ITI Director-General on the Avant-garde and Theatre Education
2014-07-11
"What is the position of the institution that educates their students in the different disciplines of the performance arts? Can they teach avant-garde? Can they teach innovation? "
Thus spoke Tobias Biancone, director-general of International Theatre Institute (ITI) at the opening ceremony of the 20th Conference of Performance Studies International (PSi 20) held in Shanghai Theatre Academy on the evening of July 4. Some 500 people, theatre scholars, teachers and artists from dozens of countries, heard these questions answered right away,
"I think you agree with me: No, they cannot teach it, neither avant-garde nor innovation. This is a creative aspect in someone's life that has its roots in the mind of an individual student, of an individual.What can an institution can do is lead a person to experiment, to improvise and to try out how his or her own ideas can be expressed."
The director-general spoke of the avant-garde and theatre education because organizers of PSi 20 have called upon participants to work on the dynamics of "the Avant-garde, Tradition and Community" (ATC). Having noticed how enthusiastic young Chinese college students can be about Karoake during his previous visits to China, he wondered if their teachers could expose them to a performance and watch their reactions, or "even ask the Karaoke enthusiasts to create a play together with the students."
The students may also be asked to create a poem of their own, of course, added Mr. Biancone, himself a poet as well. The important thing for the educators to do is to teach the students "inclined to create," to quote the theatre enthusiast from Switzerland supervising ITI since 2008, when the author first got to know him and ITI at Theatre of Nationals Festival held in Nanjing. The students' creation may or may not be good, and their teacher is no judge of its avant-gardism, he elaborated, "If it is really avant-garde history will tell."
Given the burgeoning theatre education in China, which was partly showcased at PSi 20 by the performance series of Confucius Disciples presented by Chinese and Bulgarian students at all levels, the idea of theatre education, or art education in general, as essentially an aesthetic education integral for a creative and innovative life for the individual, is tellingly and urgently informative for educators in all disciplines. [imgid=0]
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