Beyond the Stage

For years, faculty member Katie Dawson and her colleagues have placed arts-integrated education at the forefront of their research and teachings. Through programs like Drama for Schools (DFS), directed by Dawson in collaboration with faculty member Lara Dossett and College of Education professor Stephanie Cawthon, they have worked with educators to implement arts-based strategies in classrooms across the country. Thanks to a connection Dawson has at a U.S. Embassy abroad, she expanded the reach of DFS’s programming beyond the United States in 2014. Since then, she has led presentations and workshops on drama-based pedagogy in five countries around the world, often accompanied by UT Austin graduate students. Recently, one such program took root in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country with deep ethnic divides following the Bosnian War a quarter of a century ago. In order to better understand her work, we spoke with Dawson about the Applied Drama Institute and its efforts to empower educators through drama-based pedagogy.

Continue Reading Empowering Educators Around the World Through the Applied Drama Institute

Ambient lighting and ethereal depictions of Greek mythology welcome visitors to Daedalus: The Lost Wings, Texas Theme Park Engineering & Design’s latest pop-up attraction. Teams of UT students enter a room filled with artifacts and puzzles – a tiny Grecian boat, a glowing fountain, a bookcase that doubles as a doorway – with 45 minutes to unlock a pair of Daedalus’s legendary wings. Beneath the puzzles are wires, magnets and structures built by an ambitious group of students from across the Forty Acres. The Texas Theme Park Engineering & Design student organization, sponsored by Theatre and Dance faculty members J.E. Johnson and Karen Maness, may be comprised of a variety of academic emphases, but they are united under one goal – to entertain their audiences through unique, story-based experiences, cultivating the creative problem-solver within each of its members.

Continue Reading Students Engineer a Creative, Collaborative Future for Themed Entertainment