Community with Jason Craige Harris – TKS Conversations

Terry Knickerbocker Studio Blog

At TKS, students receive training as actors to portray roles that showcase the intricacies of human relationships, exposing both the challenges and potential for community.

Jason Craige Harris is a consultant who specializes in community, culture, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). He has a strong interest in studying and enhancing human relationships, which form the foundation for fostering belonging and inclusion at Terry Knickerbocker Studio.

TKS: How do you define your role as a consultant on community, culture, and DEI?

Jason: I begin by thinking about relationships as the bedrock of human life – how we relate to each other, see each other, hear and value each other. Humans are social creatures and are inclined to create and maintain community and also to diminish and destroy community. How we understand and respond to those inclinations defines us and our communities.

Community consists of a collection of relationships. Culture is a series of behaviors, thought patterns, and stories that influence and shape community. DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion– are core values that should shape our community and our culture.

TKS: Why are you fascinated with exploring those qualities at the Terry Knickerbocker Studio?

Jason: I view actors as having unique skills that provide tailored access to the empathic imagination – the ability to inhabit stories that are not their own and to use their bodies and voices to fill out life worlds. That’s an incredible resource. It enables actors to reveal the nature of human relations – and the messiness and possibilities of community. 

Exploring community, culture, and DEI within the Terry Knickerbocker Studio, therefore, offers a chance to do that within a school that trains people to enhance their craft of representing the depths of the human experience and human relationships across differences – and that is at the heart of the Studio’s commitment to inclusion. Since exploring human relationships is fundamental to acting, the Terry Knickerbocker Studio needs to be an incubator where acting students can encounter an enriching community experience. To make the greatest difference in the world through their craft, they must first encounter true community in their training.