understand the impact of their words and behavior in critiquing peers. Balancing rigorous critical responses in a nurturing environment with a focus on helpful correction allows student to learn appropriate peer critiquing skills.

Critique’s development of professional sensibilities

In addition to serving as a feedback loop for the actor’s development of performance, critique is used as evaluation using subjective and objective criteria. While all creative work is personal, performance is intensely so. Actors are not only interpreting characters; they are embodying them with their bodies, their voices, their imaginations, and their experiences. Being critiqued in the professional world and in most pre-professional programs involves the assessment of that embodiment and its effectiveness and, more personally, the actors’ use of body and voice. To prepare for this level of evaluation, students must learn to see their bodies from a distance, dispassionately.

Critique requires student actors to develop the abilities to make sense of and use the assessment, and to see with new eyes through a sense of objectivity. They must learn to form a thick enough skin to listen, evaluate the feedback, use what is helpful, and simply let some things go. Without this ability, students may hear critique negatively and painfully, even to the point of destroying the artist’s ego, despite the critique’s intention of merely improving the performance. A former student who recently earned an MFA in theatre pedagogy articulates this relationship to critique: “The most beautiful gift we can hope to offer our students is the ability to be O.K. with getting something wrong, and being told that they indeed got something wrong” (Baker, 2014, personal communication). Another former student acknowledged that in the beginning “it was extremely difficult for me to take criticism and even harder for me to understand how to critique someone else.” Over time, though, this student also learned to understand and use the practice differently:

As I began critiquing others in classroom settings I began to understand that most critiques come out of a place of kindness, of wanting the artist to succeed, rather than a place of cruelty or desire for the artist’s failure. (Cotton, 2014, personal communication)

Critique also develops the artist’s “authority,” the authorship of performance that builds on the literary analysis of a text in the context of presentation for a contemporary audience, creating new meaning through this analysis and the actor’s body, voice, and imagination. As the work is “completed” (if we can ever say that is true of a performance), actors take ownership of their work, understanding it as an iterative process that comes from their choices. Growing into this sense of ownership and authority for their work extends to their critique of others as well. Young actors as critique-givers must learn to be responsible in their subjective response to peers, recalling Shulman’s (2005) idea that signature pedagogies require students to “act with integrity” (p. 52).

With multiple experiences with critique, being assessed and assessing the work of others in both formal and informal ways, students begin to develop more than the skills of the professional: they are also socialized into its habits of mind. Theatre is all about understanding human behavior and the world through different situations and multiple viewpoints. First, students begin to understand the world of the profession and start to imagine where—and if—they see themselves entering and succeeding in that world. They become more aware of themselves as artists and come to understand what it means to be an actor and practitioner. They also begin to develop their own aesthetic, formulating their future goals, the kind of work that inspires them, the way that they feel comfortable working, and what they value in their area of growing expertise. As theatre connects people’s stories to larger social, historical, and cultural issues, student actors also become aware of themselves as individuals in a complicated world—who they are and what is important to them. Successful actors learn to position themselves in their art as people responsible for living truthfully within imaginary circumstances, which requires understanding more than the text: it requires understanding the self. As theatre theorist and practitioner August Boal (1992) said, “This is theatre—the art of looking at ourselves” (p. 15). Ultimately, this self-examination through critique can lead to self-realization as both an artist and a human being.

Shulman (2005) notes that signature pedagogies

implicitly define what counts as knowledge in a field and how things become known. They define how knowledge is analyzed, criticized, accepted, or discarded. They define the functions of expertise in a field, the locus of authority, and the privileges of rank and standing. (p. 54)

When done well, critique socializes students in the questions and conversations of the discipline. It takes practice and time, moving students from developing proficiency to practicing mastery. While signature pedagogies instill disciplinary values and ways of thinking, in theatre we address ways of being as much as ways of thinking. Critique allows students to move far beyond the simple application of content knowledge and development of skills. Critique educates whole persons and helps them understand that all their experience, education, and exploration of the real world will be engaged in their work. Theatre’s signature pedagogy challenges who artists are, how they will enter into practice and present themselves, and who they are going to be in a community of practitioners.