Wright believes that Drama is fundamental to our pedagogy primarily because it requires that the learner be encouraged to learn in an embodied state (Wright 2007). Furthermore, Hennessey states his concern for the inseparability of cognition and rationality from artistic feeling and creativity. He makes the point in the section ‘Learning through Feeling’, that ‘the most important lessons we learn in life are such that their significance to us cannot be characterised in terms of having acquired new facts' (Hennessey 1998, 194). Everett further develops this thinking with reference to Lecoq’s integrated approach:
The last hundred years have seen a shift away from the body/mind dichotomy towards a re- integration of the corporeal, manifesting in a new paradigm of 'embodiment' which positions body, mind, culture and environment as mutually determinant (Everett 2008, 73).
Drama theorists, including Bertholt Brecht’s political didactic exploration of acting (Brecht 1986; Broadhurst 1999), Antonin Artaud’s essentialism (Artaud 1958; Broadhurst 1999), Constantin Stanislavski’s psychology of the actor (Stanislavski 2013; Stanislavski and Hapgood 1981; Whyman 2008), Jerzy Grotowski’s concept of transmission (Grotowski 2002; SCHECHNER and Wylam 2013), Augustus Boal’s sensory, memory, muscular, emotional and imagination (Boal, C. A, and McBride 1979) and Peter Brook (Brook 1989, 2008; Boal 2005) all allow us to observe the very notion of embodiment through performance. Their works explore the art form of acting and the reciprocal nature of the art form.
The adoption of these theories in Drama in Education has meant that a rich embodied history is available to all educators. However, within this embodied learning we continue to see theory fraught with language dichotomies. The spoken and written language offers a wealth of knowledge and understanding, although if it goes unembodied it can become yet another imposed binary (talking about drama, versus doing drama). Doing Drama is the embodied state of learning as opposed to theorising the processes. In line with this thinking, is the importance for students to experience their teacher as embodied in their learning.
In ‘The Teacher’s Body’ (Grummet 2003), we learn how important the embodied teacher is for quality learning to occur. Franklin suggests, ‘to be possessed of glory in the dynamics of teaching and learning is to be embodied and honour the embodiment of others’ (Franklin in, Freedman et al. 2012, 20). When I speak of the embodied teacher I mean the embodied experience, embodied teaching, embodied sexuality, embodied lives and embodied histories of teachers and the teachers sharing this with their students. The embodied teacher is required in the authentic production. The production teacher shares their craft through embodied experiences and history. Similarly, Eisner explains, ‘to experience, the qualitative relationships that emerge in his or her work’ (Eisner 2004, 5), allows students to make judgements that they cannot experience when they are not engaged in an embodied state of learning. The production lends itself to this embodied form of teaching and learning, it allows the learner and teacher a relationship that transcends the classroom and the page. This transcendence, in effect, is important in engaging the student at a level that is both interesting and sustainable - this allows quality learning to take place (Wankel and Blessinger 2012; Baldwin 2009; Anderson 2011; Grainger, Goouch, and Lambirth 2005; Anderson and Dunn 2013; Aubusson, Ewing, and Hoban 2012).
Students working together make the process of mastering articulation accessible. Vygotsky’s theory of education supports this idea that collaboration underpins the development of literacy skills (Kozulin 2003). Furthermore, the ability to embody the spoken word also has the benefit of making meaning, allowing the writer to ‘feel more alert to the world’ (Anderson 2002). The involvement of the whole body, and not just the organs of articulation, is important in the adoption of the rhythms and patterns of standardised English (Algeo and Butcher 2013; Ong 2002; McCallion 1999; Langman 2014) From this understanding of how language can be experienced and enriched, it is a small step to ask what else can be learnt from ‘embodying’ learning, from experiencing intellectual challenge in the whole body, not simply as a ‘mind’ process. The production as a form of performance offers an embodied learning. This is informed then by performance discourse that is concerned with embodiment.
