Director's Corner

Despite the difficult times, MTC’s Education Program has remained true to its mission and goals. We have scaled back a bit to be sure; for example we will not be able to print a hard-copy version of this report this year. But I am pleased and proud that we have stayed the course, preserving the essentials of what we do. Our job as an education department remains the same: to instill in the learners we serve the idea that theatre constitutes a unique and irreplaceable means of knowing and understanding oneself and the world. The in-depth work students do in our classrooms and workshops and the world-class plays they encounter in our theatres enables them to explore vital issues and ideas that exercise and concern us all today; the work they do with us enriches them as citizens and as human beings.

To that end, we have continued to provide the same level of high quality instruction and partnerships to all the learners we serve. Our students ranged in age from junior high school through adult; we worked with them in all parts of the New York metropolitan area and indeed, thanks to our distance learning program, TheatreLink, in schools and communities all over the country and around the world. In fact, in 2008 a record high of 66 schools collaborated with us, affording their students the benefits of our unique combination of in-depth classroom instruction and attendance at world-class plays and productions.

This year, more than 500 high school students saw Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Ruined. Their intensive, hands-on classroom exploration deepened their understanding and enriched their experience at the performance of this powerful, disturbing, but finally uplifting work. Students also studied and attended such insightful and challenging works as Richard Greenberg’s The American Plan, Itamar Moses’s Back Back Back, and Samson Raphaelson’s Accent on Youth. In some cases, though our Write on the Edge Program, they went on to write plays inspired by the ideas they encountered at these performances. The students’ comments on evaluation forms, as well as those of their teachers, attest to the unique benefits they derive from these opportunities.

The following pages document the array of programs and activities we provided this past year and will suggest as well the crucial importance of what we do, especially in these challenging times.

David Shookhoff
Director of Education