From Ed Theatre to Teaching to Teaching Tech - Capella Solomon

From Ed Theatre to Teaching to Teaching Tech

Capella Solomon

When I first entered the Ed Theatre program I wanted to improve my evolution as a Theatre educator; I already had a Bachelor’s in Theatre from Spelman College; a Master’s in Education, my teaching certification in Special Education and Theatre and had been a classroom teacher for about five years. Tech had always been my passion; at Spelman I was the only woman taking every tech class they offered and overalls were a permanent part of my wardrobe.  As I got older theatre education became my passion and my art form.

While in the Ed Theatre program and I was teaching full time and attending classes which meant a lot of restless nights and coffee binges. It was all worth it though; the program taught me that theatre and education could unite to become an outlet of creative expression that was beneficial in any classroom setting but in a truly cross-curricular way. I was able to successfully finish the program with a toolkit of activities under my belt, a fresh outlook on theatre education and a rockin’ thesis about women in technical theatre.

All those theatre games and Boalian activities made me think about ways to incorporate what I learned at CCNY with my artistry as a theatre educator. I currently teach at a theatre high school where incorporating math into theatre through drafting and model making, ELA and history through play analysis and exploring period, and science by making cool special effect like blood and fog has made theatre come alive for my students in a way that it never had before.

In my last semester of the program I was offered an Adjunct position to teach the Introduction to Teaching Technical Theatre class. Now I’m back to restless nights and coffee binges but I absolutely love it! A theatre educator in the truest sense I love teaching students about technical theatre and teaching grad students about teaching students about technical theatre (bet you can’t say that 3 times fast). I encourage both my high school and graduate students to explore their creativity, try new things, take ownership of their classroom experience and to be fearless (especially when it comes to a hammer and nails)! While the overalls have been retired from my wardrobe they will never retire from my heart or my pedagogy.