T&L Post (Sietske Rijpkema)
Last year I had to explain to students the story structures of Javanese shadow puppetry plays, which differs greatly from plot structures in western theatre. The problem is that very few students are familiar with theatre other than western theatre and arranging a plot according to the development of the story in time is considered normal. Presenting them directly with a storyline and story structure they are unfamiliar with seemed to overwhelm them and didn’t seem to last in their memories. I wanted them to think about space, but I tried to make it more concrete instead of keeping it a vague and abstract concept.
In order to get them to think about different ways to arrange scenes of a story, after having discussed the story of Ramayana, I give them a picture of a painting of the Ramayana from Thailand, such as the narrative painting in the Wat Phra Kaew, with the task to find all core scenes and number them (students are provided with a picture of the main characters). The exercise sounds easy, but . In this painting the narrative is arranged not in a chronological fashion as you would see in the narrative panels in churches, but purely on spatiality. The relevant spaces were painted first (and only once) before the painter arranged the characters in it:, therefore all the scenes taking place in the palace are painted in the palace, all scenes in the forest are painted in the forest, all scenes on the battlefield are painted on the battlefield, no matter the chronological order.
When the students start finding and numbering the core scenes, it will be expected that students will have difficulty understanding why the story is not depicted from left to right and the appearance of the same character several times in one space. For example, in the palace Rama appears several times in contrasting behaviour, such as walking out of the palace and entering the palace at the same time. The exercise will be taken home to make the question linger a bit longer instead of giving the solution right away.
The next class this exercise will be discussed classically and the students can give their solutions or talk about the problems they encountered looking at this painting. If they could not find most of the core scenes, they will be given in groups the scenes (cut up) and asked to put those in chronological order (which usually works better). Afterwards they have to find those scenes back in the whole painting and number them. Finally they are asked to consider how the scenes are arranged in the narrative (by that time they usually understand it is by space).
References
Ashwin, P ea, Reflective teaching in higher education, 2015
Brown, P.C. and H.L. Roediger, Make it stick; the science of succesfull learning, 2014
Elkins, S. and C. Evans, Transforming assessment in higher education; a case study series, 2017
Meyer, E and R. Land, Treshold Concepts and troublesome knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines, 2003
Response:
I really love your interdisciplinary approach to getting students to understand this complex cognitive shift: I also often find that a different discipline can help to illustrate something much more clearly than an attempt at a straightforward description, since it allows students a fresh way to to visualise a concept that they might otherwise struggle to understand. I wondered about how you might then use the painting as a way of getting students to stage their own Javanese shadow puppetry plays, and if you might further use this example to get them to think about other ways in which spatial and temporal conventions might be disrupted in dramaturgy? Could they, for example, restage a Shakespeare play (or something else familiar & canonical) along spatial, rather than linear, lines? (Mae Losasso, English Literature)
Response:
On the face of it, your subject matter is far removed from my own scientific teaching. Yet, I find the challenge you face to be a very familiar one. Within the discipline of geology, where I teach, there is a sub-discipline known as sequence stratigraphy. Students struggle with this as it asks them to understand issues of sea-level change, the deposition of sediments and the lowering of the seafloor all from a different frame of reference. Once it clicks they are members of the club for life and can hold a conversation with other initiates. However, getting students to the clicking point is tough! Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your book and approach the problem from the opposite end. That is to say, I should allow my students to see the apparent contradictions evident from the frame of reference they are accustomed to, then allow then to find their own way to the alternative, with a little nudge in the right direction perhaps.
I appreciate that this may seem a little cryptic. Essentially what I'm saying is that, despite the apparent gulf between our respective disciplines, I wonder whether your approach may be the answer to a teaching problem within my own subject area.
Many thanks
Tom Vandyk (Geography Dept)
P.S. Javanese shadow puppetry sound really cool 😊!!!
