An Intensive Seminar-Workshop

Athens, Greece, June 1998

Instructor: Despina Kakoudaki

In the summer of 1998 I was invited to design and teach a workshop for the Theater Studies Alumni Association, a professional association affiliated with the Theater Studies Department, at the School of Philosophy, University of Athens. After consultations with the President and Secretary of the Association, I organized an intensive seminar, which was offered in June 1998. I chose the topic, materials, and teaching methodologies to address the specific needs of this group, their investment in continuing education, and their emphasis on the teaching of theater.

The result was a merger between a practical workshop on teaching methodology, a theoretical introduction to Film Studies, and an open-ended discussion on the uses and limitations of visual media in the classroom. The first of its kind in Greece, the seminar was received with great enthusiasm. The participants were graduates of the Theater Studies Department in the University of Athens who had taught for a number of years in high schools. Since the teaching of theater is at present under a pilot program by the Ministry of Education, most of them had very limited control of curriculum design, and usually had minimal resources in the form of bibliographies, access to film libraries or further teacher training.

I decided to put an emphasis on familiarizing participants with current practical strategies for discussion and teaching, and to introduce them to communicative methods for class interaction. At the same time, my own background in Comparative Literature alerted me to the challenges of using visual media in the classroom. Unless the teacher is comfortable with the materiality of visual texts, they could be used solely as "aids." To this effect, I designed the seminar as an introduction to the theoretical study of film, allowed time for familiarizing participants with techniques for close visual readings, and insisted on issues of materiality and production. Given the participants' specialization in theater, the seminar was structured to highlight textual elements that are specific to both theater and film, such as sound, color, or costumes. This enabled a discussion not of plot connections between films and theatrical texts, but of the performative effects of teaching both as visual texts.

I had very good responses from the participants and the Association, and have been invited to offer this seminar again. Participants mentioned in their evaluations that given the rigid structure of the Greek high school system, both aspects of the seminar were necessary. They felt that the intervention in teaching complex visual and open-ended texts can only succeed in a non-hierarchical communicative classroom.

For your reference, in the following pages I include: