PANEL PRESENTATION: DISTANCE COLLABORATIONS
Friday, March 27, 1998, 1:30-2:45 p.m.

SPEAKERS: BEVERLY EMMONS, Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Institute; ROSE CORTICO, Production Director of TheatreLink; and DAVID SHOOKHOFF, Director of Education, Manhattan Theatre Club. Moderated by Madeleine Holzer, Director Arts in Education Program NYSCA By: Linda Earle

Lincoln Center Institute and Manhattan Theatre Club distance learning programs represent two distinct models in response to similar goals and concerns: both institutions were interested in interactivity and collaborations among students, teachers, and artists that conveyed the dynamics of artistic process. Both programs seek to serve non-traditional audiences and bridge “psychological as well as physical barriers” to their interaction with cultural institutions.

The Lincoln Center Institute (the arts education arm of Lincoln Center) serves both K-12 and higher educational institutions. Emmons described a four-year pilot program in distance learning that was established in 1992 in collaboration with NYNEX. The program equipped a classroom in each of the collaborating schools with TV monitors and interactive video and audio equipment, and faxes that allowed students a live interface with artists and with each other. Up to three schools could participate in the live sessions, and Emmons showed several examples of collaborations, including a workshop on dance with Pilobolus wherein the company both taught and received direction from students ---executing movement demonstrated by the kids to music selected by them. In another example, students faxed lyrics based on their experience to a professional blues singer who performed them. Emmons reported that student feedback was extremely positive – not only about collaboration with artists but about the opportunity to work with students from different backgrounds from whom they had previously felt separated, both socially and geographically.

The Manhattan Theatre Club program relies on interactive computer technology, rather than video. MTC’s basic educational program is structured around attendance at student matinee performances, preceded by intensive preparation by classroom teachers and teaching artists. TheatreLink was developed with the sponsorship of Bell Atlantic, to reach students in more isolated areas that could not attend the theatre. The program currently links three high schools: one in West Virginia, one in Kentucky and the third in New York City. Shookhoff reported that the program’s design keeps MTC’s production process at the center and stresses humanistic group-oriented education. The program is one semester long, requiring participation in 32 sessions. The Web site that links the schools has several different components, including bulletin boards, chat areas, resources, e-mail boxes for each student, a “how to” area, and a space restricted to use by teachers and staff members so that they can plan and discuss projects. Shookhoff stressed that most of the work happens in the classroom and is shared and commented on in the Web site.

During the question and answer period, speakers agreed that for both collaborative programs, educational and cultural partners had to negotiate carefully with corporate sponsors in order to preserve the educational and artistic integrity of the program; they warned against the tendency to “abdicate the design” of distance programs to sponsors. They also agreed on a practical problem: the rigidity of most schools’ bell schedules. A member of the audience observed that while different in form, both models represented a shift in thinking about aesthetic education away from the desire to create “teacher-proof “ programs in the 1970’s, and toward an integration of the classroom teacher.

Though distance learning represents a relatively small proportion of Manhattan Theatre Club’s education program, Shookhoff reported that it is growing. Having completed a successful pilot, Lincoln Center also intends to establish a permanent program.