Spring Fever: ENACT’s Busiest Year Ever
It’s easy to get lost in the chaos of a busy spring semester, but ENACT has only gained momentum. We have much to be thankful for, including $750,000 from the City Council for dropout prevention programming, a long-standing and incredibly beneficial partnership with the United Way, and an ever-growing staff of both teaching artists and site directors.
In schools all over New York City (in each of the five boroughs!), ENACT continues to provide both short-term residencies and long-term, whole-school programs, parent and family workshops, staff development workshops, and amazing performances.
According to Emily Weiner, Associate Director of Training and Manager of Performances, teachers have been particularly impressed by the realistic nature of the original ENACT productions, Cooked and 2:45, plays which encourage students to talk about making the right decisions under pressure. “They touch on real issues,” says Weiner, “and we have intensive, thoughtful discussions following every performance.”
To keep up with the demand for more programming, ENACT recently trained seventeen new teaching artists. According to Emilie Ward, Director of Training and Research, the new group has a range of experience but “they all share the high level of passion and commitment needed to creatively engage students.”
This issue of ENACTION takes a closer look at two talented members of the ENACT team, as well as both the “science” and the “magic” of ENACT
Giving Kids Choices
A Conversation with Site Director, Johanna Creswell, LMSW
 In a neuroscience research lab at the National Institute for Mental Health, Johanna Creswell had an epiphany. “I was researching the genetic links to schizophrenia, and I started having the test tubes talk to each other!” she laughs. “That’s when I realized I was missing the more personal side of psychology.”
In the summers, Creswell left the lab for Wediko, a camp for emotionally disturbed youth where she enjoyed working with kids, often employing creative methods like drama to connect with the most challenging campers.
Knowing her love of counseling, her mentors at Wediko encouraged her to apply to graduate school. She was accepted to Columbia School of Social Work, where she worked in dropout prevention programs and crisis counseling.
But Creswell still felt something was missing. “I kept saying, I love what I do in the summer!” She returned from camp, determined to find the “perfect merge” between her creative approach to working with youth and her love of research, one that enabled her to confront the challenges of improving the place where kids spend the most time – school.
Enter ENACT.
In the fall of 2007, Creswell was hired as the Site Director for the City Council-Funded program at Middle School 399. She has since found the school staff, especially Principal Ledda, to be incredibly supportive and willing to help. The students, too, “are really open to being creative. They want extra programming, they want creative arts.”
ENACT works with 63 students at MS 399, a combination of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Creswell counsels four students individually and leads a sixth grade boy’s group and an eighth grade “Strong Young Women’s” group.
Creswell’s status as a member of the ENACT team enables her to bypass the stigmas often associated with school social workers. “That’s how they know me – ‘she’s with ENACT.’ Kids are asking for passes to come to counseling!” But there’s also something particular to the ENACT method that keeps the kids coming back. “We use a strengths-based approach,” she says. Counseling is positive, not accusatory. “We say, these are the skills and tools you bring to the table. Now how are you going to put those into play?”
This strengths-based approach has enabled Creswell to reach out to students in danger of slipping through the cracks. She recalls, in particular, a sixth grader who was barely coming to school at all before ENACT. Through home visits and phone conversations, Creswell established a relationship with the students’ parents and began working with her family to encourage her to attend class as well as sessions with ENACT teaching artists. “She loves school now, she loves the ENACT sessions,” says Creswell. “She doesn’t want to leave!”
How does ENACT encourage this kind of enthusiasm? According to Creswell, it’s all about empowering the students to decide for themselves. “I give them choices,” she says. “The student comes first.”
Creating Dialogue: Onscreen and In the Classroom
An Interview with Senior Teaching Artist, Dennis Pressey
 Dennis Pressey’s voice is everywhere. You may have heard him announcing your favorite show (“On tonight’s episode of…”). When asked about the relationship between teaching and acting, however, Pressey says, “It’s all about listening.” In both situations, it’s crucial to pay attention to your audience. “If you’re not authentic,” he says, “they know it.”
Both listening and “reacting honestly” are skills Pressey honed while working with mentor Martin Barter at Neighborhood Playhouse, skills he has since applied to work in television and film, as well as “lots of voice-over.”
Much of the voice-over work is a post-production process called “looping.” Pressey has “looped” on over 17 films, giving voices to people onscreen by syncing with their lip movements and often employing accents. “I get to be English, Russian, Jamaican, think in the moment and be very spontaneous,” he says.
According to Pressey, spontaneity and thinking “in the moment” are also key to the ENACT method he’s used for the past 15 years. A teaching artist must be able to “address what is going on right now,” he says. The ability to improvise, to step in and adapt accordingly, enables an actor to “transform a classroom.”
