Somebody argue with me, here.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Must we only sing in chorus?
Energy theater participants often seem to feel that they need to reach consensus about what to do before they do it. Today I got asked to join a group because they needed more people, and when I got impatient with the talking and said, "Can we try doing it?" they said they had not decided what to do yet, so no, we could not do it. On the one hand this makes sense - it's a multiperson representation, so maybe we have to agree before we can proceed. On the other hand... must we always and only talk talk talk? It's not the only means by which to communicate, and it's not a particularly reliable language in which to convey what energy does. If you say the energy "goes away," do you mean it goes somewhere else, or it disappears? What do "dissipate" and "absorb" mean? etc. Actually walking it through gives us all a lot more to work with, especially since you can talk at the same time. And who said there had to be consensus before we move a muscle? Can we only sing in chorus? Why not just everybody get up and do what they think ought to be done, and talk while you do it if that helps us all understand? Our movements can be part of the consensus-building conversation, rather than requiring that conversation to be only verbal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
i will now argue with you. your view is too pessimistic of how much extraverbal expression is in fact being taken up, or maybe you are just impatient with the slow rate at which it is being taken up. but, i see it being taken up. i think we in western society and especially in school have really developed a long tradition of an exclusive diet of hyperverbal expression. so, i think it is a stretch for teachers and students (anyone who is used to our educational system) to learn to do explicitly embodied thinking. anyway, i see individual people expressing proposals for group action with their own actions. as in, "we could..., like this." i also saw yesterday afternoon in year 1, in the group that stayed in the classroom during breakout ET sessions, that a certain guy with blond hair and a blond goatee was really trying (suggesting multiple times) that the group just do the first step that they knew and go from there, which i saw as him recognizing that their perspective would be altered by doing the first step and being there, talking, planning, etc. while standing where they had left off, or paused.
ReplyDeleteso, in summary, i do not think we ARE singing only in chorus, and it takes us some time to warm up.
i feel i must add: even if you are exactly right and it is just plain frustrating not to get the rich data you want (as it is sounding to me), it is still a finding that people are reluctant (at least at first) to transmit on these other channels!
ReplyDeleteOf course I am not there, but I am reading as I think about Benedikt being there. Hope my comments fit in...
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like people are having a hard time knowing what to buy in to. Buy-in and start-up take time in unfamiliar situations. Are the teachers (I'm thinking the first year folks) aware of the value in energy theater? What might they need to learn in order to find that value? I'm really curious, because I'm totally enamored of ET, and worry a lot about issues of uptake, lately.
(typos? Writing on my iPod. Sorry.)
@hunter, you're right I was feeling impatient (or alternatively, eager). i like your phrase "long tradition of exclusive diet of hyperverbal expression." it is partly about me getting data, and partly about them and me getting to the intellectually fun part: the exciting work they do in the more richly featured space. i am always in a hurry to get to the fun part.
ReplyDelete@michael, it seems like sam got some really efficient buy-in in her maine workshop, which was modeled on hunter's workshop in yakima. what did you observe her doing that helped people get right to it?
Even in my Maine workshop, people talked about it for a while before they started doing it. I have observed numerous times that people talk about it, get stuck, then do it, and immediately get unstuck. I have also heard participants reflect on this experience at least twice, recognizing that they had to do it in order to really figure out what was going on. I think it's inevitable that they will spend some time talking first, but instructors can speed this process along by encouraging them to start trying it as quickly as possible. I just witnessed Lezlie doing this really effectively this morning. Rachel, I think you might have not have had much luck persuading them because you were perceived as a participant, not as an instructor. An instructor probably has a little more clout to say, "Hey, trust me, just try it even if you don't know what you're doing."
ReplyDeleteAs a participant in Maine I would like to "defend" the talking at the beginning by picking up Hunter's notion of talking being the primary means of communication in western societies. I would agree that it comes most natural to most people in such societies to talk to each other at first. But let's not forget that while talking, most of us also gesture a lot! Is the gesturing part of the theater? The preface to the main act, maybe?
ReplyDeleteAnd also, let's not forget the emotional aspects of communication. A bunch of people who don't know each other might first of all use a type of communication that they are very familiar with and that they think they have control over. Ah, that would be talk, by the way, just in case you were wondering ;-) I think that people might at first be hesitant in acting something out, afraid of making a fool of themselves, embarrass themselves. With some talk, this initial nervousness goes away as people begin getting to know and getting more comfortable with each other.
At least this was my impression while participating in a workshop with lots of people that I didn't know (and some people I know very well).
Maybe some kind of a "theatrical pre-activity" can help decrease the hurdle and encourage people to engage in bodytalk, embarrass themselves, etc...
Also, I disagree to the statement that teachers and students might not be able "to learn to do explicitly embodied thinking." This is merely an emotional response on my part. I don't think that teachers and students are so stuck in the culture of the educational system. This might be very optimistic but I believe that given time and good learning opportunities with the necessary affordances (whatever those might end up being) it is possible for teachers and students to learn embodied thinking.
Finally a note on the buy-in in Maine, there were many workshops offered, and only a very small part of the conference participants actually came to the energy theater workshop, quite a few being members of the PERL group. Furthermore, some of the participating teachers mentioned that they went to the workshops on kinesthetic astronomy the day before. So it seems that some of the workshop participants were strongly interested in this kind of "learning strategy" and were therefore highly motivated to get right into it. So, it might just have been an issue of having the right audience...
Wow, I just realized that I crafted a novel, there. I apologize for the lengthiness of my comment...
ReplyDeleteSorry, me again. I totally forgot another (in my opinion) major point. In our group, we had to talk about some things before we could start doing the theater. We had to make sure that we all understood the rules of the energy theater, had to establish some common ground (Which "kinds" of energy? What were the rules, again? Do we include heat and work? Which letters do we use to indicate the different forms of energy?). While we might have been able to do that using other means of communication, I feel like talking about it was the most effective way to ensure that all of us are on the same page.
ReplyDeleteOK, stepping down from the soap box, now...
Benedikt makes a good point about people getting comfortable together before acting.
ReplyDelete"Maybe some kind of a "theatrical pre-activity" can help decrease the hurdle and encourage people to engage in bodytalk, embarrass themselves, etc..."
Last year I took a couple improv classes, and the instructors there have fantastic, easy warm-up exercises to get groups of strangers slightly more comfortable acting together. Five minutes of word association in a standing circle helped us realize there really are no wrong answers, and helped us realize that our stupid answers weren't that important--the exercise just kept going.
If you want to expand the energy theater toolkit, I recommend taking a look at improv work.