Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 72

The solo-improvisations are followed by different types of improvisations in pairs, or sometimes in groups of three. A common initial exercise in this vein is the ‘One+One’ improvisation where two clowns encounter each other on stage. Two participants leave the room and put on their costumes and noses. Needless to say, the participants do not make plans, or come up with ideas beforehand. Then one comes out first and begins to ‘live out his life’ until Gladwell suddenly rings his bell which is the signal for the second clown to appear. When the second clown enters, without having any idea of what the first clown has been doing the entire time, i.e. what ‘story’ has been developing, both then have to spontaneously and creatively deal with their unexpected and unplanned ‘meeting.’ While having someone to share the stage with clearly has its advantages in terms of reducing nervousness, it also presents a variety of new challenges and requires a very different type of awareness than in the solo-improvisation. Trying to simultaneously meet the challenges of being receptive to a partner, while being one’s own character, while developing a relationship and a common story in that very moment, while maintaining eye contact with the audience can be a very confusing, not to say overwhelming experience:

When you have a partner on stage you come up against a whole new set of problems to do with listening and communicating. Does your partner understand what you understand? Do you both share the same perception of where you are and who you are? What is often difficult to realize at this stage is that it matters little whether your impro works or not – in other words whether you both actually know what you are doing. What matters more is how you listen and communicate with each other – and negotiate your misunderstandings. (…) How do you live your life on stage? What do you do when you realize your partner has not the same misunderstanding? It’s hard enough relating to your partner; you also shouldn’t forget the audience and you need to get a sense of the story that is unfolding. You easily get lost in it all. (Interview 6)

What becomes increasingly clear to the participants in the course of this work is that this feeling of ‘being lost’, of having problems, can offer the most poignant and enjoyable moments, if lived out fully. A line that Gladwell constantly repeats during these improvisations is, “Stay with the problem”. Those improvisations that become most enjoyable to watch are often those in which the clowns’ living together on stage with a single problem becomes the fulcrum on which an entire story seems to hinge. Living with the problem, learning to enjoy the problem, is an essential element of clowning and an aspect which constantly recurs in the feedback letters.

A related experience has to do with the unexpected ‘accidents’ that often seem to occur during the improvisations. Watching how the clown or clowns spontaneously respond to such accidents can become a highlight of an entire improvisation. Both the feedback in the workshops as well as the written responses to the research inquiry make clear that this learning ‘to enjoy a problem’, ‘to be glad about the accidents’ was a completely new and liberating feeling for many participants, which often led to sustained personal reflections about their attitudes towards teaching and life.