Practicum Experience

Abstract

Practicum courses in theatre arts, which function as laboratories where students can practice theatre and receive academic credit for their efforts, greatly benefit students. Because the main goal of such practicums is cooperative achievement of the best production possible and since every step of a production involves a new problem or decision, the practicum course appears to provide an ideal model for life training as well as for artistic training. An experiential model created by Kolb, Chickering, and others tries to capture both the cognitive and the socioemotional factors that go into knowledge acquisition and application. The practicum theatre activities support this model by focusing on having experiences or taking actions, observing and reflecting on these experiences in order to generalize from them, and re-using the generalizations to solve new or similar problems. The direct experience that theatre practicums provide, therefore, assures strong student motivation because it teaches socialization skills and creative problem solving by offering students the experience of producing art and of plying their craft before an audience. (EL)