International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Holzwarth, C. (2024). Editorial: Issues in teaching theatre design. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 25(si2.0). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea25si2.0

The title, Issues in Teaching Theatre Design, may elicit ideas of an edition full of solutions to the problems theatre design educators are currently facing; however, this special edition of IJEA is less interested in finding solutions and more invested in the questions, ideas, experimentations, theorizations, and research of theatre design educators. Primarily focused on theatre design education in the wake of 2020 and its subsequent years of global unrest and trauma, which teachers and students moved together through with vulnerability, this special edition originated from deep conversations I was having with my students and fellow educators in the classroom, design studios, and national conferences. How were students and teachers co-creating the next wave of theatre design curriculum and pedagogy? How are the values of this new generation of college students questioning and pushing back against some design traditions that many of us design educators were taught? What does it look like to completely overhaul a discipline’s theoretical framework?

This collection of essays, reflections, and case studies showcases how educators take on these questions and others in their teaching and design practices. My intention in guest editing this special edition is to encourage other theatre design educators to continue sharing their experiences within scholarly mediums such as academic journals in addition to exhibitions of arts-based research, which are more traditionally associated with theatre designers. Moreover, to see theatre design education theorized and researched beyond the dominant skills-based literature that is readily available to students and teachers.

This special edition is divided into two sections. I chose this particular curation with the original call for papers in mind, which intentionally sought two types of contributions: ones that focused on pedagogical impulses and theoretical explorations and others that laid out praxis-based case studies and reflections as guides for bringing theory to the design classroom through real-world examples. Each section takes on multiple design specializations, winding from the general or interdisciplinary design classroom to costume design, costume production, scenic design, scenography, and lighting design.