Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2) #21 Theatre Pedagogy: I’ll see you so far…

After a short hiatus, Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2) is back for another 12 conversations. For the first session post the mid-season break, we had Lecoq pedagogue Norman Taylor and UK-based director, actor and teacher Dr. Ellie Nixon in conversation with our co-curator and pedagogic director of Embodied Poetics, Amy Russell.

The three pedagogues engaged in a discussion on what does pedagogy truly mean. How is it different from technique or method or system and curriculum?

Pedagogy as a voyage of mutual discovery

Taylor and Nixon both believe that pedagogy is process-led as opposed to achievement of certain technical goals. Thinking about theatre pedagogy, Nixon says it has prompted her to reflect upon how we teach, where we teach, what we teach, and who we teach. Having worked in higher education institutions and in organisations that sit outside the government higher education network, she says the two are vastly different in how they function.

“I think part of pedagogy is about listening and watching and being watchful of these contexts,” Nixon says. In her experience as a practitioner and teacher, she has found that sometimes students are overwhelmed by doubt when trying out something new or working without a clear outcome.

“I often think about the sociologist Frank Furedi’s definition of the precautionary principle, whereby it’s best not to take a new risk unless its outcome can be understood in advance. And, I think, pedagogy is about the doubt. The questioning is absolutely about inquiry, rather than mastery,” she expresses. In that sense, Nixon views pedagogy as a space for rich engagement where the student and teacher learn from one another.

Taylor, who is widely regarded as one of the finest international ambassadors of the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, adds that doubt within pedagogy always leads to questions. “Look for a question. You’ll find a question and then you can learn something,” he shares. “It is about listening and watching, not hearing and seeing. When you’re on stage, you want people to watch you and listen; you don’t want them just to hear you and see you occasionally.”

Pedagogy as a cumulative process

Taylor believes that pedagogy is a cumulative process and an aspect of that is technique. Technique, of any kind, is based on observation, practice and finding one’s authenticity in it. He gives the example of Indian cricketer and bowler Jasprit Bumrah and the peculiar way he bowls. “When you see him bowl, it’s impossible. You can’t bowl like that. Everybody bowls in a certain technique, but they do it in their own way,” says Taylor.

He demonstrates that learning a technique within theatre is like bowling: you learn how one bowls, observe others bowling, analyse their movements, then practice bowling yourself and finally decide how you want to bowl. It is about finding how your body moves in space.

To find the method, one needs to observe. And for that, says Taylor, the most important thing is not to formulate an opinion. “It’s very difficult. As human beings, we always formulate an opinion. If you can postpone the formulation of an opinion, then you’re in the observation.”

As a teacher, the aim is to be a witness and not tell the student what to do. “As a teacher, you never have an opinion,” says Taylor. “You do certain things. It is the objective of each learner, each student, each actor to realise what he/she/they want, whether they like that or not. And then you often have people who realise, ‘Oh, I need to learn that’. That is great.”

Establishing a method

But how does one establish a pedagogical method?

Nixon speaks of her own experience of co-founding and running the La Mancha International School of Image and Gesture in Santiago, Chile. When Nixon and Rodrigo Malbrán started the school, they began by transmitting their own inherited and experience of education, admits Nixon.

“Little by little, we started to realize see and sense how the students are changing, how the environment around us was changing. We arrived in Chile at the of an 18-year dictatorship. It was going through a process of transition and that enabled us to move from transmitting something to actually developing our own method,” she shares.

Nixon claims that La Mancha now has its own method. It is foundationally built upon the education that the founders received, she says, but it has become its own pedagogical space.

Coming up with a pedagogical method involves putting in place a rigorous structure, with room to improvise, she elaborates. “It’s going back to that sense of listening.” At La Mancha, they interacted with students over the years to understand what they needed to let their inner expression flow through. While Nixon didn’t change pedagogical structure much, she found pockets where they could really let things explode.

“The school is based in the Andean mountains with tarantulas, scorpions and snakes. You are interacting with nature all the time whether you like it or not,” she says. Giving an example, she shares how the students internalized that in developing the bouffon, a specialized form of clowning. As the conversation comes to a close, she remarks that she found their bouffon was shaped more by the external world around them. “It made me think that pedagogy is about connecting the inner and outer worlds, and how we navigate that transitional journey between absorbing the world, being absorbed by the world, and then, how we transpose that into the theatrical dimension.”

Compiled and written by Phalguni Vittal Rao

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