Making a difference one show at a time

In 1996, Jim Boggs stumbled upon a unique concept as a TA for a communications lecture: to teach with actors. He realized the potential of art as a teaching method, and that summer created UWOnCue.

"Our work is more about difference-making than art, but bad art doesn't make a difference. Therefore, if you are going to make a difference through art, it has to be good," said Boggs, executive director of UWOnCue. He recently earned his Ph.D. in communications.

For the past six years, UWOnCue has been making a difference in the classroom through innovative activities involving both actors and students, and in the local community by training volunteer social workers.

Members of UWOnCue are all UW students, and a surprising number are not drama majors. There are currently 48 actors in three companies who perform 20 or more shows each quarter.

Each week, the companies meet separately for two hours of actor training and two hours of rehearsal for shows. This quarter, the actor training is headed by Jamie Morgan, Catherine Ingman and Elliott Williams, graduate students in the School of Drama's prestigious Professional Actor Training Program. The training consists of various exercises and activities that are designed to fine-tune concentration, spatial awareness and body control.

"I joined OnCue because I wanted to try something different that I also thought would be fun and [would] offer different aspects of acting training," said UWOnCue actor Amber Boone. "My favorite thing about [UWOnCue], despite the fact that it takes up my Saturday morning, is that it's sort of a release from all of the other crap my week entails. You get to hang out with your friends and play games while also making a difference -- what more could you ask for?"

Each company has a director who casts the shows, but the content of each show is created by the cast and the party requesting the show, usually a professor. The academic shows teach a wide range of subjects from Newtonian physics to news reporting on a traumatic event.

I work very closely with the OnCue group to develop the presentation. They do all the creative work, but we do talk at various stages of their preparation so the performance I see is exactly what I expected," said Nancy Kenney, associate professor of psychology and women studies.

Carefully examining and conceptualizing the subject being taught creates this tight link between scenes and course material.

"[UWOnCue follows] learning objectives very closely, but we're making art. All of our art is based on course concepts. Generally, we take a course concept, look into its aspects or related concepts, abstract them, place them in a social situation, then make a scene," said Boggs. "Then we relate each abstracted aspect back to the main topic through the facilitated discussion. This is how we can do physical sciences."

At the heart of each show is what Boggs refers to as facilitated discussion, or simply facilitation, in which the topic of the scene is discussed with the class. Facilitation is conducted with the hope that the class will readily participate and formulate its own inquiries in response to a well-performed scene. "One point if we say it. Ten points if they do," said Boggs.

"How do we make our scenes compelling? I want the audience to be so related to the characters that when the characters come into conflict with each other, it really hurts," said Boggs. "That leads to the audience caring about what is going on." And thus, a successful facilitation.

"I find OnCue performances an excellent pedagogical tool. It's a change from the regular lecture routine. It's a powerful format for presenting emotionally or socially charged information. Most importantly, my students report that they find the performances and discussions associated with them to be highly valuable," said Kenney.

From April 18 to 19, UWOnCue created a show that addressed education issues as part of the UW Pack Forest faculty retreat. Usually a show is requested by a professor who has worked previously with UWOnCue, but at the conference, many of the professors had never even seen a UWOnCue performance and were skeptical. That show proved more difficult than others, but by the end of the conference, UWOnCue had gained many more supporters.

"I [saw] UWOnCue perform at a faculty retreat, and they were terrific. They effectively brought important issues to light and did so in a way that I did not think a professor could. That is, by acting them out, UWOnCue made the ideas real and much less abstract. I don't think this approach is always the way to teach, but sometimes for certain topics I think it might be very effective," said David Domke, assistant professor in communications.

Outside academics, UWOnCue works with Shanti, a organization that offers free emotional assistance to people afflicted by terminal illnesses. UWOnCue actors assume the identities of fictional characters who are troubled by life-threatening illnesses and attend therapy sessions with new Shanti volunteers to train them. This also benefits UWOnCue actors by providing useful service training.

UWOnCue offers an exciting challenge to its actors, praiseworthy facilitation to instructors and indispensable service to the community. For the past six years, this organization has made a difference in Seattle with its unique approach to teaching.

"[UWOnCue doesn't] make points. We create inquiries; we ask powerful questions," said Boggs. "Grappling with those questions is where the learning occurs, and that learning is at a very deep level. We will entangle a class in an issue they thought was simple. If they come out more confused than when they came in, we've done our job."

Auditions for new UWOnCue members will be held today from 4 to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 to noon in Hutchinson 202. No preparation is necessary. UWOnCue asks only that those auditioning bring their class schedules and are prepared to stay for the entire hour. Each quarter, UWOnCue members may opt to register for Drama 259 and receive up to four VLPA credits, which can be repeated for up to 12 credits. Membership in UWOnCue is limited to current UW students. For interested students or faculty, more information is available on the Web at depts.washington.edu/uwoncue.