Don’t just sit there
“I want theater to look like this,” said Diane Paulus, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), gesturing dramatically at a PowerPoint slide that looks like it was taken in a packed 1970s nightclub, glitter ball and all. The slide, however, shows the A.R.T. production of “The Donkey Show,” which set Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in a disco and had audience members standing up and dancing alongside actors. The production represents Paulus’ vision of theater that actively engages the audience, tearing down the invisible wall between actors and attendees. Likewise, many schools are turning to new forms of education that break the mold of static lectures and passive listeners. Examples of this kind of “active learning,” matched with new classroom technologies and the evolving role of the instructor, were highlighted on Friday (Feb. 11), in the first of a series of campuswide dialogues on teaching and learning called “Conversations@FAS: Redefining Teaching...