Despite demand for his voice-over abilities, Pressey has dedicated himself to several long-term residencies, including Belmont Preparatory, a program whose enduring relationship with ENACT is a testament to the passion of its teaching artists. When asked how ENACT keeps such relationships alive, Pressey claims two reasons: 1) knowing and respecting school staff, and 2) tailor-making a program to fit a school’s particular needs. “A tailor-made suit fits better than a suit you buy in the store,” says Pressey. “We don’t come in with a pre-conceived agenda. That’s a beautiful thing.”
According to Pressey, the ENACT method “creates a dialogue.” Students are often surprised by the simple fact that an adult will sit and listen to what they have to say. “Many students are talked at, not talked to,” says Pressey. “Many are waiting for someone to really listen to them, listen without judgment.”
Needing a role model is something that hits close to home for Pressey. “I grew up in the projects,” he says, “so I’m healing the wounded kid that I was. I’ve been there. I’ve survived it. I’m a living example of someone who came out on the other side of it.” Kids take extra notice of that living example when they see him onscreen. “The kids see you on TV and they see that it’s possible,” he says.
Because of his work at several of ENACT’s long-term programs, Pressey has been able to see the true potential of such possibility. One of his students, a girl who struggled with a mentally ill parent as well as life in the foster care system, found comfort and inspiration in the ENACT sessions. Not only did the program provide her with a safe space to express what she was going through, but also encouraged her artistic abilities. “She’s a brilliant writer,” says Pressey, “and she just got a full college scholarship. To overcome the stuff she did and get a full scholarship, that’s amazing.”
These are the moments that make all his work worthwhile, seeing kids find “alternative ways of acting” despite difficult home environments. “When they start living conflict-resolution,” says Pressey, “when you see those tools being used, you realize you might be saving this kid’s life.”
The Science of ENACT
The Ford Foundation Supports ENACT's Ongoing Research
 ENACT’s teaching artists think both outside and inside the box, or to be exact, inside “the container,” a term fundamental to the ENACT teaching methodology. The word seems like an oxymoron – how can a space with boundaries (with walls, even) be freeing?
Imagine a room where the boundaries make you feel safer and closer to the people who share that space, a quiet space that allows you to concentrate and tap into your creative potential. This “container” is one of the many elements of the ENACT process that the Ford Foundation’s arts and education researchers, Rob Horowitz and Terry Baker, have found so fascinating. In their report, the evaluators defined the container as “a safe space that values the human spirit and provides emotional boundaries that neither overwhelm emotions nor distances them, a key factor that can impede the learning process.”
Setting up the container begins in warm-up activities – theater games that help both students and teaching artists determine the prevailing emotions or attitudes in the room. This leads to scene work which helps students identify and manage feelings. While teaching artists and students are gaining awareness, they are working to build the container, a space for reflecting on those emotions and attitudes. ENACT’s Executive Director, Diana Feldman describes the walls of this container as “a strong embrace” that encourage students to “come out of themselves.”
Along with Emilie Ward, ENACT’s Director of Training and Research, Feldman explores the container in Current Approaches to Drama Therapy (forthcoming in December). According to Ward and Feldman, the container is all about movement. Teaching artists may direct students to either “freeze” or “focus” during theater games to help to create this protective space.
The Ford Foundation’s researchers also see the container as a connector, “a bridge, calling on the use of external experience to connect to internal experience, ultimately allowing for self-knowledge.” In this safe space, students are able to make connections between emotions and reactions, while learning skills to make different choices despite chaotic circumstances. It is this environment that enables ENACT teaching artists to show students how they can choose to amend their own behavior.
Thinking inside the box (the container) becomes a freeing process, one in which students can feel safe to trust, reflect, and change.
The Magic of ENACT
We ask, "What sets ENACT apart?"
ENACT helps me express my feelings in positive ways.
-Jimmy, MS 399 student
ENACT has developed an innovative and dynamic approach to sparking dialogue, promoting inclusion, and effecting positive change both in and outside the classroom.
–High School English Teacher
The magic of ENACT is that a method has emerged over 20 years that changes the dynamics of classrooms and transforms kids’ lives.
–Mark Weiss, Chairperson of the ENACT Board of Directors
The magic of ENACT is the transformation that occurs when the young people really connect with the teaching artists.
–Ilene Mack, Secretary of the ENACT Board of Directors
Special Thanks!
ENACT wishes to thank its many supporters who have made our work possible for over two decades. Special thanks to Councilman Jackson and Councilman Rivera for initiating the Dropout Prevention Initiative, to the City Council and United Way for their generous support, and, of course, to the teaching artists who dedicate their time and talent to schools all over New York City.
For a complete list of ENACT's funders, visit www.enact.org.
Links to ENACT's Partners and Supporters:
United Way of New York City
New York City Council
Ford Foundation
NYC Department of Education
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