A new year, a new teacher, a new technique

Henry BoydCopy Editor   Consistency is often considered to be essential in the construction of a strong performing arts program. For the students that have been active in the Samo theater department in recent years, this has not been a given commodity.However, I, as a senior and Samo theater veteran, have tried to look at this situation in the most positive way possible. While some may call the constant changing of theater directors inconsistency, I have come to see it as a vital diversity in teaching and learning.In fact, learning about different styles and methods of teaching is a crucial quality that many high school theater programs tend to lack. With the same teacher, students only receive one view, one opinion and one technique or method.Through the multiple drama teachers (four teachers in the past five years) that have graced Samo’s Humanities Center stage, the Samo theater community has been exposed to a vast spectrum of performance techniques, taught through new styles of teaching and directing.As Samo welcomes its new theater director, Kate Soller, we theater nerds are in for some serious change. Emily Kottler, fellow senior and theater veteran, is just one of the many to praise Soller’s new approaches.“Ms. Soller’s authority and organization at the start of her first year here really impressed me,” Kottler said. “She had confidence in her decisions and in us, though she hadn’t even met us yet. Her eagerness to plan and create a great fall play has set the tone for the rest of the year, and I am very much looking forward to it.”Santa Monica Arts Parents Association (SMAPA) member and theater parent Bambi Martins is also pleasantly surprised with Soller’s approach to the rehearsal process.“I’ve been on the set a couple of times and I really like the way she interacts with the students,” Martins said. “I think she’s a lot more aware of the other demands that kids have in their other classes and she seems a lot more focused ... It speaks volumes of how organized she is.”While Darryl Hovis, Samo’s beloved theater director of two years, who resigned in June, was focused more on artistry than timeliness, Soller announced Samo theater’s tentative season days before the new school year had even started.For those who are unaware, it takes a hefty amount of effort to direct a theater production: from booking venues (Barnum Hall is not as easy to book as one would think, and Samo’s theater productions do not necessarily get first priority) to hiring set designers and creating audition materials. It is a big job and is even harder for someone coming in as the new girl on the block.The dates were already booked in Barnum Hall for the spring musical and Soller began pitching show options to the department and administration. Auditions, casting and rehearsals for the fall play, entitled “A Night of Madness,” took place in the beginning of September. That’s right, rehearsals started within the first weeks of the year – a concept that Samo actors weren’t necessarily familiar with.The play consists of condensed versions of the wacky comedy “Harvey” and the psychologically provoking “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and opened this past weekend.Through a scrambling haze of preparing “Madness” under Soller’s watchful eye, neither Hovis nor his poignant and resonate teachings have been forgotten.“Mr. Hovis’s acute directing skills made ‘good’ shows memorable and pushed all of us past our perceived limits,” Kottler reminisced.Though it can be easy to get attached to a teacher you see for hours on end after school each day, with change comes more and different knowledge to be gained. Theater, as an art, consists of many different methodologies and techniques, and with every new teacher, the more you learn of different ways of pursuing your art, the better artist you become. Like a songwriter who might appreciate Lady Gaga just as much as Paul Simon, it is important for an artist to expose himself or herself to different approaches.Sophomore Sophie Thomason, who has only taken part of a few Samo productions, agrees.“It’s really important to be open to all different techniques of theater because you will most likely work with many different directors in the professional world,” Thomason said. “Many of us in the Samo theater department hope to pursue this as a career, so the exposure to the many different directors and styles prepares us and gives us an idea of what to expect.”While James Altuner, the short-lived yet esteemed Samo theater director who taught during the 2008-2009 school year, was quirky in his own sense of the word, he taught me to think on my feet and to make a choice and stick with it.Hovis may have been disorganized and created lengthy, tedious casting processes, but he taught me more about the process of thinking about and creating art than anyone else would have been able to.And Soller, though young and fresh-faced with a toddler, gives me a new insight that I never would have been able to obtain from a middle-aged man. Consistency has its strengths, but diversity has proven to be worth the sacrifice.hboyd@thesamohi.com