The Teacher-Artist Journey: A Conversation with Rosamund Small

Christine Jackson and Rosamund Small

Christine sits down with Rosamund to have a conversation about the joys and challenges of navigating a career as both a theatre artist and an educator.  They revisit key learnings from pre-service teacher training and discuss some of the shared territory and unique differences between teaching and performing. 

Christine:   Hello  Rosamund. Thank you so much for being here. This is our first conversation beyond the walls of OISE, where I was your drama instructor, and it's so nice to reconnect.  I am really looking forward to having this conversation with you because the story of your career is unique and  interesting and I want to learn more about it. And I want to invite our Provocations community of teachers and artists and artist educators to learn about you and your work as well. Thanks for making the time.

Rosamund:  I was so immediately jazzed and extremely flattered to hear from you.

Christine:  Wonderful!  I'd like to start by  inviting you to say a little bit about your work as a playwright, theatre artist, creator. What's that like for you? What do you love about it? What's challenging? Why do you make this kind of work? 

Rosamund:  I've always made things and performed things and written things. My parents encouraged me to be creative. Everything from playing games to reading and the theatre. As I became a teenager, they became more and more central to my identity, and I really saw myself embarking on becoming someone who made creative things. And I had a really wonderful post secondary experience in the drama classroom. I attended Rosedale Heights, which has always had a really strong drama program. And I think what stands out to me from that experience was that the classroom was rigorous and fun and safe, and I made a lot of friendships there. And that's something I really track through all of my experiences and all of my choices in my life. I really valued collaboration and friendship, and I met people in that drama classroom at age 15 or 16, who remain important people in my life. So I think it's very bound to a social experience for me.

Christine:   Well, that's such a theme among drama students, even those students who don't pursue theatre, but find other life pathways. But those relationships that we form in a drama space can be qualitatively different or deeper, or so it seems, because I hear it so often.  And it's so exciting that you have found a way to continue to make work while also becoming a teacher. I am curious to know -  what led you to that decision to come to the Master of Teaching program at OISE?

Rosamund:  I was recognizing, maybe for the first time, that script writing was really important to me, but I was recognizing that I felt isolated writing all the time.  I think I just felt there was something, something missing.  And professionally… I felt a bit on a treadmill.  I wanted to expand. And I had already been teaching adults, I'd been teaching workshops. And I had gone and visited a few high schools and had a few experiences with younger people in drama classrooms. And I felt like, oh, there's something. There's something in my work that isn't just the script, that’s important to me.  I felt so thrilled to facilitate other people's creativity. It felt so fulfilling and challenging, and I felt incredibly present. And I felt like that was creating rich memories for me. [...] I was thinking about what I wanted to do with the next decade. And I thought, Oh, I don't want it to fly by. I want it to be meaningful and different every day. And I thought, well, that that might be something that a learning space would be able to find for me. And I felt also a desire to grow, and that's very connected to teaching, right? Like this, desire to grow and see other people grow,

Christine:  The life long connection between teaching and learning seems to be a prevalent theme in the lives of teachers and artists. That was such a beautiful description, Rosamund, of the joy and thrill that you felt and were further seeking in facilitating creative learning for others. I can identify with that. And I imagine that all arts teachers can, so I have to ask you, was it the right decision for you? 

Rosamund:  Definitely. Though, I think you can see from my very scrambled resume that it wasn't a binary.  It felt momentarily a binary decision, and that I would leave everything behind and become this new person who only did teaching. And I think that can be an amazing choice for some people, but I have found that it's played out in a less binary way.  I take education very seriously, and I also feel very attached to my artist identity, and finding ways to continue that. So it's been a really interesting and more gray area change in my life than I anticipated. And I find it very mutually fulfilling.  I think if I didn't pursue some artistic practice, then I would find the education space frustrating in some way. And I think if I didn't have the education space, I would find the artistic space frustrating in some way. 

Christine:  I love that you have found a way to navigate those two paths and bring them together in your life. I’d like to hear a little bit about your experience at OISE. You were a student in my drama class. We spent 72 hours together as a small community that year, co-learning, having shared creative experiences, really thinking and experiencing the kinds of learning that we aspire to bring into the classroom. And I just wonder if there were any takeaways from that experience that have kind of bled into your practice as an artist and or as a teacher.