Linking Lived Experience to Challenging Subject Matter (Alex Watson)
The transmission of knowledge in higher education through methods such as didactic lecturing is well-established and are often essential for universities. However, there is pedagogical evidence to suggest that 'lived experience' is as effective (if not more so) in individual learning. In one of the more challenging sessions I taught in the last academic year, I sought to ease the potential difficulty of the subject matter by actively linking students' lived experiences to what they were being taught. As Robyn Tudor writes in her study of creativity and pedagogy, 'a strengthening appreciation of the crucial influence of lived experience informed by individual intuition' is pivotal in fostering 'an increasingly confident inclination to explore the unknown' (2008: 14-5). Although my subject area of Drama and Theatre is predisposed to embodied modes of learning, this particular session was grounded in advancing theory rather than active performance and so should be applicable to a wide range of disciplines in which teachers look to expound on difficult subjects.
The session was structured around an exploration of debbie tucker green's, ear for eye (2018), a play that includes challenging themes of racial inequality and the validity of protest. I devised two exercises to specifically integrate lived experience into the teaching. The first of these included asking students to share any experiences or perspectives they had of protests or demonstrations (recent occurrences such as the Hong Kong, Brexit, anti-Trump, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations were mentioned). This encouraged students to connect their own interactions with or standpoints on protest to both the challenging themes of the play and relevant critical theory associated with it. The second exercise was based on creating a 'lived experience' in the seminar itself which could be discussed. This was done by asking the students to read a line each from final section of tucker green's play, in which historical British slave codes and Jim Crow laws are recounted. Reading the lines together made the challenging themes and theoretical engagement more 'real' for the students, and they were asked to speak about how speaking and listening to the words made them feel: again, linking their experience to issues of systemic racism.
It must be said that this session also took place later in the academic term, once the students were comfortable with one another. Though under different circumstances these activities and their content may not have been tenable or appropriate, this proved to be effective and could be transposed into teaching other subjects. Overall, the activities helped the students to approach and grapple with the daunting and challenging issues around this play.
Works Cited
tucker green, d. (2018), ear for eye, London: Nick Hern.
Tudor, R. (2008), 'The Pedagogy of Creativity: Understanding higher order capability development in design and arts education', Proceedings of the 4th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education, 4 (online), <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/ 41782455.pdf> [accessed 18.05.2020].
Response
This was a fascinating response to a potentially challenging teaching and learning situation. Racism is such a live issue for some students, but for others less so, and as educators we need to teach all students, as per Tanner. [1]. This multi-stage approach allows students to meet this controversial topic at different levels of comfort and prior experience while still offering a shared experience as a basis for learning.
[1] Kimberley D. Tanner, ‘Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity’, CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 12, 322–331, p. 322.
Response
This is tremendously interesting. In Creative Writing, a lot of what we do ends up drawing on personal experiences, whether explicitly (through forms such as life writing) or implicitly. As a tutor, it is thus essential to create a safe environment, not only for your own discussion, but where students are able to express topics which others might find potentially triggering. I agree that as a term goes on students become more comfortable with one another, yet I still warn students in advance of any particularly challenging themes that might arise (mental health, for instance). I also find that by talking about my own experiences, it defuses some of the anxiety in the room and actively demonstrates that the seminar room is a space for open discussion. (Michael Wheatley, English)
Teaching a familiar but elusive concept (Bomi Choi)
The topic of the seminar that I led was multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is a commonly used concept, but often not clearly understood. My aim, therefore, was to help students to get closer to this familiar but elusive concept. To this end, I actively used individual/group activities.
Firstly, I encouraged students to relate the theoretical concept with their own experiences. Before I give scholarly definitions of the concept, I asked students to consider their own positionality in the multicultural British context. As answering this sensitive question in front of their peers could be uncomfortable, I used the Mentimeter. It allowed students to share their thoughts with the class anonymously. I also asked everyone to share one example of multiculturalism from popular culture. After several minutes of preparation, all students shared their own examples of multiculturalism in pop culture such as film, theatre and novel. This way, nine students got to have nine different examples that could help them to better understand multiculturalism. These examples also naturally mirrored the diversity in the room.
