For the rest of the afternoon, the Creating Spectacle class led St. Olaf students in a rousing rebirth of their dearly departed childhood friend, play. This rather spectacular event capped off a semester's worth of collaborative and challenging performance art around campus. From carrying around storytelling "crankies" to enacting shadow puppet shows in the cafeteria, the students of Creating Spectacle have been busy this spring brainstorming, planning, constructing, and bringing to life spectacles, staging their performances everywhere from practice rooms to the library.

Creative collaboration
What is spectacle, you ask? Associate Professor of Art/Art History Irve Dell and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art/Art History Christopher Tradowsky have been asking their students the same question all semester. Described as a cross between performance art and a happening, spectacle's essence lies in creative collaboration. "Spectacle was a vehicle to bring together students with talents in all four fine arts disciplines to work together to do something they would not do in their individual disciplines," Dell says.

Dell and Tradowsky wanted to combat the tunnel vision that can come with serious study of any of the fine arts. Designing Creating Spectacle as an "interdisciplinary and, to some extent, anti-disciplinary" course, they aimed to push students beyond the boundaries that inevitably form between disciplines that typically meet, practice, and perform in separate spaces around campus.

When they first met with the 22 student artists, dancers, actors, and musicians that make up the class, they impressed this uniquely cooperative aspect of the course upon them. "We don't want you to abandon your rigor as it refers to technique, but throw out everything else," Dell told the class.

Their students intuitively embraced the opportunity. "As an art major at St. Olaf, we have a liberal arts art major," notes studio art and environmental studies major Sheila Novak '12, "meaning you cannot just adhere to one medium while ignoring other mediums. Creating Spectacle has challenged me as a visual artist in ways outside of my comfort zone. I have been required to mold my appreciation for perfected shapes and beautiful imagery around a very public and active art-making."

For dance major Timmy Wagner '11, Creating Spectacle presented a unique opportunity to invigorate his art. "I took this class because it offers a chance to work collaboratively and across disciplines," he says. "I wanted something that might expand my horizons as a dance artist, and not only by becoming a proficient technician of dance."

A lesson in democracy
The collaborative bent of the course, while stimulating much of the class's vital creative fusion, wasn't all fun and games. As Dell frankly notes, "It's hard to get 24 people even remotely on the same page."

Brainstorming to plan spectacles took up many class hours, in between films and lectures on performance art as well as the occasional campuswide game of "follow the leader." With so many artists in one room, says Novak, "We can blossom ideas in speeds that are breathtaking. Unfortunately, this yields some arduous discussions and debates when it comes to sifting through ideas in order to decide on what we are actually going to do."

Opting for a democratic model, the class held votes on each of the innumerable decisions regarding the spectacles they staged throughout the semester. "There were a lot of votes — it was the joke of the course," says Dell. "Things went as well as they possibly could, but it was so slow, so painful. I think the lesson of the pain of a true democracy was valuable."

Preparation for the avant-garde
Tradowsky and Dell hope the creative fusion their students have been engaging in over the semester won't vanish with the class's conclusion. For Dell, the goal of the course has been to "give them a taste of what's possible. Then they go back to what they're doing and think about it differently. An actor goes back to theater and considers bringing in a visual artist."

Moreover, impresses Dell, the collaboration implicit in spectacle is fast becoming the norm in the contemporary art scene. "Out in the real art world, this is some of the most exciting work being done. If we're going to send these kids out of here, they can't just be in these little worlds," he says.

But leave those thoughts of the future to the adults. The students in Creating Spectacle didn't choose to resurrect play just to put it on their resumés. In contrast to the sometimes grinding routine of a typical course load, "our class has been open to spontaneity," says Wagner, "and this has led to some wonderfully fun and enlivening times."

The Creating Spectacle class will be exhibiting the implements of a semester of spectacle through the end of finals. To find the exhibit, enter Dittmann Center from the east, and turn right at the hearse.