Examples of performative embodiment can be found in the postmodern dance of the 1960’s Judson Dance Theatre, distinguished by the ‘willingness to freely incorporate elements of pedestrian movement –’ (Copeland 2004, 231). Dempster (2008) suggests that the ordinary or pedestrian
movement has since been used to dichotomise dance to fit into the modern understanding that you are either a trained dancer or non-dancer. This way of thinking that a person is either a dancer or non- dancer disregards the embodied state of dance and the possibility that all bodies dance.
Earlier examples of performative embodiment can be found in the fluidity of Isadora Duncan’s movements which‘expand upward and outward from the chest to flow through the entire body’ (IDDF 2005), which could be considered to be devoid of conscious mind control. This type of embodiment experienced through dance of the pedestrian or everyday person, and what they have to offer as performer, is of real interest to the concept of embracing a school production within the school day. The context of the production usually includes the process of interpreting text rather than text interpreting the embodied or the lived experience. I propose that an interpretation of lived experience needs to happen for our young people to truly create embodied works and thus learn creatively. The creative learning of the students who collaborate on construction of a collectively imagined production is both pedestrian and embodied.
While some students bring with them acting and dance training, predominantly the students involved in production are pedestrian. Students bring with them all types of experiences from their worlds, some are more pedestrian in their approach than others. When choreographing with students I observed those students who had no background in dance willingly taking direction from those who have had dance (Kaufmann 2006) lessons. These students, who bring experience, carry varied levels of understanding and often bring ideas and ideals that extend the pedestrian.
Where the lived experience of each child involved is accepted as important and valued (Cole 2008), the dance training that some students have requires some support in the notion of working equitably. The idea that some students are more physically able (Kaufmann 2006; McCutchen 2006), those who have dance training as opposed to those who do not, is remarkable and requires some breaking down of barriers to allow those who feel less physically able, to participate fully (Kochhar-Bryant and Heishman 2010). More specifically, in relation to the title of this thesis, The School Production – To be or not to be?
Mary-Rose McLaren identifies the learning as:
‘A way of learning in the whole body – learning that engages the emotions as well as the mind; that is expressed in the arms and the legs and the fingers and the toes as well as verbally or in writing. For some children the present is so overriding, so overwhelming, that we need to meet them right there in the present, and place the opportunities to learn right where they are at that moment.
From the above you can move into literacy activities if the children are ready, or into dramatic scenes, or music composition, or debate and discussion, or artistic
representation, or data collection and graphs. But this movement comes from the child, involved in the learning, gently guided, and offered opportunities to be themselves as learners. It is about being and being learners’ (McLaren 2010).
Grosz asserts the need to de-privilege some forms of textualisation over others, ‘for example the verbal or linguistic over the visual or the performative’ (Grosz 1994, 11). Lovat eloquently places an argument for the latter in our schools: ‘If there are ways in which anxiety can be minimized and self- confidence grown through schooling, then we must be proficient in those ways’ (Lovat and Smith 1995, 51). Lovat describes what is needed to educate students who can reach their goals as per Maslow’s psychological theories based on the hierarchy of needs (See Appendix 2 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). He contrasts ‘Gagne, as being far more inclined to want to guide or structure any discovery processes’ (Lovat and Smith 1995, 51). Either way it is evident that the preferred outcome for a student is to reach their optimum potential in a self-growing fashion.
Being a member in community space can have an effect upon a person’s ability to be an embodied learner. The timetabled education model of learning is known for requiring an enclosed space (Deleuze 1992), where everything can be measured and controlled. The production space that resides outside of the controls and confines of the timetabled model of education, allows students the
opportunity to experience this freedom of space and time. The possibilities presented when the structure of class expectations are lifted from students is an exciting and freeing experience to witness. We see this through self-directed learning where students have the freedom to explore content and discover meaning (De Boo 1999; Watt 1989).
When students’ confines are lifted and replaced with a freedom to be in the space and actually make work where they are embodied, rather than only contemplating the text which traditionally is where performance comes from. The Authentic model requires students to workshop, re-write, re-invent and create. In engaging in the collaborative process, a connectedness with the space and the people with whom interaction takes place in the moment to make performance becomes evident. This collective imagination phase, (Cammarota and Fine 2010; Murphy 2012; Hayward 2012) where students understand each other’s imaginings and finish phrases of imagination through movement and word requires students to be present in their learning in the ‘potential space’ (d'Entrèves 2002) of their collective project. It requires the space and time to be free from restrictions placed upon the usual classroom. It calls also for connection beyond the school community.