Secondly, I used a group activity to guide students to think about the theoretical concept in a broader context. When explaining multiculturalism and theatre, I introduced the notion of ‘cross-cultural theatre’ which is an umbrella term that encompasses intercultural theatre (transcultural/intracultural/extracultural), postcolonial theatre (syncretic/non-syncretic) and multicultural theatre (multiculturalism/Multiculturalism) (Lo and Gilbert, 2002: 32-38). Using a diagram of the types of cross-cultural theatre (Lo and Gilbert, 2002: 32), I created a group activity of doing a puzzle. It allowed students to speculate and compare the definitions of the similar but different concepts. While each group was piecing together the puzzle, I could observe that the task generated productive discussions around the topic, helping them to understand multiculturalism more comprehensively.
References
Lo. Jacqueline. and Gilbert. Helen. “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis.” TDR: The Drama Review vol. 46, no. 3 (2002): 31-53.
Responses:
Hi Bomi, thank you for this interesting post. Teaching a familiar but elusive concept is really a bit tricky. I like your strategies to deal with this tough task. The individual activity based on the Mentimeter would motivate more anxious students to actively share their personal ideas, while the group activity, namely doing a puzzle, would bring fun elements and also evaluate the students' understanding. By the way, in my class, I found that concept mapping, a graphical tool for organising and representing knowledge (Novak & Cañas,2006), was very useful for individual and collaborative learning. (Xiangming Tao, Management).
Novak, JD, Cañas, AJ (2006) The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct them. Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Available at: http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf
Thank you for sharing your teaching experience.
I like the process that students spoke their own opinions out about a concept before you gave them the scholarly definition. This definitely encouraged their creative thinking! Using diagrams and puzzles to visualise theoretical concepts was also an innovative and useful method to improve student participation.
Thank you again for this interesting post. (Jia Jia, School of Business and Management)
Using technology and virtual lessons to encourage experiential learning (Sidonie Carey-Green)
During the current climate (which I am sure everyone is sick of talking about), learning is restricted to take place online. For a dance student, this presents somewhat of an issue when much of their learning takes place through the body, in a highly practical method. I have started to experiment with my students on the use of scores (such as in improvisation – a set of rules to follow) to re-engage them with practice in their own homes, to find guided movement and to continue their practice.
Some of the scores I have been experimenting with are as follows:
Breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Curve
Drop
Find your centre
Lower your centre
Increase the curve.
Allow lightness
Allow weight
Move the curves through you.
Cut.
Slicing softness in the curve.
Speed.
Soft.
The students are tasked to use these words to find their own movement, and to reflect on this. This could be tailored to reflect on theoretical frameworks from various scholars connected with their module, and encourages a shared experience which we all are craving.
This practice really resonated with me. I think that whilst we are all in our homes more, students should be encouraged to find new learning possibilities in their environments, and new perspectives in their surroundings. This will only serve to enrich the at home 'learning environment'.
I think your idea of using descriptive words to engage with movement is great. It allows students to describe what their movements are but also, going further, be able to convey their movements to others, something which is challenging across online platforms and in a small space when we are in our own homes. (Emily Leggatt, Biology).
I found this post fascinating insight into the ways practice-based research has been affected and rethought through the pandemic. It offered practical guidance on responding to how movement-based research was specifically affected by the prohibitions on movement beyond the study, and how practitioners could recentre their practice under the restrictions. I would love to know more about how students responded to this theoretically. It provides an interesting model for my own discipline where focus on literary embodiment is primarily textual. – Chloe Osborne, PhD English
I find your teaching philosophy brilliant as well as simple. I think teaching message should be as simple as possible so that students can understand and remember by heart easliy even after the course finishes. To live in this virtual environment world, students as well s teachers need to adapt to this new learning systems and design their own way to overcome disadvantages of the virtual learning environment.(Hyosun Choi, Computer Science)
Benefits of Teaching Theatre and Acting in an Online Environment (Xunnan Li)
Active learning and students' own meaning-making are influenced by social, cultural, and contextual elements. Transferring to the online learning environment, students are engaged in new learning contexts. Consequently, teachers seem to have to adopt new teaching methods to meet students' changing needs. However, theatre teaching and acting teaching have highly relied on active learning and students' creativeness. They share similar characteristics with online teaching, including strong direction; clear design; students (players), acting at times alone, and sometimes together, who know what is expected of them; and the atmosphere that is formed by the interplay students, teacher and the elements in the learning space. Therefore, an online learning and teaching environment should not be a challenge but a benefit for theatre teaching.
