Acting class or writing class? This semester students didn’t have to choose. Two Holy Cross professors came up with the innovative idea to show students just exactly how the two go hand-in-hand.
Leah Hager Cohen, the Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters, and Lynn Kremer, professor of theatre, teamed up through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CISS) to teach Acting & Writing this semester.
The class consists of 24 students, all of whom are called upon to both perform and write. The group meets once a week in The Pit in O’Kane Hall for two and a half hours. “We just cooked up the idea ourselves,” says Cohen. “We're exploring the ways that the craft of acting and the craft of writing draw on some similar techniques and principles.”
The class stems from Cohen’s longtime interest in theatre. “Leah initiated a meeting, and we decided to try an experiment,” says Kremer. “Her creative writing students would write letters and my scene study students would perform them.”
Kremer says they both used letters as a part of their teaching but not in this particular format. “We discovered a great amount of overlap in our work,” she shares. “Nudged along by enthusiastic students we decided to offer a semester class where all students would be required to write and perform.”
Christian Krenek ’12, a double major in English and theatre, says the class was a perfect fit for him. “A course that unified the two seemed like fun,” he says. “I’ve taken classes with Professor Kremer in the past, and greatly enjoyed them.”
Cohen says the goal of the class is for students to “realize the power, potential and nuance of their written language; and that by paying close attention to how writers use language to convey character, objective, mood, etc., the students have another angle from which to approach performance.”
According to Krenek the students are realizing just that. “Our creative writing assignments have ranged from describing the sensation of eating a favorite food to assuming a child’s perspective on scenes from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ ” he shares. “Our acting work is similarly varied: we’ve told stories, built entire scenes around individual props, and stood next to other students and spoken as their subconscious thoughts.”
He says another thing that adds to the experience is that the members of the class all have different backgrounds. “We have students from different class years, majors, and experience levels working together.”
An original class makes for original work. “One day, Professor Cohen gave us a deliberately vague prompt for a writing assignment: ‘Describe the first 10 minutes of class.’ She refused to give any information beyond that sentence, so all of the students had to fill in the blanks for themselves,” shares Krenek. “The results were amazing. They ranged from objective reports to deeply personal reflections to a wild fantasy story.”
Krenek says that “surprising” elements is one of the course’s best qualities. “By leaving assignments open-ended, Professor Kremer and Professor Cohen challenge us to come up with truly original work.”
Krenek’s future plans include becoming a college professor, specifically in the field of dramaturgy, which includes researching plays, working with professional companies to develop productions, and teaching theatre. “This course has bolstered my interest in that field — many of the graduate schools I have looked into train dramaturgies by having them work with playwrights, just as I am doing in Acting and Writing!”
Heidi Grek '12, an English major and German minor with a concentration in creative writing, says her favorite thing about the class is watching texts come alive through acting. “There are good writers and actors in the class,” she explains. “It's really neat to watch one student act out another’s piece of writing.”
She says she also enjoys the warm-up exercises at the beginning of class to “loosen up.” “Having never taken a theatre class, these exercises were a new experience for me,” she shares. “We jump and shake around and do different things with our voices.”
Grek hopes to get her M.F.A. in writing and has applied for a Fulbright grant to teach English in Germany next year.
Cohen and Kremer hope to be able to offer this type of collaboration again in the future. “Teaching with Leah has been such a joy,” says Kremer. “I am learning as much as the students.”
Related Information
Pencils Down, Curtains Up! Faculty Create Script for Innovative Collaboration Across Disciplines
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