PhD Candidate in the Educational Theatre program – Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University
Tammie L. Swopes is a Doctoral Candidate at New York University in the Educational Theatre program – Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, her dreams of working in the arts were crushed by the realities of lack of resources and opportunities for artistic pursuits. However, after having received a BA in Speech Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a brief stint studying Aesthetic Education at UIUC, she started her theatrical career as an intern at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta, GA. Tammie immersed herself in the art and business of Theatre which further inspired her work with youth, social justice, and community building. Her work with organizations such as the Performing Arts Program for Youth (PAPY), The Names Project Foundation, and The Partnership for Arts in Learning inspired her to move to NYC and study at NYU, where she earned an MA in Educational Theatre working and studying with some of the fields most notable practitioners. She has gone on to work as a Teaching Artist, Arts in Education Specialist, Theatre program director, and a full-time Performing Arts Instructor (working primarily in the South Bronx). Tammie is currently an adjunct professor at New York University (Program in Educational Theatre and Tish Drama), Marymount Manhattan College, and CUNY’s program in Applied Theatre. She is also a Career Coach for Wasserman Center’s Creative Career Hub and an Artistic Associate for the Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) at NYU, where her work is centers on disrupting and dismantling systems of oppression through projects that illuminate implicit bias. Through her work with VPL she has received the NYU Steinhardt Champions of Equity Award (You’ve Got To Be Brave, Brave, Brave), as well as the NYU Steinhardt Diversity Innovation Grant (The Serena William’s Project). She is also the recipient of the Nancy and Lowell Swortzell Permanent Fund in Educational Theatre Scholarship, and the Elle Mae Mullavey Adler Scholarship, both for academic excellence. Tammie’s research interests are deeply rooted in art as activism, as is evidenced in her work done with youth, as well as her current research which seeks to decolonize theatrical and academic spaces through a community-centered process utilizing principals and praxis in artivism. Her work challenges standard theatrical practices and ways of being that are steeped in white supremacist ideology and have become the model for theatre-making. She believes that theatre is a space to “freedom dream” the world we want, and to not only “rehearse for the revolution,” as Augusto Boal would say, but to begin to dismantle systems of oppression by creating a community built on revolutionary acts of joy.
I’m not sure how I originally came upon the term Artivist, but as soon as I heard it, I knew that’s where I would find my life’s work, my art, my joy, my community, my world – the artist as activist. But did this term only apply to the intention of an artist’s work or could it apply to the process of creating art and for me creating community spaces where artivism thrives? Then I remember something I was told years ago when I first started doing community-engaged work – “there is an art to making art happen!” And so here is where I begin. While the term artivism has become common amongst community-engaged artists, there is a lack of agreement on what the term means and how it fits into present activist movements. For years now artivism has been emerging in my practice and has become a way of knowing and engaging with, art (theatre), artists, and the community at large. The purpose of this study is to examine the way(s) in which artivism can be useful pedagogy in creating equitable and inclusive theatrical and educational spaces and ways of working. This autoethnographic study utilizes arts-based research methodology as a means to gather and evaluate data. The play and rehearsal process, will serve as the springboard for the intentional creation of work that utilizes not only applied theatre methods, but artivist methodology in centering the script and the community of artists that will bring this play to life. I will study myself and my praxis of facilitation in a directorial role as we (the artists involved) undergo the process of mounting this work. The study examines how I will uplift the work of not only the playwright, but all artist involved in the project, thereby creating a more just space where community, trust, and healing are at the center of the work. I am also looking for replicable ways of working and offerings that others will be able to use moving forward.