Equilibration is also an important concept in this context. Csikszentmihalyi (1993) explained the necessity for the adolescent student to be allowed to use their bodies in their education as a means of reducing the need for behavioural management, in his theory based upon ‘flow state’ (See Appendix 3 Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow State). When we disallow the student to be embodied we set up a state of confusion and a meandering apathy among our learners (O'Loughlin 2006). While educators
acknowledge that there are different ways of learning that appeal to us (Gardner 1983; Pritchard 2013; Baum, Viens, and Slatin 2005; Gould 2012), we struggle to include the embodiment of the students in the Broadway model of production practice where the hegemonic heterosexual scripts are preferred (Agnew and Duncan 2011, 486).
The embodied student in curriculum is one that is of great interest in the theory of teaching and learning. One example of a theory attempting to address this is that of, Marcia Tate’s theory, that, ‘Shouting Doesn’t Grow Dendrites’ (Tate 2007). Tate addresses behaviour management by offering students engagement activities rather than requiring them to simply sit and listen. She suggests
varying lighting, smells and using mood music in order to improve the capacity of the student to learn. Tate’s (Tate 2007) theory is limited, however, because the action happens alongside the passing on of knowledge, rather than the creation of knowledge being embedded in the action, or experienced in the action. In contrast, the very nature of a theatrical production is a rich experience of the senses,
offering the student an experience of ‘flow state’ whether via performance on stage, creating or applying technical skills such as lighting and sound or via another facet of the theatre.
Sir Ken Robinson advocates for the education of the whole person and speaks in his TED talk of the human, ‘being educated in one side of the brain and then slightly to one corner, where scholars look upon their bodies as a means to transport them to meetings’ (Robinson 2009). The authentic school production requires the student to learn in an embodied fashion and requires them to create through collaboration with other students, teachers and community.
Over time and in the past, more often than not, teachers were conditioned to learn in the ‘chalk and talk’ approach and many have become accustomed to teaching in the same way. Deviating from this standard of teaching is often seen as ‘innovative’, rather than the ‘standard’ being seen as stagnant. The Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) registration to teach process focuses largely on two subject areas as a prerequisite (Victoria 2010) to registration. Similarly, in Tasmania, a teacher is required to have two subject areas to teach. Such requirements further embed the thinking that secondary teachers teach ‘subjects’ rather than students.
This notion of teaching subjects has been challenged in popular media for many years, with heroic images of teachers being constructed from those teachers who address the needs of individual students. To Sir With Love (Braithwaite 2005) and Freedom Writers (Gruwell 1999) are both examples of what can happen when the teacher teaches beyond the subject. In the book, To Sir With Love, first published in 1959, is an autobiography set in the 1950’s. We meet the teacher, Mr Thackeray who begins a job in teaching at an East End London school. He works with a group of students who have been rejected from education and shows them through life examples how to be successful learners. Likewise, teacher Erin Gruwell changes the worlds and lives of students through encouraging students to write about their lived experiences, focussing on their past, present and futures. Numerous other examples exist such as Dead Poet’s Society, Bridge to Terabithia, and more recently, some of the teachers in Summer Heights High.
In these popular images of education, at risk students are challenged to become engaged in learning and often, to graduate from high school. These are examples of exemplary teaching. This is what the authentic school production teacher does. Through writing and understanding children in their present moment the authentic production allows a sense of embodied learning that has meaning for the students involved. Reflecting upon The Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT) (Childhood 2013a) calls for teachers to be as engaging as these exemplary teachers, yet, as Lovat asserts that in the ‘real’ school, ‘not only do our teaching methods in general continue to reflect a two dimensional approach to learning, so do our class rooms and physical structures, or more simply put, our
‘curriculum’ (Lovat and Smith 1995, 51). Our curriculum calls for embodied teaching and learning, yet the stark reality is that teaching and learning is two dimensional and the examples of the
exemplary teaching are examples because they do not fit into the norm for teaching and learning.