One of the most prominent underpinnings of our first year theatre class has been the question of the role of theatre as a social and artistic vehicle for communication—and through the various workshops in which we’ve partaken, the productions we’ve seen, and the roles we’ve played and directed, we’ve been exposed each time to perhaps a slightly different flavor of the theatre’s communal significance. From the very beginning, we’ve seen the important—and almost indefinable—role that the theatre, and the contributions of theatre students, plays on campus, and most were drawn in almost immediately, at first without a sense of direction or a point of reference; in the best of ways, we hurled ourselves into the first pieces of theatre we could digest: the mini IPs.
Little did we know that our collaborations with second years, as well as those with other students in theatre, and those not, those with extensive theatrical experience, and those with none, would forge the connections that would ultimately form later, more ambitious productions taken on by the theatre department as a whole. In reflecting on my experience directing a miniature IP this spring, I feel as if I have some sense of the incredible emotional connection that a director forms with his or her actors, as well as with the essence of the piece presented—it is through coordination of logistics and creativity that the emotional expression inherent to any piece of theatre is drawn; the IPs act as a prime example, early in the creative year at Pearson, of this spirit of emotional expression.