Rosamund:  I think the biggest takeaway, honestly, is almost metacognitively, which is, I remember the class so viscerally, I remember so many moments and experiences from it, and I think that comes down to it being basically embodied.  Like, we did things. We got up every day and we did things, made scenes and played games. I remember so many moments like, you know, someone did object theatre, someone did puppetry, someone did all these different skill sets and things, and it's almost like they live in my body. It's like they don't just live in my brain or in my notes. It's like I remember how to do it in my gut, all of that. And I think that in comparison to being told something or explained something, is so valuable. 

And then the community spirit and the sense that everyone had contributions to make. I remember the social dynamics of the space and thinking, Oh, that's what you need to do. You need to make a space where everyone can contribute and feel seen and heard [...]. 

And I also think you did a great job of giving us a lot of dilemmas to think about. Because I think teaching is often a series of dilemmas. And you can't leave a course with all the answers. You've just got to leave with the problem solving skills.

Christine:  That is so true, isn't it? I mean, I've read that teachers make more decisions on any given day than a surgeon.  And when we are learning at the academy, where we aren't working with real kids in a classroom, all we can do  is imagine a drama lesson, or a classroom situation, going this way or that way.  I mean, in our drama class at OISE, we really used it as a laboratory for exploring a variety of scenarios, didn't we?   And I remember for one of your assignments, one of your projects, you brought your classmates  to different spaces in the building, exploring different sites as possibilities for staging texts. I see such a clear connection to your own immersive, site-specific theatre creation, which is really, really interesting. I think it  really underlines the  idea of bringing your whole self to the teaching. David Booth used to say, "You teach who you are".  I imagine that is true of your work as a theatre artist as well. I mean, you're creating an autobiographical, solo piece of theatre, bringing who you are to that creation and performance process.  It is so interesting to think about all  those connections, and to think about how the embodied experience sort of anchored your learning within your body. 

Rosamund:  Oh, yeah. I mean, theatre is great because it's real and it's social and it's ephemeral, and classrooms are too. And I think it's more obvious in a drama classroom. 

And thinking about bringing myself to the classroom, like you were saying, bringing the self… I think teaching and doing my solo show both taught me that the more authentic you are, the better. But it's always just a little part of you that you're sharing, you are a specific part of yourself. You leave a lot of stuff at the door. But that doesn't mean you're not real. 

Christine:  Oh, that's so interesting. And to think that that's true for our students as well, right? That they show up in a particular way within a particular context, to meet the moment that they're there with you, right? So yes, your whole self, well, maybe you parse that out according to the moment in the room and the dynamics, and you know, the kind of space you're in in your life. Love that.

Rosamund: Oh, yeah. And I see so many parallels between the audience and the students. But then I have to be so careful. I try so hard to remember, like, my theatre is about me. I'm so thrilled for the audience to come. But ultimately, I think it's healthier for me to recognize it's about me, it's what I want to do, it's my self expression. And in teaching I try so hard to learn from that, and then flip it and think, this is about the students, right? The audience is there to see me, but when I'm teaching, I try to be there to see the students. 

Christine:   Oh wow. So, it's sort of like the audience, the right audience, finds your creative work, which is about you. But we don't get to pick who your students are, right? And they don't get to pick us.  And the difference between an audience and a group of students - that is truly a profound insight.  Let's consider the drama space occupied by the teacher and the students.  As you know,   it's such a complex space to work in. I'm sure you must find it different from teaching English. For instance, how would you describe the difference between the English classroom and the drama room?

Rosamund:  I mean, I think the biggest thing that is the most immediate difference, and it's so literal, is just, there's no desks, right? It speaks to the immersive theatre nerd in me, right? It's, it's like, it's just like the rules are the social rules and routines are not so prescribed. And they're not so parallel to every other class. And that's why I've met many teachers who will say: I don't do gym and I don't do drama. And I do comprehend that perspective. They don't want to lose the security blanket, right, of the routine of the desk. So I think that is huge. And so there's the need to create a rapport and a routine from less of a baseline, standard expectation. It is exciting, and it asks a lot of both teacher and students. We are both learning how to exist, without those desks. 

I would say that I'm also limited in my experience of building a class rapport over a long period of time. Most of my experience really is at the post secondary level at this point, where the principles of teaching remain the same, but the dynamics with post secondary students are quite different. 