First, compared with my previous experience of on-ground teaching, I find that teaching online deepens students' engagement and commitment to the group. In the on-ground classes, I used to distribute students into pairs and small groups to take discussions and preparations. People of the same group usually needed 1-2 minutes to move through the classroom to sit together. However, through the 'breakroom' feature of ‘Zoom’ or other online teaching platforms, I'm now able to set up small discussion groups for students within a couple of seconds. I would also be able to call them back when the breakroom ended. To enhance exchanges of ideas and critical discussions, I can do the second or third round of 'breakrooms', so that students can talk in different groups.
Second, for those students who often got nervous and stressed about performing in the physical classroom, an online environment makes them more comfortable doing individual presentations in front of the screen. The students usually pin their own screen when they are performing in the online learning environment. They can see mainly themselves on the screen. The online environment excludes the 'noises' from the audience. The players feel more concentrated on their own creations, which is essential for acting practice and learning.
Reference
Gillani, B. (2003). Learning Theories and the Design of E-learning Environments.Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Philip, R. & Nicholls, J. (2007). Theatre Online: The design and drama of E‐learning, Distance Education, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp.261-279.
Responses:
Thank you for sharing your experience. As a statistics demonstrator I too have had to make adjustments to my teaching style to suit online learning. In comparison to those of you that teach within the arts, my acclimatisation to this new style of teaching seems somewhat menial! It is so refreshing to read of the benefits that online learning platforms have brought to your students. It will be interesting to see whether the provisions zoom enables for those more nervous students has resulted in a sense of increased confidence, and whether this confidence extends beyond the online environment and into the studio/stage? Perhaps a possible silver lining to the very ominous cloud that is Covid-19! (Elise Gear, Psychology department)
It was very interesting and heartening to read about these positive outcomes of online learning in another discipline! Though I have seen some downsides to online learning I have also found the online format to work really well for student confidence in small group discussions. It makes me wonder about future teaching strategies. Will these new tools be retained to complement more traditional teaching methods? (Cathy Smith, geography)
Interdisciplinary offerings (Olivia Lamont Bishop)
As part of the Theatre and Performance Making course, I ran a weekly online seminar to help bolster students understanding of the more theoretical slant of the course and offer them the opportunity to contribute verbally, exercising their analytical skills. I was keen to cover the material on offer, but it became quickly clear that as the course addressed many contemporary, societal issues, that the students were bringing (unprompted) case studies from a host of different creative sectors.
Even though some of the case studies didn’t necessarily relate in the most accurate sense to the course content that week (e.g. the week on improvisation, we discussed graffiti), it allowed for the students to widen their understanding of what they conceived to be theatre and performance studies, therefore aligning with the aims of the course. Additionally, when I began to validate their offerings as being important for the session, I noticed the students were more able to communicate freely, in a more relaxed way.
McIntosh notes that ‘symbols and metaphors are part of our visual literacy and convey messages that other means cannot. Paintings, poems and stories provide us with opportunities for dialogue not possible by more literal language’ (2013: 5-6). In theatre and performance studies, when communicating theoretically, there can be a wonderful harmony between wedding an analytical argument with creative examples, symbolism and metaphor. When the students brought their own examples, dance performances, community work, a YouTube video etc., they began to gain confidence that their own frame of reference was valid for argumentation.
Works Cited
Ed. Paul McIntosh and Digby Warren. (2013). Creativity in the classroom: case studies in using the arts in teaching and learning in higher education. Intellect.
Response:
I agree that it is important to validate student contributions, even if they move slightly away from your intentions for the discussion. In my experience, allowing students to bring 'their own frame of reference' to the issues at hand, at least initially, is a great way to build confidence, which stands them in good stead when challenged to respond to things less familiar. I think it's especially important to foster open discussion in Humanities subjects, where there is rarely a 'right' answer. In fact, student responses can sometimes make me reconsider or expand my own understanding of the subject matter in unexpected ways. (Gemma Holgate, English)
Practice as Research (Agnieszka Jakimiak)
When teaching theoretical approaches towards theatre, I like to address practices that derive from my dramaturgical experience or are connected to the gestures established by theatre makers or choreographers. One of these strategies refers to the idea of practising research and it enables gaining a fresh perspective on one's research, evaluating one's performance or structuring one's work. It is based on so-called "Impersonation Game", as described in "Everybody's Toolbox" - a set of performative strategies assembled by Mette Ingvartsen and Xavier Le Roy among others.
