How Toxic Teaching Methods Impact Performing Arts Students

In recent years, the arts and entertainment industry has witnessed the rise of the #MeToo movement in response to sexual harassment allegations. But the industry, one I grew up in and love dearly, also boasts a long history of non-sexual harassment, emotional trauma, and physical abuse contributing to an unhealthy environment for young artists. The reason for this environment can often be attributed to specific teaching methods in the performing arts that are not brought to the forefront of our attention nearly enough.

Abigail Matheson, a freshman Arts & Entertainment Management major at Dean College, can still recall the repetitive verbal and physical harassment she was subject to during her days as a dance student in Europe. Being smacked in the face as a reprimand and being sat on by a teacher while stretching in the splits was commonplace and accepted in the dance classroom. Matheson also described a story she heard secondhand of a student adjusting her dance attire one too many times for the teacher’s liking and was forced to finish the rest of class completely topless so she wouldn’t have anything to adjust. The teacher took pride in that humiliation, Matheson recalled. She also remembered hearing the phrase, “you dance like a pig because you’re so fat,” often. Name-calling was second nature for her teachers. After awhile the students just expect to be called “idiots.” That’s just another day in the office for performing arts students.

Too often these students are aware of how unacceptable these teaching methods are but feel as though they have no one to turn to, no one on their side. Jet Jameson, a senior theatre major at Virginia Commonwealth University, says, “The teachers I trusted had made it very clear that they wouldn’t be able to do anything if a situation was happening. No one could stand up to my abuser.” For those who are fortunate enough to be removed from their situation, it’s never a guarantee that the distance is permanent due to what a small world the industry is. When Jameson was put back in their abuser’s classroom, she brought the situation to the principal who said, “Oh we know he’s tough, but he’s so talented.” Talent does not excuse bad behavior. Teachers excusing the behavior of their colleagues is a denial of the issue at hand and severely psychologically hurts their students. The sooner arts educators understand this, the more beneficial they can be to their students.

Another teaching philosophy perpetuated in the arts is the phrase, “You need to develop a thick skin.” Everyone in the arts, past, present, and future, has a love-hate relationship with this phrase. It’s a phrase drilled into students’ brains until all meaning is void. It becomes a robotic repetition and does not get the analysis it deserves. The idea of having a “thick skin” is applied to a variety of situations but has drastically different effects when applied professionally versus personally, a distinction difficult for performing arts students to differentiate. This lack of distinction is “a major contributing factor to the large number of unreported sexual harassment incidents,” as stated in the Fall 2018 edition of Southern Theatre, Southeastern Theatre Conference’s magazine. Everyone has had at least one professional rejection, and in that event, it’s important to “push through,” as David Rowell, program coordinator for Arts and Entertainment Management at Dean College, says. Dealing with professional rejection basely solely on work, not on personal factors, is when having a thick skin comes in handy. However, developing a thick skin is not the answer for personal harassment and abuse. Matheson views the phrase as an excuse to treat people poorly and place the blame more on the victim’s reaction than the aggressor’s action. She also notes the hypocrisy of the statement being used to “turn off a very human thing.” The arts are a place to embrace and validate the emotions of the human experience, not shut down at the first instance of negativity. Jameson also recalls hearing this phrase as a kid. In their mind, their sensitivity was the issue. She remembers believing, “If I grew a thick skin, then the issue would be resolved, that the abuse would magically go away.” But it never does. For many artists, no matter how thick their skin is, the abuse will never magically disappear. Unfortunately, the abuse many students grew up having to accept have mentally scarred them and becomes trauma needing to be unpacked later in life.

An important thing to note is that many students who grow up accepting that abuse and harassment don’t realize how wrong it is and that it is truly hurting them. Many artists don’t get the perspective needed to realize the severity of the teaching methods brainwashing and gaslighting them until they are removed from their educational environment or the industry altogether. Rowell recalls his days as an actor in college where exercises designed to provide shock value, rather than actual educational value, were common. He and Matheson also describe thinking that physical manipulation and hitting dancers to force flexibility or turnout was simply how it was supposed to be learned. Matheson remembers believing that verbal harassment was the only way to inspire dancers into improving because that was what she was used to. It was common for dancers to be bullied into losing weight, and it wasn’t until she was older that she realized a healthy body can be achieved through a completely different mindset. Until then, she and so many others like her believed in the sentiment that it was “all for my own good.” This harassment creates a cycle of abuse where dancers are verbally harassed as students and then in turn verbally harass their own students. And this verbal harassment isn’t always direct. In Jameson’s experience, public humiliation and group lectures obviously directed at one student were a prevalent part of the classroom environment. She also had to learn that blatant favoritism to the degradation of others and the competitively comparative environment the performing arts supports is not a healthy way to encourage a young artist’s growth.

