Beyond the surface
Playwright helps area teachers delve further into lessons
This week, area teachers are learning techniques to show students how to look beyond the top layer of a happening, a piece of art or the written word, with handson instruction from award-winning playwright Mary Hall Surface.
Since 1997, Surface has been a teaching artist for the Kennedy Center, which aligns with Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council to present the Partners in Education program.
Surface’s presentation, Standing in a Character’s Shoes: Deeper Meaning Through Monologues, helps students develop a deeper understanding of the motions and motivations of literary characters and historical figures.
“Drama provides a lens for looking at the world that is rooted in our senses and rooted in our emotions,” Surface said. “And so it connects students to material in a way that sitting in a desk does not. It brings it to life, but it gives students the tools to literally step inside a character and experience what a character is feeling and give voice to that character, and perhaps, most importantly, as they’re giving voice to that character, they’re discovering their own voice and how they can communicate.
“It’s all of the activities involved— deep reading, deep looking, ques-
tioning, looking for the best questions rather than the right answer—the kinds of things that, to me, education should be about.”
Her award-winning plays have been presented by Seattle Children’s Theatre, Dallas Children’s Theatre, the Kennedy Center and the National Gallery for the Arts, to name a few, and several foreign countries. She’s earned one Helen Hayes Award, with eight nominations, and her work focuses primarily around children and family issues. Surface is also a teaching artist for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and she’s involved with Harvard’s Project Zero, a research institute based in the graduate school of education.
“I feel that my whole work as an artist, everything I do as an artist, is really about two things: It’s encouraging people of all ages to develop their empathetic muscles, to try to understand how somebody else feels, and to have a rich and deep appreciation for multiple perspectives,” Surface said. “By writing plays that present rich and diverse perspectives about the world; by teaching workshops that invite people to step inside of people that are very different from themselves by directing plays, producing festivals that are all about please open your eyes and experience something that’s perhaps outside of your immediate world. … Central to that is asking questions. I believe that it’s far more important to develop probing, rich questions about life and the world and ourselves than it is to have answers.”
Liberty-Eylau Middle School teachers Patrice Phillips and Vearnita Patton said they see how Surface’s techniques can create change in the minds and futures of their students.
“They have ownership for their learning,” said Phillips, who has been part of the group for six years. “They take complete ownership because it’s creative. They go out saying, ‘Man, I learned more about science, math, social studies, than I ever thought I would, because I actually put it on my feet, put it in my body, put it in my hands.’ So when it’s time to take those tests and assessments, it’s inside because they remember. … It’s no longer rote memorization. It’s no longer dates and names and numbers. It’s actually, ‘ We created this moving model, we created that monologue dealing with adding, subtracting and using numbers.’”
Patton said that power the students feel helps them gain control not only of how they learn, but also how they react in certain situations.
“What they’re doing when they’re creating, this is coming from them,” Patton said. She uses techniques from the institute, including those from the Actor’s Toolbox, which was presented last month, to help students learn to control their own behavior.
“It calms them,” she said. “It works for them when they’re not in control to get in control, because sometimes they know they’re out of control, but they just don’t have the method to control theirselves.”
Brain skills are the key results of the training, and Patton said she sees results in that area, as well. “A lot of what we’re doing does take them to that higher-order thinking. It starts them to going further and getting more where we want them to be.”
Surface will interact directly with students and teachers Thursday at C.K. Bender and Trice elementary schools and Friday at College Hill Middle School and Pleasant Grove Elementary.
“They’ll have a chance … to get an even deeper experience of implementing, and then, you hope they go away with not only the experience, but also with resources,” Surface said.
She believes the power of art is important in the world, especially in classrooms, where young minds are constantly creating new ideas.
“Artists help give form to what doesn’t already exist,” she said. “You think something’s impossible, but a work of art can help you see how it can become possible. It doesn’t exist before, and the same way a work of art comes into being and … creates something new, to me, that is a transformational act that helps me to continue to believe that the world can change.”