This exercise is dedicated to students working on their own research and are willing to describe and share their thoughts and perspectives on the chosen thesis. Firstly, they need to form groups of four. One person in the group presents their research to the others - in the most detailed and explanatory way it is possible. The task is about giving a significat insight into one's work without being hermetic. The next step belongs to the other members of the group. One by one, they are supposed to "impersonate" the researcher and describe the research as if it belonged to them. The person from whom the research originates works as an interviewer - they can ask questions, inquire about possible ways of expanding the work, ask for definitions and sources.
The objective of this exercise is to expand understanding of one's work by listening to others retelling it, but it also enables the student to see how to talk about one's work so that it becomes comprehensive and easy to follow. By opening the realm for discussion with "impersonators", unexpected and fascinating directions may come to light.
References
Chauchat A., Ingvartsen M, Everybody's Performance Scores 2011
Various Authors (unknown), Everybody's Toolbox 2005
Embodied Learning in a Disembodied Learning Environment (Tim Cowbury)
I was teaching on a module that involved a two-hour lecture in the morning followed by a two-hour seminar in the afternoon. All of this teaching was online. One of the biggest challenges was to keep the students’ learning experience active: given the online format, but also the length of the lecture. This challenge was made yet more acute, I think, by the nature of the lectures on this module. Lectures were supposed to introduce drama students to ideas from beyond their own field, and tie these ideas to theatre/performance examples. This frequently meant discussing complex or abstract theoretical concepts and large social-historical shifts, that the students had little reference point for.
It became clear that the key approach to adopt, in this context, was to break the lecture up with elements other than my voice speaking, at least every fifteen to twenty minutes. As Phil Race notes, ‘students get bored listening for a full hour – and I was lecturing for two! On advice of senior lecturers, I used a lot of audiovisual materials to do this. I was also advised to give students a chance to talk through and experience issues I was introducing. I often did this by encouraging students to relate and have their own experiences in response to ideas I had just discussed. Here I adopted a version of the approach advocated by Mors and Murray, who note the work of Ausubel to emphasise that ‘new information has to link to what you know’ (20). (I also see that Alex Watson, in this T&L space thread, has some useful examples of this from his own teaching practice).
One particular technique that I found effective, here, was to set the students a task that playfully invited them to concretely experience some quite paradoxical difficulties that I was lecturing on. These were difficulties connected to precarious work in a society that deemed all work to be “creative”. Approaching halfway through my lecture, having been through some dense theory including some Marx, I had quoted Oli Mould’s sardonic assertion that, in such a society, ‘you have as much chance coming up with an idea whilst praying, playing with your child or dreaming as you do when you’re at work’ (20). Inviting them to be a bit annoyed at me for doing so, I sent the students “off” for an extended mid-lecture break from their screens, but with one requirement: that they came back from break with a new idea connected to their academic/creative work.
On returning, I polled them on whether they had succeeded in the task, and invited them to share their experience of it. The range of responses showed that there was an embodied and nuanced student understanding developing - around ideas that may have otherwise been hard to access. It also got student voices into the "room" after sending them away from it entirely. And it did this in an informal and (relatively!) fun way, varying the pace, tone and format of the two hours as well as providing time for quiet reflection/digestion amidst a lot of information flying about.
Works Cited
Morss, Kate, and Rowena Murray. Teaching at University : A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers, SAGE Publications, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rhul/detail.action?docID=334556.
Mould, Oli. Against Creativity, Verso, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rhul/detail.action?docID=5517243.
Race, Phil. 2000 Tips for Lecturers, Taylor & Francis Group, 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central,http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rhul/detail.action?docID=1166575.
