Sneak Peek: Thalia Goldstein Podcast
Thalia Goldstein: We saw about 20% of the (theater) class time across all of the different school districts is being spent in improvisation where the students have to create material in the moment. They don't have a script, they might have a specific prompt, but nothing sort of is known ahead of time. So, they have to go ahead and create things while they're in that moment and that really is the brainstorming part of the creative process and when you're brainstorming, there's lots of research out there on the creative process that says you don't want to limit yourself, right? You don't want to throw away an idea just because you think it might not be the best idea yet. You want to take all the ideas you can possibly have in the moment and then sort of sift and sort through them after you've gone through that brainstorming process. So, in the improvisation moments in those classrooms, students are encouraged to trust themselves, right? To be playful, to try things out and if something doesn't work, try something new and if something doesn't work, try something new and this really applies to every kind of creative process across different fields, where you have to just keep brainstorming, trying new things, testing them out, and keep going until something really clicks. So, the theater space really invites that sort of trial and error pretty much on every different kind of activity that the students could be presented with.