Student Blog: Academic Integrity in Theatre Classes

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of academic integrity? For me it tends to be not cheating on exams or plagiarizing essays. But academic integrity covers so much more than just that.

When you're in school for theatre it's not often you need to show academic integrity in the way stated above. Sure, we all probably write analyses of plays that we watch or read, or on the characters that we're playing, but other than that there aren't really any exams we can take to test our knowledge or skills. Theatre is a much more hands on, project based field of study. A big component of academic integrity that we can apply to our theatre studies is being responsible and reliable when it comes to getting your work done.

When it comes to our acting classes how can we demonstrate academic integrity? This may not be as clear if you are presenting a monologue since it is a solo assignment and it's pretty hard to fake memorizing a monologue. However, a professor can definitely tell when you're not prepared or if you're just making something up on the spot. It's much easier to see where academic integrity comes into play when you are performing scenes with other people. It is important that each person does their part and is prepared for your performance by being fully memorized and knowing their blocking. While this is obviously a standard in professional theatre environments, it is definitely a feat of academic integrity when it comes to acting class. Your classmates are relying on you to do your part of the project, just like in any other class where you have a presentation to make.

This concept can also be applied to technical theatre classes. Whether you're working on a costume piece, a prop, a set design, a light plot, or sound effects, it is important to make sure that the work you are doing is all your own, and if you are working in a group it is important that everyone does their part for the project.

Nothing makes me feel more proud than being able to present a project or perform a scene knowing that I put all of my own effort into it. In fact, I've kept many projects from my technical theatre classes and display them in my apartment today. I know it can be difficult, especially as the semester wears on and burnout sets in, to keep the motivation to do your best work on every project, but as long as the work you do is authentically yours it is something that you can be proud of.