TRANSCRIPT: Conversations with the Dean: Stephen Dobson | Ep 2 | Dr Linda Lorenza

Speaker 1 (00:02):

What is your story? How did you get to this

Speaker 2 (00:04):

Story? My story, I really became interested in, um, the idea of storytelling from the stage was really the importance of, of stories and how we tell stories and how we pass on knowledge and we develop relationships. There's, you know, the art support society.

Speaker 1 (00:23):

Hello everybody. I've been looking forward to talking to Dr. Linda Lorenzo. Before we begin, we're on the land of the dur Ramble people, and I would like to acknowledge the forefathers fore mothers past, present, and emerging as the custodians of these lands. And in the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to thank them for letting us have this conversation. So, Linda, you, you've worked in the theater branch and one of my favorite playwrights is ret, and he had this piece, which people don't talk about, it's about refugees. It was conversations, two refugees meet in Denmark in what is the Second World War, and they just come and talk. And for Brecht working in the world of theater was not about emotion. It was really about having fun and having a good time. It was about coming in and thinking about things. So what kind of theater person are you? Who are you?

Speaker 2 (01:39):

Oh, who am I? Well, I guess in terms of Brecht, I think his work is essential. And I actually, with our Bachelor of Theater students mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we do a term on Brecht with the drama ensemble. Um, and yeah, they, we've done that twice now in the, in the time that I've been here. And that's been a really interesting process and discovery, um, for the students because they're not familiar with that whole style of theater. But for me, I mean, my, my background is, um, as quite mixed. Um, I studied education. I was previously a performer. Um, and then I ended up in the, the sort of national perspective of the arts industry. I worked for Bell Shakespeare, I worked for the Sydney Symphony, and I worked on the national arts curriculum for a Cara, um, through the course of that, acquired a PhD and was very lucky to, to land this very creative position at the Mackay campus.

Speaker 1 (02:34):

So if you were to telling, helping people understand your way into theater, did you wake up one morning and say, I'm, I'm gonna do theater or acting, or what, what is your story? How did you get to this story?

Speaker 2 (02:46):

My story? I don't know. I think my parents probably would've said, well, she was, um, a bit of a drama queen as a child, maybe. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I did like, I learned piano, I loved making up plays with my friends at school, that sort of thing. And then as I progressed, um, you know, in, in my years and so on, it, it was going to shows and going to the theater. And then once I was at university and my undergraduate degree, I really became interested in, um, the idea of storytelling from the stage, I guess initially is, is where it is. Mm-hmm. And then further on in life. And then when I worked for a while as a drama teacher, it was really the importance of, of stories and how we tell stories. Mm-hmm. And how we pass on knowledge and we develop relationships. There's, you know, the arts supports society. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (03:36):

Mm-hmm. Did, did you feel that, uh, as you gradually developed your skillset, it was about technique? Or is it a a about many facets? I mean, you mentioned writing. Is it, is it, is that what you envisage with theater for people if they're entering this world? Multi, multi-skilled

Speaker 2 (03:55):

Y Yeah, I think definitely today you need to be multi-skilled. I mean, I remember for me, as part of my studies, I, um, studied opera. And when I was at the Conservatorium doing that, you know, we had to learn languages and I hadn't really learned languages in school. And when I'd been in primary school and early high school, that was the period where grammar and, and sort of the, the names of the parts of language weren't really taught. Mm-hmm. So I discovered that by learning languages for opera, I learned the structure, the grammatical structure of English that I'd never really learned. Mm-hmm. Um, so to then end up, you know, in universities trying to teach people about reading scripts and, and reading and, and writing and so on, I guess it's, it's a, it's another different world, but at the end of the day, I think for me it's the script or the score is there as the map mm-hmm. To lead you into that story.

Speaker 1 (04:52):

So if we go back to Bertol, Breck, of course, what he was saying that normally you go to theater and you, you identify with the actors or the storyline and you get a kind of a good feeling or a or you cry and it's a way of kind of catharsis or releasing emotion. Um, what, what, what does that aspect of theater mean for you? Not the breath piece, but that kind of having a good time or emotions. Is that an important part for you and either being an actress, actress or teaching it

Speaker 2 (05:23):

Abs? Definitely, definitely. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, I particularly well with any of the art forms, but with theater, yeah. It's, um, bre aside because he's using a whole different technique. Mm-hmm. But when we see a film, when we see television, when we watch a play, we do connect with or disconnect from characters. Um, and often it's, it's that we actually see something of ourselves reflected in those characters. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, whether it's an experience they're having, whether it's, it's something about the character themself. Um, and, you know, and I think there's, there's a huge amount of empathy that we really develop in ourselves by being open to going to different theatrical experiences.

