Exploring Bodily Reactions: Embodied Pedagogy as an Alternative for Conventional Paradigms of Acting in Youth Theatre Education

Abstract

For me, it seems obvious that in the youth theatre education of today, there is a need for embodied alternatives for conventional paradigms of acting, such as the predominance of delivering the lines and concentrating on the supposed feelings of the character, perceived through analysis of the play. To seek alternatives means challenging dominant discourses around youth theatre education as well as acting in general. Contemporary forms of performance such as process drama and devising have proved to be remarkable options for conventional theatre making, but they need to be reinforced by embodied, workable, and ethically sustainable methods of acting/actor training—that is, realization of embodied pedagogy within the practice of acting in youth theatre performances. What should this kind of embodied acting pedagogy look like? In which terms could it operate? In this article, I shall discuss embodiment in student actors’ methods of acting at an upper secondary school level, and present one application of embodied acting pedagogy for youth theatre education. I have gathered source material from seventeen-year-old students’ accounts of a one-week workshop actualizing embodied acting pedagogy. These materials clearly indicate that even a comparably short period of training can shift the actors’ focus into the body, specifically on experiencing and exploring bodily reactions. Simultaneously, the actors’ focus turns to the here-and-now, which emphasizes the nature of theatre as an art of the moment.

A mí me parece obvio que en la educación teatral para los jóvenes de hoy en día hay una necesidad de alternativas a los paradigmas convencionales de la actuación, tales como la predominancia de recitar los parlamentos concentrándose en los supuestos sentimientos del personaje, percibidos por medio del análisis del texto teatral. Buscar alternativas corporales quiere decir desafiar el discurso dominante alrededor de la educación teatral para los jóvenes, así como de la actuación en general. Las formas contemporáneas de representación tales como el drama en proceso y el drama de creación colectiva a partir de la improvisación, han probado ser opciones sobresalientes a la creación teatral convencional, pero necesitan ser reforzadas por métodos corporales, trabajables y éticamente sustentados para la actuación y el entrenamiento del actor; esto es: la observancia de la pedagogía de lo corporal en la práctica de la actuación en las representaciones del teatro hecho por jóvenes. ¿Cómo debería ser este tipo de pedagogía de lo corporal de la actuación? ¿En qué términos podría funcionar? En el siguiente artículo discutiré lo corporal en los métodos de actuación utilizados por estudiantes del nivel superior de la escuela secundaria. Y presentaré una aplicación de la pedagogía de lo corporal de la actuación en la educación teatral de los jóvenes. He reunido materiales provenientes de alumnos de 17 años de edad, resultado de un taller de actualización en la pedagogía de lo corporal en la actuación, de una semana de duración. Estos materiales indican claramente que incluso un período corto de entrenamiento puede cambiar el enfoque de los actores hacia el cuerpo, específicamente en la experimentación y exploración de las reacciones corporales. Simultáneamente, el enfoque de los actores gira hacia el aquí-y-el-ahora, lo que enfatiza la naturaleza del teatro como un arte del momento.

Notes

¹ Viewpoints technique is powerful in its tendency to externalize the inner sensitivities in the body as a working phase. In the final performance score, the movements may be far more subtle than in training, but they still keep their original effectiveness.

² On the Artaudian unruly aspect of theatre with adolescents, see also Keefe (2010) and Wessels (2012).

³ In this article, the word “body” refers to the whole entity of human being, the body/mind.

⁴ “Emotion” is used here in line with Damasio’s (1999) distinction between “emotions” and “feelings.”

⁵ On considering knowing, learning, and teaching as “acts of becoming,” see also Springgay (2004) and Neelands (2004).

⁶ The central position of the development of self does not mean that the thing the student actors find especially enjoyable—that of being someone else for a moment—was somehow misleading and not to be encouraged.

⁷ Joe Kincheloe describes the “dialectical” authority of the critical teacher, who assumes the position of a facilitator of student inquiry: “In relation to such teacher authority, students gain their freedom—they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge” (cited in Taylor 2006, 128). In theatre pedagogy, this is a crucial step toward a “more empowering rehearsal atmosphere” (Gonzales 1999, 6). By Gonzales’s (1999, 7) definition, empowerment is an “exercise in self-agency, and a continual interrogation of knowledge.”

⁸ During the Finnish-German workshop, the students wrote brief feedback texts after each session. The students were asked simple open questions such as, “How do you feel right now?” and some thematic questions such as, “What do you think about the emphasis on the physical in this workshop?” The students wrote their feedback texts anonymously under pseudonyms they picked themselves. There were twenty-two students altogether, eleven Finnish and eleven German. About three fourths of the students were female and one fourth were male. The sex of each writer remained unknown to me. The students wrote in their native language, which made it inevitable that the nationality of each writer was recognized. I translated Finnish texts into English, and Hanna Saari translated the German texts into Finnish. All of the inquiries mentioned were authorized by local educational administrators.

⁹ The original members of the research group were Jari Hietanen, Pauliina Hulkko, Sari Mällinen, Taisto Reimaluoto, Marja Silde, Ritva Sorvali, Janne Tapper, Petri Tervo, and Antti Virmavirta, along with Esa Kirkkopelto and me.

¹⁰ These workshops include the two Finnish-German youth theatre workshops at the upper secondary level, as mentioned.

¹¹ “Actor’s dramaturgy” is basically about an actor’s artistic choices: how she becomes impressed by different things and how she regulates the amount of being impressed, and how her performance score actually unfolds (during each performance). In working with scripted text, actor’s dramaturgy modifies and adds to the main dramaturgy, the story being told, and provides a richer picture.

¹² In the preliminary version of the AAMT approach, the frames were named the lift, wires, and carrying. For this article, I wanted to give them names that are more general and informative and not that much aligned with the technique of the researching actors of AAMT. The number of frames is unlimited.

¹³ Exercise on the somatic frame: “The Lift.” Imagine you take a cold shower, opening your chest and letting the water flow on it; or walk on hot coals; or feel something suddenly touch your back; or imagine you suddenly remember something important. Exercise on the network frame: “In the Web.” Imagine you are a spider in the middle of your web, feel every little movement anyone else makes in the room; or imagine you are a bat that can sense anyone moving without seeing or hearing anything, just by using the radar. This could also be done in pairs: An actor moves following impulses given by the fellow actor who pulls invisible strings attached to various body parts of the actor. Exercise on the carrying/being-carried frame: “The Star.” Five or six persons form a star by lying on their back on the floor, head to head. They raise their arms and the seventh person bends down on her back to lie on the hands of the others, supporting herself from the waist down, legs slightly spread and firmly on the floor. She can now relax from the waist up and possibly speak, very quietly, using as little energy as possible, about whatever comes to mind. The same exercise can be done by using scripted text. Exercise on creating a performance score: Create three states of being. Decide their order and articulate the transitions between them. Add speech or scripted text.