Researching teaching methods in theatre education

Theatre Academy Maastricht (TAM) wanted to develop a method to understand their own teaching and learning, explicating the specifity, strength and rigor of their typical ‘Maastricht-style’ of theatre education. Arts education and in particular performance/theatre education is typified by hands on, practical, physical, and aesthetic work. Art, theatre, music themselves, of course, also have this quality of escaping or transcending that which can be verbalized or described rationally or easily. How can we study such implicit, improvisational and embodied ways of teaching and make it explicit and understandable without destroying the unarticulated quality that it has? How can we develop an appropriate vocabulary to describe its quality? Alec Malatt and Emma Olyff, two students from University College Maastricht (UCM), were invited to do practice-based research at the theatre school, in collaboration with the research centre.