Speaker 1 (06:08):

And, and you'll often hear this, people will say, I haven't got the energy to go to theater. I'd rather watch TV, or I'd rather watch a movie. What do you say when people say that to you?

Speaker 2 (06:21):

I say, yeah, sometimes I feel like that too. Mm-hmm. And it's actually not that you'd rather watch a different form. Mm-hmm. It's that you'd just rather be in the comfort of your own space. Mm-hmm. Um, I had this situation last night, so Matt Young, who's directing the production for us this term with the theater students is up in Mackay. And we'd seen that circa a physical theater dance company is touring Queensland. They were performing in Mackay last night at six o'clock, which is a very early time. But some of these regional towns, you know, time can be quite fluid. Um, and so Matt and I had agreed that if we managed to finish with the rehearsal and what I was doing in time, we would go and we left the university at 10 to six <laugh>. I mean, and as I was told, when I moved to Mackay, everything's 10 minutes away, which is pretty well true.

Speaker 2 (07:11):

So we got to the entertainment center at, at six, but then we had to buy tickets. And then it turned out there was a lockout for the beginning of the show, which we thought, well, that's perfect. 'cause then we won't be the rude people walking in. We'll be with anyone else who's late going in together. And, and the bar was still open. So we were able to take in a glass of wine mm-hmm. Go in a couple of minutes late, and it was a, about a 75 minute performance, and it was riveting. Mm-hmm. And I was really glad that I didn't just go home and turn on the television. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (07:44):

Mm-hmm. I, I suppose where I'm going with that is that we, we've become accustomed in that kind of covid time. Everything is communicated through a screen. Mm-hmm. And, uh, what I'm really kind of saying is, do you think we've become too accustomed to that in a way? Do you think it's almost like in our human nature to want to actually not go through a screen we've just forgotten how to engage with theater?

Speaker 2 (08:12):

Excuse me. Um, yes. Mm-hmm. I think there is an element of that. Um, I think, um, you know, prior to Covid, we had become a society where everything was accessible all the time. Mm-hmm. You know, and we had big cinemas with, with lots of screens, so you could go to any number of films, um, and then of course having a, you know, a large screen at home so you could watch things on your own home, um, television. Um, but I think that plus Covid has changed the way people experience, um, um, live performance, if you like. Um, and I know actually from talking to friends in the industry, um, down in Sydney and in Melbourne, that it has been actually very slow to pick up again. People haven't quite

Speaker 1 (09:09):

Got the hang

Speaker 2 (09:10):

Quite been going out. And now with what's happening in the country financially, again, the first thing that people do is step back from the things that are considered the extras or the luxuries. And so ticket sales, again, are down in life performance in the maba major capital cities.

Speaker 1 (09:27):

Interesting. Mm-hmm. I know you've been doing some really interesting work in TikTok and commonly known as the TikTok generation, so I'm quite excited to hear exactly how does a theater person get to work in the TikTok world?

Speaker 1 (09:50):

You know, it's a, we, we we're talking about the world of theater and people being engaged in that. And often it's a, a, a kind of a, a take and forgiven. If you live in a city place, you have access to theater. And, um, I grew up in a village. I don't think I ever in, in the England at one time. I don't think I ever went to theater until I was maybe 15 or 16, just wasn't them. So did you have those kind of experiences growing up, or were you a kind of a city person or, or grew up in a little village or,

Speaker 2 (10:24):

Well, no, I started, started my life in Sydney, so yeah. A city person living in the suburbs, you know, and I'm from a, a quite a large family, an extended family. Um, and then when I was about 12, 13, my father took a job in Townsville. Mm-hmm. So our whole family, including the Pola, packed up and moved to Townsville from Sydney mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and it was a very different life mm-hmm. <affirmative> for someone coming from, you know, one of the capital cities. And I have to say, I actually loved it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, part of the reason was probably we had our first ever swimming pool in the backyard, so that was pretty good. Um, but that, um, really opened my eyes and my mind to the fact that there's a lot of different experiences around the country. And then, you know, later in life working back in Sydney and working for major performing arts companies mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (11:14):

And really realizing that what we had access to in the city, not everybody else around the country was getting that. Um, and thus, you know, my experience, I mentioned in our previous conversation of going to see circa at the entertainment center in Mackay, it's, um, now being in a regional center where everything's not there all the time, if someone's coming through town, then I wanna go. Hmm. And, um, interesting. And often so does the rest of the town, the Queensland Ballet came up and it was sold out. Mm-hmm. And it was incredible because it was such a mixed audience. Mm-hmm. Um, but, you know, so yeah, there, there's a real difference between growing up in a major city and, and growing up in a regional center.