Christine: But it is interesting to think that even when you're doing an LTO or an occasional stint, it's this different kind of social contract that is required in an open space, very demanding of students in a different kind of way. Ruben Gaztambdes- Fernandez talks about how we're engaging with students inner, outer and in between, that they're exploring their inner selves, their personal identities, their personal story, and then they're working with others to bring their  creative expression out into the world. There’s this sort of  dance of inner, outer and in between, as they're creating their social contract, creating the culture of their classroom. I don't know if that resonates for you at all, in your work at the secondary or post secondary level or or in the rehearsal room?

Rosamund:  I definitely feel the risks that students take, like in an English class, the biggest risk you can really take is to raise your hand and answer the question and be wrong, right? And if the teacher is quite nice to you or kind of skilled, they won't make you feel stupid. And then this sort of possibility of social risk in a drama classroom for any age group. I've taught classes that are like continuing Ed. So I've sometimes had 70 year olds in a playwriting class, and I've also taught grade 9. And for anyone the like, getting up in front of people… it is just a whole different world. To be perceived as you might be in a drama space is just such a different thing. And I find that it's just it has so much more possibility for bringing more of the self, and it also has that, that responsibility, right? If you're facilitating people, people being seen, it's very profound.

Christine:  Yeah, exactly. I mean, that outer representation of inner experience and shared creation,right? High risk, and as you say, profound. 

So I want to return to this idea of the two worlds that you are inhabiting- artist and teacher,not as a binary, not in opposition to, or in competition with each other in any way. But if I understand what you are saying, you are really living a life that embraces both. I'm curious to know whether your work as an artist feeds into your work as an educator, and whether your work as an educator in any way feeds into your work as a theatre artist. 

Rosamund: Oh, yeah. I mean, of course they of course they do. They feed each other deeply. I'm always experimenting with how much to blend these worlds.  I get self-conscious teaching my own work. I’m currently teaching a playwriting class for the University of Toronto, and I have, for the first time ever, assigned my own play to read. And I was so bashful about that. But I'm experimenting more and more as I become a little bit more confident as an instructor, with not being so afraid to let them see the artistic side and for the very, very first time, just last week, I actually performed my work for them. 

I've always been nervous to do it, because it felt like it had such an ego trap attached to it, and such a, you know, I don't want them… to have to think that what I do is so amazing, or to hang the class on that as a teaching principle.  I also had this kind of bashfulness. And then I realized, like, I am going to ask them to present. I encourage them to get up in front of the class. And I thought, well, I have to do it too then. Like, I want to model that for them, right? 

And I think it was valuable and interesting for them to see that side of me for the first time. And it also brought me back to my own high school drama classroom, where my teacher would teach in-roll, and do those embodied things that we also practiced with you with OISE. And I thought, Oh, this is actually a really valuable pedagogical tool.

Christine: Yeah, that's fantastic to hear.  I expect that the reason it was so valuable for your students to have you share your own work is because of all  the thought behind it- the clarity of your intention and teaching purpose. And a deep understanding of the difference between your role as an artist performing for an audience, and your function as a teacher encouraging student creativity.  

Before we go, I just want to give you an opportunity to share anything else that you might like this audience of artists and teachers and artist educators to know about you and your work and your life journey.

Rosamund:  I just would say the teachers that I've met in secondary and post secondary spaces are so passionate and they're so skilled, and I feel that in the artistic space, in the education space, there's so much to learn and to mutually respect between them. 

And I also have just been amazed by things like technical skills, like drama teachers can often, they can build things, they can light things, they can design things, they can manage a crisis… They are just so skilled and passionate. And I feel so thrilled by that. 

And also, I think of the show Summer Heights High, which has a very funny stereotype of a drama teacher who's sort of… he’s every drama teacher's nightmare, right? He's ridiculous, and it's all about him, and he's showing off all the time. He centres his own artistic identity in a way that’s really embarrassing. And I always was very nervous that I would end up acting like. But I don't feel like I do that, and I also see such good teaching modeled by incredibly creative people all around me all the time. So I just, I think that's been such a thrilling thing to see the drama classroom continue to be such a wonderful space for young people. 

Christine: Thank you Rosamund. I have really enjoyed our conversation.

Rosamund: Thank you. This is the first chance I’ve had to reflect openly on these two worlds, and I am so glad there are forums for drama teachers to find community and resources. I appreciate your work so much. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai