The art of collaboration
By D.K. Iversen
Dustin Suggs is passionate when talking about the possibilities of interdisciplinary studies in working as a fine arts therapist with autistic children. “Theater and helping children grow are my two big passions,” he said following rehearsal on the set of Metropolitan State University’s spring theater production, The Water Engine.
A senior at Metropolitan State with a theater major, Suggs was born in Connecticut and raised in the Twin Cities. Following graduation from Eden Prairie High School in 1999, he enrolled at Iowa State University as a history major.One year later, he moved back to Minnesota.
“I got a serving job and just tried to figure out how to live life,” Suggs explained. “I fell into working with kids with autism for about six or seven years before I decided I was going to try to get my special education licensure.” He subsequently decided he didn’t want to just teach in a classroom.“I was much more interested in the therapeutic side of working with autistic kids.”
According to Suggs’ experience, autism is more closely a social disorder rather than a cognitive disorder. “There’s always some trigger,” he informed. “It’s about identifying what those triggers are and then you can teach the child skills for self-identifying those triggers and self-regulating the responses.”
Fine arts therapy for autistic youth is an evolving field that Suggs first experienced while working with a music therapist at a summer camp for kids with autism.“It’s not just about music and sound,” he described. “It’s about the activity of self-expression. It’s about things that are far more theatrical than just music therapy.
“The reason why I think I’m so attracted to that and why the theater training that I’m getting here [at Metropolitan State] is useful ... is because the way that you think about theater, the way you think about a character and analyzing a character, it’s really just trying to figure out why this character, this person, is doing the things that they’re doing. It’s analyzing the behavior and so much of what I’ve learned with the job of working with this population of kids is to try to identify what their actions are trying to say that their voices can’t say or what these misguided behaviors are really representing on an emotional level.
“The theater teaches empathy and inquisitiveness about emotional intention … It’s about reading what’s happening and taking meaning from other people’s actions and then allowing that to have an influence on what your actions are.
“That’s what the twofold part of my master plan of autism and the arts is,” said Suggs, in providing therapeutic experiences for children to learn life skills and how to express emotions “so that those ideas, the brilliance of a lot of these kids, gets the chance to come out through a filter that is safe.”
Suggs is currently considering an internship at the Stages Theater Company in Hopkins. “It’s a youth theater organization,” he explained. “In addition to their main stage shows, they also do summer workshops for kids.”
When Suggs began taking classes at Metropolitan State, he included an acting class taught by Camille D’Ambrose.“It reminded me of what I was so passionate about in high school,” he said.“The skills that I was learning in that acting class, I found very useful in the other things I was pursuing.”
Suggs describes his passion for theater and creating art as “a wonderful thing ... It’s not just a theater degree.It’s also a humanities degree, a sociology degree, just without those titles ...You’re studying human behavior, how the mind works.You’re studying how the self sometimes deceives itself, like how your actions and your words sometimes don’t come together.By studying that in scripts, and by studying and watching people in class perform or direct and whether you believe their actions and their words or not, it is training for deciphering what’s happening out there in the real world.”
The value of Metropolitan State’s theater program is unique. “It’s a different beast than a typical college because the students are atypical,” noted Suggs. “What they can expect from the theater program is similar to a small production company of creative collaborators ... They’re a great group of educators because they all have [professional] experience and they all have a big investment in a process that is about discovery rather than a process that is about lecturing, so they allow the students in the class and the participantsin the productions to really take a lead in the creative process.”
As president of Theater Underground, a Metropolitan State student organization, Suggs stressed that students do not have to be theater majors to be involved with Theater Underground or its productions.
“It’s an extracurricular activity that any student can be involved in but it’s also a big part of the education process if theater is your major,” because of the hands-on practical experience each production provides.
When asked about his lead role in Metropolitan State’s upcoming production, Dustin modestly noted, “It’s an ensemble piece ... It’s a play by David Mamet called The Water Engine and takes place in the 1930s but it deals with energy issues and corporate corruption and what innovation is, so I think it’s very relevant to things that are going on right now with the energy crisis and the plans in our nation [and] the world, to come up with new and more efficient technologies.”
According to Suggs’ experience, exposure to the theater as a student, participant or audience member enriches and empowers the self regardless of one’s primary interests or areas of study. It is the theatrical experience that encourages people in self-discovery by developing and articulating an authentic voice.
Suggs discovered the collaborative nature of theater compelling and rich with transferable skills.Because theater is a collaborative art, “more than any other activity I’ve been involved in,” he observed, “not only is it you doing your part, it’s allowing others to do their part as successfully as they can and providing them with the support and encouragement to take risks; risks in a way that you don’t take anywhere else in life.”
The Water Engine by David Mamet opens at 7 p.m. on Thurs. March 25, at Metropolitan State University’s Minneapolis Campus in the Whitney Stagedoor Theater off Loring Park, at 1424 Yale Place. The parking ramp is at 15th Street and Hennepin Avenue.
Additional performances are March 26, 27 and 28 at 7 p.m. There will also be a matinee on March 28 at 2 p.m.Students, staff and faculty are admitted free with ID. General admission is $5. Reservations are encouraged as space is limited. Call (612)659-7222 to make a reservation.