Speaker 1 (11:57):

I, I think you, where I'm going with that kind of question is, so we have things that societies always have things they're worried about. Mm-hmm. You know, and one of the, the things which, and it's nothing really new about the time, it's disengaged kids, uh, on the backend of Covid, of course, the, everybody's worried about, well, the kids aren't engaging with school, or they're not learning how they used to learn. Um, w w do you have any views on this idea of disengaged kids? I mean, whether it's cities or rural areas and the role of theater or, or

Speaker 2 (12:33):

The arts? Yeah. No, very much so. Well, I'm involved in two research projects at the moment. Um, one of them is, is a national study looking at, um, arts learning for primary age children mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and it's very much looking at what arts learning happened online mm-hmm. <affirmative> during Covid, and what things helped the children to connect with each other and connect with their teachers. Um, because what we're hoping to find through this study are examples of really great practice that can help kids and their families reconnect with school, because there's still quite a problem. Um, the other thing we found in the literature is there's a massive increase in school refusal. Um, and that's an international, um, phenomenon. Um, and it's, it's, um, young people, children, primary school age and secondary school, um, for various reasons are nervous, uncomfortable, anxious about going back to school. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then the other thing that we are finding from teachers, um, is that, you know, dur, during the covid period, things went out the window such as routine, um, turn taking. And so some children are going back to school and the teachers are finding there's all of these basic social interaction skills that need to be relearned.

Speaker 1 (13:52):

Interesting. And how does this connect with the arts?

Speaker 2 (13:55):

Well, being an arts person, of course, I guess you could say I'm biased, but the evidence is coming through that it was the arts activities, the adaptability of the teachers teaching these activities online that was getting the kids to connect. Mm-hmm. And one thing that has, has just come through in the data that we are looking at is that actually because of the online situation and covid, the students were willing to take longer and the teacher was able to spend longer once they found an activity that the kids were engaged with mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so there was this development of a longer period of, of learning and deeper learning that was happening inside these arts activities.

Speaker 1 (14:43):

Do you have an example? Um, gimme an example.

Speaker 2 (14:46):

Um, yeah. So one of the things that, that we've noticed, this is looking at some of the data, data that's coming in about music activities, um, was finding found sound sources just around your house. Mm-hmm. Um, and then one of the descriptions from one of the teachers is that they would do djembe drumming with the children as class groups. They taught the whole of the primary school 900 children. Oh my god. Yeah. So, you know, 'cause we asked them how many children they taught during the online period, 900, um mm-hmm. And so, well, the kids didn't have the djembes, so it was find something at home, find a bucket. Mm-hmm. And then had them all doing these rhythms mm-hmm. And developing, um, things together and separately and sharing with each other, um, possibly irritating the family initially, but then in some cases, and we found this from the parents' responses that they were taking part and doing it with the children. So, you know, and then there were other found sound sources, like finding things out in the garden, taking a device and going and recording sounds in the garden mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then coming back and creating a story to go with the sounds that you'd heard. And then recording that or doing it live through a Zoom type platform to share it with classmates.

Speaker 1 (16:02):

You know, it, it, it makes me think we have this giant discussion about the world of schooling and the world outside of schooling. It sounds like you're finding out there's a way of, what's word crossing those borders in a way because you were bringing the school world into the garden, or into the house, or mm-hmm. Into a found object. I mean, um, so what will you do with this research when you kind of, what, what's the plan?

Speaker 2 (16:27):

The plan? So this is, is, um, part of the emerging priorities program that's funded through the, um, federal, um, department of Education. And, um, the, the goal is to develop some examples of practice of things that you could do as online learning with primary school children. And we'll put those up on the Create institute, the research institute here at C Q U on that website mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and they'll be open, you know, free mm-hmm. <affirmative> for, for teachers to use. So that's really the goal. Um, we have, um, some researchers from other universities who are specialists in each of the art forms who've come on board. And so they're looking at the data not having been involved in the actual survey distribution. So we've got these fresh eyes, very interesting. Um, and they're all people who are very familiar with the Australian curriculum for the arts mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So looking at it through the lenses of that. And what we are looking at particularly, is where we can find evidence for the personal social capability. So there are seven general capabilities within the Australian curriculum, and these are things that, that I call, or what they, they used to be the hidden curriculum because we never assess them, but to me they're all the things you learn at school that are what you actually do in the rest of your life. Gimme

Speaker 1 (17:40):

One more example. I'm think thinking I should know what the seven are. What? Gimme an example. <laugh>,

Speaker 2 (17:43):

Now I've gotta remember them all. But, um, this one, it was literacy, numeracy, um, technology. Okay. Right. Personal and social capability. Mm-hmm. And now if I'm gonna figure out the other two, I'm so focused on that one. That's good. That's good.

