Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 42

Robert McNeer’s courses are typically characterized by lots of smiles and laughter. Right from the beginning, there is generally surprised laughter based on his playful manner of introducing the work. Within the first hour of warm-up exercises, the laughter ranges from nervous to very pleased as teachers are asked to do things that often seem quite strange to them such as massaging each other’s feet, walking around as animals and making various musical and non-musical sounds.

The warm-ups often begin with an exercise in which the participants not only get to learn each other’s names, but also learn a great deal more. Standing in a circle, each person says their own name in a way they remember having heard it in the past (loving, angry, severe etc.): afterwards the group tries to precisely imitate the way each participant has said his or her name. McNeer writes,

It’s very interesting to me that we hear our own names more than we say them, and this exercise gets the shoe on the other foot, subtly helps us to see ourselves or hear ourselves, from outside which is a step towards empathy and compassion. The others listen very carefully, and as a group try to reproduce exactly the same tonality, temperature and music as a chorus. This trains their observation, their musical ear, but it immediately becomes apparent that the posture and the subtle observance of the other’s posture, is an essential part of creating the sound. I think hearing their own name repeated to them in chorus, somehow legitimatizes the presence of each individual, and gives strength to the timid ones. Of course, the chorus is non-judgemental, as I’m very picky about it being EXACTLY the same sound. This means that everyone is concentrating so much on getting inside the other’s voice that they don’t have any neurons left for judging. If I see anyone judging, I become more musically demanding with them until they have no concentration left for judgement, which means they’re practicing empathy before they know it. It’s almost always funny, but we find ourselves laughing not at, but with the others, as we recognize our own situations.196

A wide range of exercises going back and forth between the physical and vocal, not only serve the function of warming-up and stretching the participants bodies, voices and imaginations, but in enhancing perceptual awareness, these exercises can be seen as presenting a basis for all the dramatic work that follows. McNeer writes,

The basis of my work is perception. Through a series of exercises, the participants are invited to direct their attention to the way in which their bodies react to psychophysical phenomena. I often begin with foot massage, which, apart from drawing the attention as far away from the head as possible, begins to open the awareness to the vital importance of balance. Depending on the circumstances, my indication to remove the shoes can meet with anything from active resistance to unconvinced acquiescence, which generally melts into joking about un-repaired and unwashed socks, or laughter when someone’s loose change falls onto the floor. The laughter is extremely important. It is a recognition of community, an acceptance that we are all in this together and the first, happy assault on the shields of self-defense.197

Although the time-structure of each day’s sessions may vary considerably, there is a general framework present. In the three hour workshop, this first warm-up phase generally lasts at least an hour, and on the first days often longer. In the next phase people get to choose from a wide range of contemporary poems which he has read to the group on the first or second day, and then work in groups of three or four on creating ‘group performances’ of those poems. At the end of the week the poems are performed for the other participants and in some cases are presented in front of the whole conference at the final plenary session.

The groups are given complete freedom to experiment with their own ways of working on and presenting the poems. Since the warm-up phase strongly emphasizes creatively exploring the movements and sounds of words, the group processes and performances usually evidence many elements of this type of work. The final presentations can be quite dramatic, uninhibited, and surprising. One of the participants wrote down her recollections of working on a Dylan Thomas poem in an article:

Robert McNeer built up such a trust and environment for safe experimentation with the spoken word that possibly our teaching approaches will never be quite the same again. We played with words, throwing them around the room, sometimes in chorus, sometimes merging in curious indefinable sound and sometimes like arrows, striking a specific point. We pulled Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill” off the page and played around ‘the lilting house, happy as the grass was green’!198

The phase of working in small groups usually lasts between 45–60 minutes. The last part of the workshop (45–60 minutes) is devoted to individual readings. All participants have been asked to come prepared with individual material; generally poems are chosen, sometimes a monologue from a play. With the other participants sitting in a half circle as an audience, each participant in the course of the week recites or speaks his or her prepared material to the group. In an open-class situation, McNeer then works with them on their material while the others not only get to observe the process, but are often asked to actively take part through reporting to the participants what they are perceiving as changes and transformation. He writes,

Part of the work involves individual presentation of a piece of literature, usually a poem. This gives us the opportunity to analyse in some depth the qualities of each individual. This is always fascinating work and often quite moving. Watching the others, one is invited to go as deeply as possible into what is perceived regarding the performer’s energy, regarding the vehicle which transmits the poem.199

Over the years what has remained most constant in this work is that many teachers seem to have a set image of what a good public reading should sound and look like, i.e. the kind of voice qualities and gestures that are necessary in performing literature for others. The effect of this, put simply, is that there is generally a good deal of ‘overacting’. The process through which these extraneous qualities begin to disappear and the poem and the ‘real’ person seem to gradually emerge can often be a very moving and mysterious process for both the participant and the observers. McNeer describes this from his perspective:

In a calm, accepting atmosphere, the observers are often capable of reading extremely subtle signs, often surprising the performer with what seem like acts of telepathy as they respond to fluctuations in his psychophysical state. (…) Describing, without judging, the qualities of the presentation, we begin to notice that the things that we normally consider defects, such as a thin, weak or grating voice, shallow breathing, or trembling, are simply qualities which, in the right context, can be more expressive of the spirit of the poem than can the resonant but empty voice and cliché gestures to which a false idea of “correct” speaking in public can lead us.200

The nature of the transformations that can occur in this work sometimes in the course of only a few minutes can be breathtaking. These moments are clearly dependent on the entire range of processes in the workshop which have occurred until that point. The essential role of the warm-ups in creating the atmosphere and openness necessary to make such breakthroughs becomes evident in the comments of two participants who later published reports about their experiences in his workshops.