Responses
This is an interesting technique that I had not quite considered previously! Most of my experience with teaching has been insistently "hands-on /present", with the teacher going on for a bit with the breaks as a chunk of downtime. But to use this downtime to encourage students to make links and ruminate over a mug of tea (which is a more calming setting than in a class) – I’ll have to try it out one day! (Xian, History)
On Taking Up Space: Space and Dialogic Reading (Nicole Acquah)
I had the pleasure of teaching second year undergraduate students on the Drama course at Royal Holloway, specifically the module Acting for Screen. The below is a reflection on an exercise I led on space and dialogic reading.
Drawing from Training the Actor’s Body: A Guide by Dick McCaw, we understand that an actor must be hugely aware of their impact on the space, as well as other performers’ use of space: ‘The shape of your body and the way you stand, sit and walk indicate your personality’ (Lamb in McCaw 206). This can be related to Laban’s definition of what he called the Kinesphere[1] – the imaginary sphere around the body, which we can expand or retract, and in doing so, communicate meaning about ourselves (or to extend further) the characters we play.
When acting for camera, the actor must also be aware of the space afforded by the camera. This includes the space around the frame of the actor’s body visible on screen (for example, is it a close-up, or a mid-shot?), as well as the space an actor can take up in the performance (incredibly limited if the camera is static, which it was for our lessons), as well as spatial considerations such as finding their mark. In addition to practicing in front of the camera throughout the course, thereby softening nerves and leading to more spatial awareness and relaxation, I also led an exercise designed by Royal Shakespeare Company’s vocal coach Cecily Berry, constructed for educators.
With this exercise called ‘Punctuation to Punctuation’, the students moved around the space freely, whilst reciting lines from selected scripts I had provided. When they reached a punctuation mark in the text, they performed an associated action. For example, an exclamation mark required them to jump on the spot, a comma required them to pause before continuing to move, whilst a semi-colon required they turn 90 degrees.
I had never led this exercise before, but the effect it had was getting the students to begin linking movement with dialogue, space with language; this encouraged them to take up more space and discover how their words and the emotions of the characters and stories they were telling affected the space around them; how they could use their entire bodies (not just their facial expressions) to affect emotional and semiotic change. They began to think about the logic of the emotional arc of the scene and to feel freer in their expressions. This was vital as many of the actors tended to freeze when they stood in front of the camera, unused to the restrictions of performing for camera, and nervous at the thought of their actions being magnified by the technical equipment.
Whilst this exercise is intended as a vocal exercise to find the rhythms and semiotics in the written word, I believe it works well to help students find the rhythms and flow in their whole bodies, not just their vocal instruments, and I observed how this exercise made the performing the language of the script a more embodied experience for the students.
References:
Dawson, Kathryn and Bridget Kiger Lee, Drama-based Pedagogy: Activating Learning Across the Curriculum, Intellect Books, 2018
McCaw Dick, Training the Actor’s Body, a Guide, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2017
[1] McCaw Dick, Training the Actor’s Body, a Guide, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2017
Taking the first risk in group discussions
Amy Terry
In the Autumn term I had the opportunity to teach a class on Travis Alabanza’s BURGERZ (2019) which is a solo autobiographical play about violence towards trans* individuals and creating social change. I was brought in to teach this class within a Directing course and as a one off (as it is my speciality), so I had not met and got to know the students beforehand. BURGERZ has traumatic themes of violence, racial oppression, and harassment. I was nervous going into teaching this to a group that I did not know the backgrounds of and wanted to create as much of a safe space as possible.
This led me to looking at my own research and how I deal with these themes in my writing, and I remembered the writing of bell hooks. In Teaching to Transgress (1994) she discusses engaged pedagogy as a practice of freedom and ways in which teachers can decolonise the curriculum as well as break down hierarchies in the classroom. This part especially inspired me in preparation for the class:
When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material (21).
Reading the work of hooks inspired me to go into the class with an openness that I have in my own scholarship regarding my connection to the material I am researching. Embodied understanding is an important aspect of drama research which I hoped to ‘show by doing’. By opening up a discussion with my own personal experience and connection to the material, I was able to create a space where we discussed the social issues around the play and connect them to theory assigned. We also had fruitful discussions on the role of autobiography in both performance and academia. I believe I also created a space where the students felt they could discuss personal experience without judgement but were not obliged to. I think an important part of teaching is to “take the first risk” to get the ball rolling (and may avoid those dreaded silences).
References
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress, Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.