Improvising With and In

12 Apr Improvising With and In

Since 2016, I’ve been editor of a series of books—Studies in Play, Performance, Learning and Development—published by Palgrave Macmillan. I’m proud of the nine books I helped to get written and published. Every one of them has made important contributions within and across education, psychology, youth development and theatre/performance studies, and offered fresh ideas, practices, and evidence to challenge the individuated, acquisitional view of human learning and development. Through the lens of play and performance, the authors illustrate what children, teens and adults are capable of when given the opportunity to co-create environments that support their creativity and becoming.

The most recent book in the series is Improvising With and In Higher Education—All Together Now. Conceived of and edited by Luke Perone (a faculty member at the University of Washington-Tacoma and an East Side Institute Associate), the book features 20 authors sharing their work and speaking with each other concerning the question: What new approaches to higher education are possible with and because of improv activities? The authors illustrate the power that improv activities with and in higher education have to co-create revolutionary opportunities for holistic human development, learning, community building,

The book is delightfully unusual in its format—not a series of isolated voices, but a collectively created conversation among the authors. As one reviewer put it, “Through their creative process in developing the book, the authors have demonstrated its very thesis – with an improv mindset and wholehearted collaboration, new and exciting ways of being in academia emerge!”

Improvising With and In Higher Education is also the last book in the series. I decided to step down as editor, mainly because I do not want to support the way academic publishing now does business.

I’ve always been troubled that as an author, you don’t “own” your book—the publisher does. You cannot share it with colleagues, students, friends and family unless you or they buy it. This is disturbing! As one example,100s of people request (on Research Gate and other platforms) to read something published of mine, and I have to tell them that I’m not allowed to send it to them. And that’s not all. If you want to quote from your own published writing in something else you’re writing, you have to get permission from the book’s publisher—and sometimes pay a fee!

And that’s not all. There is a certain style and format that’s required for publication by an academic publisher. It is distant and distancing (you cannot say “I”), and formulaic.

I begrudgingly put up with this with books I wrote both on my own and with Fred Newman. (It helped that the publisher of most of our books, Routledge and other imprints of Taylor & Francis, were reasonable and gave us lots of leeway.)

But when I became a series editor, it wasn’t just me anymore; it was the authors of the books I commissioned. Most were newer scholars and practitioners who wanted to tell their stories of research and practice, of the people they worked and played with, and of those whose work influenced them personally. And they wanted to tell these stories the way they felt did them justice.

I encouraged and supported them them through negotiations with Palgrave (arguments at times) and, in most cases, the publisher reluctantly gave in, but not without months of delay in publication. A case in point: For Improvising With and In Higher Education, editor Luke Perone and the authors had to fight hard to use language in keeping with the subject of the book—Act I, Act 2, Scene 1, Scene 2, etc.—instead of the usual Part I, Part II, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. There is something very wrong with a system that belittles the integrity of a piece of writing and does not respect its authors.

That has been much of my experience as a series editor for Palgrave Macmillan.

And that’s not all! Somewhere in the middle of the series, they upped their prices to well over $100 for both hard copies and ebook versions. This pricing severely limits who can and will read this and so many other worthwhile, groundbreaking, inspiring books.

All is not lost, however. We can “improvise with and in” the publishing institutions in ways that meet our needs and not just theirs. And we can improvise outside of it and remake creatively what it means to publish. Leave a comment or write me (lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org) if you’re interested and/or have ideas.

Books in the series Studies in Play, Performance, Learning and Development

Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth: Creating Positive Social Updrafts through Play and Performance, edited by Peter Smagorinsky

Creative Collaborations through Inclusive Theatre and Community Based Learning: Studies in Transition. Lisa A. Kramer & Judy Fredman Fisk

The Search for Method in STEAM Education. Jaime E. Martinez

Storytelling in Participatory Arts with Young People: The Gaps in the Story, Catherine Heinemeyer 

Contemporary Theatre Education and Creative Learning: A Great British Journey, Mark Crossley

Applied Theatre and Intercultural Dialogue: Playfully Approaching Difference, Elliot Leffler

Witnessing Change: Applied Theatre and Youth Agency, edited by Nicola Abraham & Sylvan Baker

Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers, Dan Friedman

Improvising With and In Higher Education—All Together Now, edited by Luke Perone