One of the first things we were asked to do was to remove our chairs which we didn’t use again. (…) We were then guided through a spectrum of exercises, done alone or in pairs or as a group that are useful for our own practical everyday use when teaching. There were warming-up exercises and a lot of body work to do away with tension and make it possible to approach learning, teaching and reciting in a different way. Robert McNeer, an American multilingual actor, who lives in Italy, took us off into a world of speech and sound, hearing and feeling, of letting go and of having to pluck up courage (…) in a very pleasant and loving atmosphere that made it possible for us to go out of ourselves and get more a taste of what the artist in us could be like.201

During the workshops, Robert sometimes put us into situations that made us feel vulnerable, demanded courage of us, took us to what we imagined to be the limit and then he guided us lovingly through, to new places we were happy to explore. We made all kinds of discoveries for ourselves and with others because he made it safe for us. This is surely what we want to aim for in each of our students through their experiences in English learning.202

For the other participants in the group watching these transformations occur, there is sometimes the feeling of taking part in a highly personal and existential process. As the reading begins to gain clarity and expressiveness, the group simultaneously witnesses the transformation of both the reader and the poem. Despite the intimacy of the coaching process, the group remains not only closely connected to what is happening, but often becomes through its very presence a prime catalyst for the decisive steps that are being made. McNeer writes,

This is work which takes place, and which can only take place, in “public” that is, in front of the others. It leads to subtle and sometimes quite profound breakthroughs regarding one’s ability to express oneself, regarding, in fact, one’s self-image. Through the eyes of the others, one discovers that there is nowhere to hide, but also no need to do so. The others inevitably see all that one thinks to hide, but they also see beyond that, somewhere deeper, to where the profound need to express oneself resides. Through the gaze of the other, we see ourselves anew. At this point we can stop wasting energy on the attempt to conceal and repress that which we considered “flaws”, stop trying to imitate an external, rigid and generic “right form” and begin to enjoy being ourselves and discovering the side of our self which can respond most appropriately to the opportunity which the moment offers.203

It is one of the basic tenets underlying the English Week that such experiences of performing literature can have profound and wide-ranging effects on the participants – all of whom are English teachers and not actors. What also becomes apparent is that these workshops offer a remarkable opportunity for teachers to assume the role of the learner and to be taught by an enormously sensitive and capable artist. An essential characteristic of all the workshops that I have witnessed is that he is not working with the teachers as a director, but as a teacher. This means that one never has the feeling that he is aiming for the realization of his specific conception of a particular poem, story, or scene. His priority lies solely in fostering a process within each teacher which will let that person more completely express their own relation to what they have prepared. His goal remains (as he has sometimes titled his workshops), to reveal ‘the artist within’. For teachers being able to observe this, his work can function as a kind of paradigm of what teaching can be; in itself, a revealing and inspiring process.204

Those elements which he stresses in all of his exercises – listening closely, learning to be completely non-judgemental, developing the powers of empathy and compassion – are the basis of his own manner of working with each of the teachers/learners. Again and again in his work with individuals, one sees how this pedagogical attitude offers the learners the chance to transcend their own personal borders and to realize their own, individual artistic possibilities. He writes,

I think a compassionate teacher can cultivate this discovery, in which the student’s apparent limit can reveal itself as a bridge, which unites him with the world, which spans the fearful gap between himself and the other, but it’s important that you, the teacher recognize the “limit” not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity, and invite the student to enjoy rather than fight, the quality that he has. For that boundary is a very rich, very fertile zone. For instance, if you have a student very timid about using her voice, it’s probably counterproductive to ask her to sing Figaro or Die Walküre: that’s exactly what she won’t do, because she’s afraid, and the nature of fear is contraction. But if you have the others close their eyes and ask her to make the sound of a sunset, you might unlock something in her. I often find this kind of synesthetic crossover very liberating. (…) By the way, this will work ONLY if you, the teacher, honestly have no preconception about the correct sound of a sunset: if there is one molecule of your being prepared to judge the response, then you’re lost from the start. You must remain very light, because you’re facilitating a bridge, and it could collapse: the artist – in this case the timid student– has to create a connection between what everyone knows – a sunset is red and what only she knows – a sunset sounds like this. (…) This is for me what transcending boundaries is about: a sense of union. “I know you through me, I know me through you”, because it’s the listening as much as the sound which creates the act.205 (emphases in original)

There certainly could be no more fitting audience for such processes than a room full of teachers.