The aforementioned cycle of abuse can also be viewed as transgenerational trauma where past generations of artists cling to old ideals and pass them on to their children and students through nature or nurture to the detriment of these younger generations’ mental and emotional stability. Many of these teachers are in positions of power that automatically make them role models to students, yet many of the ideals they idolize and encourage are extremely toxic such as injuries and eating disorders. Too often things like this are taken to the extreme in the arts. One teacher makes a comment about not overindulging on Thanksgiving so that costumes for “The Nutcracker” will still fit in December and an impressionable 10-year-old student will spend all of Thanksgiving working out and minimizing portion sizes on their favorite holiday. That’s just one example of how students don’t understand the consequences of their actions when they are young and completely dependent on the word of their dance teacher. As the impressionable student in that story, I can say I didn’t realize why that comment was wrong until years later. These teachers hold students to a very high standard and believe it’s all to toughen them up. The arts already get a certain stereotype for its femininity and delicacy. To combat that, many performing artists take it to the extreme in order to prove that stereotype wrong. Pain is praised and dancing through a severe injury is idolized. If a performer even dares to put their body’s needs first and take a break to heal, they can be ostracized and isolated and forever viewed as defective no matter how many years have passed since recovery. Matheson states that she often heard her teachers say, “To be a dancer is to be a sadomasochist,” while she was a young student. Besides the obvious hyper sexualization (generally of minors) that statement conveys, it also doesn’t promote a healthy mindset for students to know when their own body is telling them to stop. These artists push their bodies not to the limit but past the limit for a fleeting chance of perfection, rarely recognized by the ones these students want the most from. To deprive young artists of praise and idolize pain and self-harm is just begging to fund a whole host of mental health counselors’ future salaries.

Rowell comes from a slightly different perspective from his years as a theatre manager having to deal with disciplining fellow colleagues who have overstepped. In some cases, these leaders or staff members didn’t understand why what they had done was wrong, and others realized their error and worked on their behavior so it would never happen again. Rowell says that it’s important to recognize that “what’s acceptable then isn’t acceptable now,” defining acceptable as something accepted and not called out rather than something that is okay and harmless. Admitting that truth is the first step in breaking the cycle of abuse and transgenerational trauma in the arts.

So how can we make the change so many of us long to see in the performing arts? Southern Theatre realizes that only bringing the issue of toxic teaching methods in the arts to light is not going to bring about change. For there to be change, there needs to be action. As a student, Jameson says she’d like to see true advocates for students in any educational environment as well as a way for students to anonymously submit complaints about harassment and abuse from teachers and staff. This process should be modeled after the reporting procedures clearly outlined at professional organizations. For both classrooms and professional theatres, if there is substantiated proof of abuse against a teacher, said teacher should be immediately terminated. Additionally, a general policy of not letting a student and a teacher be alone together in a room, especially with a closed door, explicitly defined and understood by everyone in the organization would benefit the safety of all the students. Matheson supports this policy as she states that she always felt more comfortable when a woman was in the studio while a man was teaching. She also thinks that there should be considerably more mental health resources in place for students as they navigate pursuing their dreams. For Rowell, as an educator himself, he believes in having “fearless communication” between himself and his students. “There’s nothing we can’t talk about,” he says. Throughout his career as an educator and leader, he has also learned to be aware of giving people space and realizing that everyone reacts differently to situations. This observance is what he credits to being able to tailor his communication and approach to each student.

All of these toxic teaching methods found interwoven between almost every artist’s experience essentially boils down to an overarching issue. The harassment and abuse used in the name of teaching has taught many young and impressionable students that artistic talent and capabilities are equal to one’s self-worth. It becomes so ingrained in their identity that a correction to technique becomes indicative of a flaw as a human being. And when these corrections are more abusive than helpful, students develop an extremely warped perspective of right and wrong. Just like a toxic relationship between two individuals, many artists find themselves in a toxic relationship with their chosen profession. The love is warped and manipulative, and it’s nearly impossible to break free from. That fear that many students feel is what keeps those at the top of the food chain in power and those at the bottom in abuse. Students deserve to be treated with respect by their teachers because we are all just human beings at the end of the day. Therefore, teachers need to nurture their students as human beings first and artists second, to the benefit of these young artists’ physical and psychological health.