Speaker 1 (17:55):

Mm-hmm. So, um, you can see that what, what I'm hearing here is that the whole point of drama and the arts is it's about applying things. And then on another view projects, which is that, um, TikTok research <laugh> with people. Tell me about that project.

Speaker 2 (18:14):

Yeah. This is, is, it's, it's a great example of applied theater mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, it, it came about initially through a pilot project that we did, and Dr. Luke Price from the law faculty, um, had a call from the Rumble Youth Network here in Rockhampton. Mm-hmm. Um, saying, look, is there, is there any way you, you can help us? We wanna help the young people who use our center, who are often stopped in the street by police. Mm-hmm. They dunno what to do. The tendency is to run away. Um, so what Luke and I did was we worked collaboratively with the theater students who I teach, and then the law students who he teaches. Mm-hmm. And they were sharing ideas, um, about how to approach this. The law students were looking up, well, what is the law? Mm-hmm. And then the theater students were interpreting that in, in scenarios, and we made some very rough clips, just the kids filming it on their mobiles.

Speaker 2 (19:06):

And, um, sent the link to Rumble and they showed it to some of the young people, and we got some amazing feedback. They found some of it absolutely hilarious. Um, but it was great. And so from that we were then able to develop the project and we've just done this much bigger project, no dramas, um, which is where we've worked with young people, and we've brought in some actors and the Young First Nations videographer, and it was exploring issues that are, or topics of concern to young people. And that included, again, interactions with police, but particularly some health issues. So vaping mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, substance abuse. And another one was cyber bullying. So the actors, um, had workshops with different groups of, of young people, and then came in here to the Green screen studio and made these short videos. So they're called, you know, informal speak short form videos. Um, and they're really for TikTok. And so what we've done now is we've made a no dramas TikTok account mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and they're all sitting on there. And I, I suspect that the next thing that this leads to is the attention span. Mm. Of the young person. So the first TikTok videos that we made were 20 seconds to a minute long.

Speaker 1 (20:20):

Okay. Okay,

Speaker 2 (20:21):

Cool. And when we took them back to the young people who'd been involved in the workshops and showed them to them, they said, oh yeah, it's nice, but it's too long. And I watched one person who had handed the iPad to watching them. Mm. And I timed it seven seconds was the amount of time that person was giving to each clip. And if you watch young people on their devices with TikTok seven seconds, you can't get a lot of information across to a person in seven seconds.

Speaker 1 (20:50):

So what, so did you then have to cut them shorter, or did you leave them at the length? They were, or,

Speaker 2 (20:55):

Or, we, we kept the ones that were there, and then we made a few more mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, that were quite short. Um, but the, the other thing that, you know, we found working through it was young people are actually really savvy. There are a whole lot of layers of structure and meaning in a TikTok. Um, you know, they, they use juxtaposition, they use transference of ideas, they use familiar dialect. They, there's a whole range of things. And then there are things that are known as trends. And these trends change very quickly. So the clips that we made in November, when we show them to young people again in February, they said, oh, those trends are out of date.

Speaker 1 (21:39):

Incredible. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible. And, and I think what I take from this is of course, that there was a time when everybody would talk about Ted Talks. People would go and buy books on Ted Talks. And that was kind of like the pinnacle was I did a TED Talk, you know, and I look at this and I say, kids are kind of saying, well, we never part of that, we don't consider that relevant. And it shows the way we move through things. But I do wonder, um, if the skill sets are still being developed. And I think that's what you're saying as well. There's still a lot of skills being developed there.

Speaker 2 (22:13):

There are a lot of skills being developed there. And in fact, we found this with a couple of young people, and this is where I was saying, they, they were savvy. Um, young people for whom literacy might be a problem are quite adept at using the voice recognition on their device. So instead of typing things in to find something, they just speak it into the phone. And of course, if there's a literacy concern and it's coming back as a video, so it's an audio visual, they're still getting that information without having to read it. Mm-hmm. And then during the course of all of this, I found some other research that said our brains actually process visual image 60,000 times faster than they process words. Mm-hmm. So a mathematician might, you know, be able to work that out and go, well, if it's seven seconds and 60,000 times, how many minutes of actual transference is that? I don't know. But there's, there's definitely a lot going on.

Speaker 1 (23:11):

And then I'll, I'll end the, the conversation and say, thank you, and I'm reminded of the great chess masters in the world, and they can just look at a chess board and they know what to move. So I think your point holds valid for a lot of young people in our ability as grownups to understand where they're, thank you. Fascinating. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (23:33):

Thank you.