Inside A.C.T.

By Simon Hodgson The Rueff—a versatile performance space at the top of A.C.T.’s Strand Theater—is a blur of sound and motion. On a hardwood floor slightly larger than a tennis court, teachers are running and sliding. “Look at this, look at this!” yells one to her partner, pointing at a bank of cables behind a sound system. In the northeast corner of the room, another pair of teachers are racing toward the corner. This year's Back to the Source participants discuss ideas with one another. Photo by Thomas Moore. The teachers are at A.C.T. for Back to the Source, a training program designed for teachers and teaching artists who use theatrical techniques in the classroom. The classes are intended to enhance teachers’ classroom skill sets, in part by reminding them of the thrill of learning. Today’s group is typically diverse, coming from as far away as Hawaii and as near as San Francisco’s Richmond district. A young guy in a green t-shirt with his hair in a bun i...

By Amy Grace Lam Back to the Source is A.C.T.’s annual week-long professional development program that invites educators to immerse themselves in the transformative power of performance. Taught by A.C.T. professional artists, faculty from our conservatory, and national leaders in arts education, this comprehensive course is a chance for teachers to take creative risks, bring new insight to their classroom practices, and ignite their passion for theater. Amy Grace Lam, a poet and community advocate who works at Community Health for Asian Americans in Oakland to empower immigrant and refugee communities to tell their own stories , participated in Back to the Source last summer, where she rekindled her own passion for theater.    As an immigrant kid, words associated with performance, music, and the arts were “you can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t.” I still have a vivid sixth-grade memory of my mom making me cut one of my three music classes in order to focus more o...