Teaching Artist Spotlight: Jackie Torres

by Gabrielle Guz, BAE Journalism Intern

Most agree with the old adage that the early bird gets the worm, but BAE Performance Poetry teacher Jackie Torres stands in staunch opposition. She says that knowing one’s specific passion early-on isn’t a sign of success. Really, it isn’t. Especially if it’s only one specific passion. When inhabiting a world of multi dimensions, why limit yourself to just one passion?

More than that, she goes even further and claims that following directions isn’t always productive, a stance few teachers take. It doesn’t lead to serendipitous discoveries. For Jackie, there is nothing more impressive than an individual who is undefinable, unbending to labels, and someone who doesn’t care to be judged for not adhering to the matrix that has become the “traditional” education system. It’s become a system that, she explains, has undervalued the ultimate characteristic of an actually successful person: curiosity. Jackie embodies what it means to be curious. Oftentimes, when reflecting on contemporary society and what the status quo considers “successful,” she asks herself: “At a time in our country now with such rampant anti-intellectualism, how do we create individual and personal scholars outside of academia?”

That question and her curiosity are what inspired her to teach Performance Poetry at Broadway for Arts Education (BAE). She wants to release young people from the distorted thinking that “traditional” learning will reward them if that is their only focus. She says that, instead of simply “filling in” a space in the restrictive teacher-student dynamic, BAE has allowed her to expand on her mission. She is more like a mentor guiding her students to understand which passions feel natural to them. Part of what inspired her to nurture a “nontraditional” approach to education were the words of one of her favorite educators, one who informed many decisions she has made on her creative career path.

She was 13 when she took an acting class with him. Surrounded then by peers who had been in that practice since early childhood, she felt inadequate and considered herself a late bloomer. “The way the academy structures are set up, I always felt like I was behind and I was not a legacy student and I did not start with dance and acting when I was 2 years old,” she said. “It was a matter of affordability and I did not have an interest that I felt very specific about until I was a teenager.”

Her instructor, however, alleviated her. While he set up high standards for her and other students, he also gave them life advice that, to this day, she remembers: “He used to say that ‘You are not going to make a lot of money, but you’ll be very happy with the choices you make if you follow what comes to you naturally.’” He had a passion for his job that he was adamant about sharing with his students.

The greatest lesson she took away from him? Do not let other people influence what is right for you. Passion isn’t passion when it emerges from a need to belong to a fast-paced, invalidating society. Passion comes from a deep reckoning with one’s self-identity and personal desires,  not mere projections of what others want you to be. That thinking informed her decision, years later, to drop out of college, or “traditional” acting school, and pursue what actually served her: playwriting, acting, creating poetry, organizing artistic collectives, and so on. College felt unnatural and difficult. Not only was it expensive, but it was also structurally restrictive and arbitrary.

“Much of the expectations and exercises that we were required to do did not make sense to me. I did not feel like I was benefitting from a performance standpoint,” she said. “What acting school hammers into performers is this idea of becoming a disembodied vessel.” 

“Traditional” education, in her view, is focused mainly on teaching skills that are marketable and saleable, which while useful in creating “perfect professionals and workers,” is dismissive of the fact that “none of our lives are linear.” Learning from the mistakes of her professors, she says: “My job [as an educator] isn’t to stir my students into a particularly different direction or to make them fall in love with the arts,” she says. “All I want is to give them tools to put in their toolbox.” Those include communication skills, public speaking, and critical thinking, so that they could become life-long learners filled with curiosity and drive.

For Jackie, she hopes that her students could see the world in a similar way by thinking about their internal processes and examining the role that they play, not just as artists, but as human beings, in the larger world.Breaking down your walls, learning who you are amid all the noise, bravely grappling with life’s non-linear tendencies, and opening yourself to passions outside your comfort zones are all signs of success - not grades.

It’s enough to make you wonder, did the early bird settle for the worm too soon?