My handwriting on a blackboard in my classroom, Bartlett Hall, UMASS Amherst
Teaching Philosophy
My practice as a scholar and an artist is directly linked to my pedagogy. This translates to a multi-disciplinary approach to the teaching of theater history and dramaturgy. In my classes, I assign material from disciplines such as American Studies, Education, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, History, Literature, and Music. I ask students to consider cultural production in a number of forms: theater, poetry, film, television, and music. I regularly include readings by scholars such as Beverly Tatum and Sonia Nieto who employ social justice and critical multicultural education frameworks so that I can talk with students about identity formation on a personal level and then introduce them to the creative work of artists of color who affirm their own identity positions and challenge mainstream ideas about race, culture, class, and gender. Additionally, across all areas of my teaching, I include authors such as bell hooks, Jeff Chang, Harry Elam, Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Jorge Huerta, and Joy Harjo to enrich the conversations about cultural and racial politics, history, representation, and cultural production.
Contemporary Playwrights of Color
In this 4-credit course, students examine contemporary plays by writers of color and the political and social context within which they have been written. Through analysis of plays by writers such as Larissa FastHorse, Michael R. Jackson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Octavio Solis, and David Henry Hwang. Students learn about race and representation in the theater, how identity and art overlap and influence each other, and the ways social contexts impact how theater is produced. Students engage in weekly discussion with their peers about course material and apply their learning by formulating discussion questions and engaging in critical writing about the texts and relevant live performances.
"Professor Page is clearly very knowledgeable and interested in what she’s teaching, and that makes her class really lovely to be in. She’s very encouraging of new ideas and perspectives." Student comment
Asian American Theater History
In this Junior Year Writing course, students read theatrical works and consider the social and political contexts of Asian American theater-makers in the US. We look at issues of race and gender as social constructs that Asian Americans are not only subject to, but also continuously challenge through various forms of cultural production. This dramaturgy course requires students to engage with theatrical texts from various artistic and theoretical frameworks. Grounded in post-colonial and transnational feminist theories, we define “theater” as a vital cultural weapon with which historically disenfranchised communities in the U.S. have inserted themselves into the cultural narrative that often attempts to silence and erase them. We also examine the gendering of Asian bodies as a form of colonization. Though the focus of the course is the Asian American experience, we must acknowledge that Asian Americans have always been “alien bodies” or threats to the United States despite legal recognition or other indicators of nationality and citizenship. Asian Americans must negotiate their subjectivity, identity, and belonging within the separate yet intertwining frameworks of the United States and Asia.
"Professor Page brings a refreshing teaching style to class every day. The readings were very relevant to events taking place in the world today. Priscilla also set up conference calls with people relevant to the field. This gave us an additional perspective from people working in the field, teaching us about things that are happening today." Student comment
Contemporary Native American Performance
Contemporary Native American Performance is an area of study with deep roots in culturally-specific production and ever-evolving practices by a wide range of artists. In this Junior Year Writing course, students read plays and performance texts written by Native American artists since the 1960s.We begin our study by acknowledging the limitations of language and the continuously contentious nature of labels. Within this critical framework, we study the art as well as the attending social, political, and historical contexts of the creative work on our reading list. We examine innovations and experimentation with artistic form and study each artist’s use of language, style, and their exploration of a wide variety of themes. Our topics of discussion also includes gender roles, expressions of sexuality, class position, and cultural identity as articulated by the artists we study. Theater is an interactive, living art form. With this in mind, we will attend relevant performances and generate in-class performance-based activities.
"I loved the class discussions. Even when some of the texts or plays we read were heavy, any points of confusion were cleared up in deep discussions with the class and the instructor. I also loved Skyping with artists, that was very helpful to see a tangible future as an artist." Student comment
Modern Black Theater
This course investigates the history of Black theater and performance beginning with William Wells Brown’s play Escape; or Leap for Freedom, written in 1858, and ending with Douglas Turner Ward’s essay, “American Theatre: For Whites Only?” published in 1966. In that span of time, Black artists created work that affirmed the brilliance of their communities, attested to the realities of their lives under slavery and Jim Crow, and resisted the stereotyping and denigration of mainstream theater. Scholar Ted Shine describes Escape as “remarkable because it is autobiographical and perhaps the first protest play by a Black American playwright” (Hatch and Shine, 1974). Protest is a productive way to view the collection of plays, poetry, and music in this course as the artists that we will study engage in social, cultural, political, and aesthetic protest in subtle and overt ways. In addition to creative works, we will read relevant chapters from Experiments in Democracy: Interracial and Cross-Cultural Exchange in American Theatre, 1912-1945, edited by Cheryl Black and Jonathan Shandell (2016).
"I really liked how we had a safe space to practice having difficult and constructive conversations about race and gender in a setting where we could receive constructive feedback and have a better idea of how to approach these conversations in the future. I also read more plays in this class than I ever have, so I exercised that brain muscle and now have a new catalog of plays I know." Student comment
Multicultural Theater and the Latinx Experience
Students in this course examine the landscape of American theater and its relationship to the politics of diversity in the U.S. We study the theater and cultural production of Latinx artists in the U.S. to broaden our understanding of multicultural theater. In addition to studying the dramatic texts, we will also consider the political implications of the work and its relationship to social activism. We will look at theater companies whose primary missions are to produce Latinx theater and the history of the representation of Latinx on stage in this country. We will draw upon theory from fields such as Feminist Studies, Latinx Studies and Dramatic Criticism as we think and write about the creative work in this course. Theater is an interactive, living art form. With this in mind we will attend relevant performances and generate in-class performances-based activities. This course satisfies the Junior Year Writing requirement for Theater majors at UMASS Amherst.
"I loved the material we studied and thought that Prof. Page did a great job of choosing and presenting the plays, Prof. Page is a committed and passionate teacher. She clearly cares about her students and the subject matter. I liked the way she had us write a lot of small reflections along the with the larger research assignments. She allowed me to follow my interests in choosing topics for my papers. I learned so much." Student comment
Multicultural Theater Practice
Through the content of this graduate course, students broaden their knowledge of dramatic literature in the contemporary multicultural canon and deepen their understanding of the politics of race and culture as one small way to know more of the world in which they plan to live and work as artists. Students locate themselves in a wider social, cultural, and political context, thus increasing their awareness of how their work is determined by - and, in turn, contributes to – the values, beliefs, norms, expectations, and assumptions that make up the culture in which they perform as actors, directors, dramaturgs, and designers. I ask students to consider how their artistic choices have been impacted by their assumptions about society, culture, and democracy. At the same time, they examine the role and the responsibility of artists in society and carefully consider the relationship between art and politics across time. We read Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative, edited by Daniel Banks and Claire Syler (Routledge, 2019) along with relevant plays to provoke conversation about the ideas presented by the contributors to the book.