Steve Marsh is a Lecturer and the Literary Manager in Department of Theatre Arts. He trained with renowned actors such as Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen. He has appeared in film, television, and on the professional stage and is a founding member of the Asylum Theatre Company. He has taught ACH 102 three times, each time with a different topic. His first course, “Great Plays You Need to Know,” was aimed to familiarize students with eleven culturally significant plays from Antigone to Hedda Gabler and The Glass Menagerie. In Spring 2008, he taught “Monologs for the Actor,” in which students studied and performed monologs from plays. Most recently he taught a whole course Hamlet. In that class, students read the play multiple times and presented on different productions of the play. This coming Spring, he plans to teach a class on playwriting, in which students will write, workshop and read their own plays. I talked to him in early September about his experiences.
What’s nice about 102, what works for me, is that you can teach what you want to teach. Generally, at the University, there is a certain amount of freedom, especially in the Arts, to teach what you know. That’s great. This is the opportunity to teach the students what the students want to know, or what I think the students need to know.
One of my favorite classes to teach was my course on Hamlet. I figured I would take different approach [from “Great Plays You Need to Know”]; I would spread things out a little bit. We would all talk about Hamlet. I don’t want students to have to nod; I wanted them to be honest, and then I would know how to help them. I wanted to teach 14 weeks on Hamlet. Why shouldn’t there be a class of 14 weeks about just one play? I’m still learning about Hamlet, and I have read Hamlet many times. I have done more than just read Hamlet, and the course was great for me, because I learn more and more. I would explain the concept of the class to the students, and they seemed mostly interested. About the half-way point we started to have presentations where they would need to do research on the different ways Hamlet was staged. They would need to do production histories on different productions of Hamlet. It was great. I would come and give production histories of things that I would thought would interest them or things that interested me. My goal in the class was to get them to read Hamlet two, three, or four times. I’d be really surprised if anyone in the class read Hamlet more than once; it’s a long play, but I did try to get across that getting to know this play is one of the most satisfying things in the world—knowing it, not necessarily memorizing the whole thing. I did try to get across that actors do memorize the whole play. So, that was a worthwhile experience. Of the classes I did, that was the one I’d do again.
What made it successful?
Well, it was a subject that I loved. I did have some really good students, and what I mean by good is bright, articulate, uninhibited. There were maybe 3 or 4 who would get things rolling, and I had fun with a few of the other people, too. Some people are just very quiet. They look at the authority figure of the teacher, and make a larger division than there needs to be between the teacher and themselves. We sat in a circle. I taught one of the classes in one of the small theaters. The presentations helped. I am very much into this idea of proposing a plan and then presenting. They had to do a certain amount of research, and that presenting is something like a performance. I give students feedback on their performance. I’ll even give students feedback on their emails. We came up with some very interesting productions of Hamlet: a Noh Hamlet, a naked Hamlet. We had as many kids as we had presentations.
What did you get out of teaching the course?
Honing my skills as a teacher. In my Hamlet class, I learned many more things about Hamlet. I got some really great students, so I got great satisfaction out of that. I got to recognize the faces of some of these kids, recognize the faces, walking through the University, I get a “hello.” We found one of our students (majors) through the monologs class. Now she’s in her senior year, and she’s wonderful, she’s one of our senior people. This class eased her into the department. A few students have been back to take other courses.
Steve Marsh’s syllabi: