NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Welcome to the new home for ArtsPraxis!
ArtsPraxis was founded in 2003 by Philip Taylor following the NYU Forum on Arts Assessment as a peer-reviewed journal that would provide publication opportunities for selected papers from that conference and others which were submitted for review that responded to similar questions as those explored at that event. The genesis of the journal was informed by the results of my literature review which identified over 60 journals in the arts disciplines but few which facilitated dialogue across and between the arts disciplines. The NYU Forum on Assessment in Arts Education brought together over 130 participants committed to discourse among arts educators and the inaugural issue of ArtsPraxis was published in 2004. Thereafter, Christina Marín edited a second edition in 2010 following the 2005 Forum on Ethnotheatre and Theatre for Social Justice. Subsequently, I became the editor in 2016 and since then, we have published six issues.
I write this as I commence the third month of the stay home order in the New York City region due to COVID-19. We understand that a significant social shift is developing. For educators, distance learning has become our primary mode of instruction. For theatre artists, sharing of work is either done digitally or not at all. Theatres are closed; in-person rehearsals are verboten. And yet, we persist. The need for community engaged theatre and school-based arts programs remains as vital as ever. To that end, I am excited to remain active in the pursuit of sharing research and practice with artists and educators—and look forward to continuing this work through the rest of the year.
Our contributions in this issue come from artists and educators whose praxis focuses largely on creating and devising theatre with young people. The first article is from Gina L. Grandi. Upon winning the AATE Distinguished Dissertation honor in 2019, I listened to her give a talk about her devised theatre work with girls of color in New York City. As I am strongly supportive of promoting this culturally relevant drama pedagogy, I invited Gina to write an article for this publication. In the second article, Anna Glarin explores her work creating theatre with young people in the UK. Like Gina, Anna’s writing highlights the necessity to center student voice in the theatre they create, while navigating power dynamics and ethical considerations. Finally, Nkululeko Sibanda, a practitioner based in South Africa, interrogates the aesthetics of applied theatre projects.
From the time government agencies and the press reported the emergence of a novel coronavirus in late 2019, we have collectively faced the need to reconsider the way we congregate, communicate, and educate across the world. Artists and educators have been called upon to reinvent their practice seemingly overnight. While we struggle to balance our personal health and wellness, ArtsPraxis invites you to share your scholarship, practice, and praxis in Volume 7, Issue 2a. As we’ve asked before, we welcome teachers, drama therapists, applied theatre practitioners, theatre-makers, performance artists, and scholars to offer vocabularies, ideas, strategies, practices, measures, and outcomes that respond to Educational Theatre in the Time of COVID-19.
Concurrently, as of this writing, we find ourselves about ten days into international protests following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Protestors the world over have made specific calls to action: acknowledge that black lives matter, educate yourself about social and racial injustice, and change the legal system that allows these heinous acts to go unpunished. In thinking through how we in the field of educational theatre can proactively address these needs, I reminded myself that there are many artists and educators who are already deeply engaged in this work. And while scholarship and practice around racial and social justice permeate so much of what we do, now would be a good time to document current examples of best practices, organize them, and share them. As such, we will have a companion issue of ArtsPraxis—this one, Volume 7, Issue 2b. Again, we welcome teachers, drama therapists, applied theatre practitioners, theatre-makers, performance artists, and scholars to offer vocabularies, ideas, strategies, practices, measures, and outcomes that respond to Social Justice Practices for Educational Theatre.
These companion issues will publish later in 2020. Thereafter, look to the Program in Educational Theatre at NYU for the 2021 Forum on Humanities and the Arts, and the Verbatim Performance Lab. ArtsPraxis will return to general topics in educational theatre for early 2021.
Jones, J. P. (2020). Editorial: No end and no beginning. ArtsPraxis, 7 (1), i-v
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Stay Woke
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: On Reimagining
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: E Pluribus Unum
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Collective Visioning
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Get Woke
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Radical Imagining
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Look for the Helpers
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Communing with the Ancestors
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: Into the Traumaverse
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: I Can't Breathe
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: No End and No Beginning
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: On Mindfulness
Jonathan P. Jones - Editorial: A New Colossus
Jonathan P. Jones, PhD is a graduate from the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University, where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. He conducted his doctoral field research in fall 2013 and in spring of 2014 he completed his dissertation, Drama Integration: Training Teachers to Use Process Drama in English Language Arts, Social Studies, and World Languages. He received an additional M.A. in English at National University and his B.A. in Liberal Arts from the NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Jonathan is certified to teach English 6-12 in the state of California, where he taught Theatre and English for five years at North Hollywood High School and was honored with The Inspirational Educator Award by Universal Studios in 2006. Currently, Jonathan is an administrator, faculty member, coordinator of doctoral studies, and student-teaching supervisor at NYU Steinhardt.
Jonathan has conducted drama workshops in and around New York City, London, and Los Angeles in schools and prisons. As a performer, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, Town Hall, The Green Space, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, The Southbank Centre in London UK, and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. He co-produced a staged-reading of a new musical, The Throwbacks, at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2013.
Jonathan’s directing credits include Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Elsewhere in Elsinore, Dorothy Rides the Rainbow, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bye Bye Birdie, The Laramie Project, Grease, Little Shop of Horrors, and West Side Story. Assistant directing includes Woyzeck and The Crucible. As a performer, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, Town Hall, The Green Space, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, The Southbank Centre in London UK, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin, and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Production credits include co-producing a staged-reading of a new musical, The Throwbacks, at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and serving as assistant production manager and occasionally as stage director for the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus since 2014, most recently directing Quiet No More: A Celebration of Stonewall at Carnegie Hall for World Pride, 2019.
At NYU, his courses have included Theory of Creative Drama, Methods of Conducting Creative Drama, American Musical Theatre: Background and Analysis, Seminar and Field Experience in Teaching Elementary Drama, Drama across the Curriculum and Beyond, Assessment of Student Work in Drama, World Drama, Development of Theatre and Drama I, Acting: Scene Study, Seminar and Field Experience in Teaching Secondary Drama, Directing Youth Theatre, Dramatic Activities in the Secondary Drama Classroom, Shakespeare’s Theatre I, and Devising Educational Drama Programs and Curricula. Early in his placement at NYU, Jonathan served as teaching assistant for American Musical Theatre: Background and Analysis, Seminar in Elementary Student Teaching, Theatre of Brecht and Beckett, and Theatre of Eugene O'Neill and worked as a course tutor and administrator for the study abroad program in London for three summers. He has supervised over 50 students in their student teaching placements in elementary and secondary schools in the New York City Area. Prior to becoming a teacher, Jonathan was an applicant services representative at NYU in the Graduate School of Arts and Science Enrollment Services Office for five years.
Recent publications include Paradigms and Possibilities: A Festschrift in Honor of Philip Taylor (2019) and Education at Roundabout: It’s about Turning Classrooms into Theatres and the Theatre into a Classroom (with Jennifer DiBella and Mitch Mattson) in Education and Theatres: Beyond the Four Walls (edited by Michael Finneran and Michael Anderson; 2019).
In addition to his responsibilities at NYU, Jonathan currently teaches Fundamentals of Speech, Introduction to Theatre, and Theatre History at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
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Cover image from NYU’s Program in Educational Theatre production of The Triangle Project directed in 2011 by Dr. Nan Smithner.
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