"The goal of the mimetic space is to create deeper understandings through the partial identification that lead to both authentic feelings of respect and understanding of the knowledge and perspectives of others, as well as to instill a clear sense of boundaries to mitigate against the dangers of appropriation .... The use of storytelling has the potential to produce a mimetic space resulting in new understandings beyond the usual Western perspectives operating in classrooms."
"The Production and Use of 'Mimetic Space' in the Classroom"
At BATS, our
teachers Rebecca Stockley, Paul Killiam, and William Hall led our diverse
group of 15, which included tech execs, retirees, financiers, preschool
teachers, and health workers in shouting “Yay!” as a mark of celebration
whenever someone froze, lost their way, or failed in some other manner, mostly
as a result of inattention, self-consciousness, or fear.
By the end of our
four-days together, I too held Stockley’s belief that by virtue of being born we
each carry a felt knowledge of storytelling conventions and its myriad culturally
nuanced patterns. The urge to play with narrative, its rhythms and its rules,
are, indeed, held within our DNA. Writing structures, including the composition
forms I’m responsible for teaching, are related to storytelling frameworks.
It’s helpful to remind students of this because what we naturally know and
already intuit about these structures can make composition’s roots more
explicit and easier to master.
Starting with
story can demystify what is often a traumatizing subject for students––writing.
They carry tales of classrooms where they’ve been shamed for “bad” grammar and
an inability to reproduce the rigid formulas that arise not from authentic
writing practices but because of what I believe are misguided notions; students
have nothing to say and, therefore, need to be told how to say it. Stories
offer a relief from the shame and fear such approaches engender. In this way,
storytelling is connected to other mindfulness practices that can restore
balance, harmony, and even hope to an individual as well as the collectives
within which they are learning.
The storytelling
and improv games we played at BATS helped our group quickly become a
collective. Upon gathering that first Thursday, we were strangers. Three hours
later, and for the remainder of the weekend we belonged to one another. The
simplest of improv games, such as “Pick-Me”** and “If It’s True for You,”*** eased
our tension and taught us how to playfully and respectfully inter-relate
despite our different backgrounds and goals for the workshop.
We were “radically
pursuing presence,” explained Hall, which included a responsibility to
understand our own needs moment-to-moment. To assist us in this, we were
explicitly given permission to make choices throughout our many hours together.
Were there times we’d rather observe rather than participate? Then, by all
means, we were told, take a seat. Improv games work best when presented as invitations
not mandates.
More recently still, I attended
the annual Association of Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE)
conference in Amherst and was re-introduced to the exciting work of Dr. Traci Currie and
Dr. Lenwood Hayman, Jr. Each had been using improv in their classes––Currie
communications and Hayman public health –– at the University of Michigan-Flint.
They integrate improv into their work
because they understand––improv can establish more humane learning environments
and better societies. This is because, in addition to its roots in storytelling
and survivorship, improv games are well-known for revealing how power and
social stratification operate. These are heady dynamics to explore in
environments as stratified as colleges and universities, places where a desire
for success is great and competition, though often unspoken, ever present.
What improv can do, as Currie
explained it, is transform “the word power into play.” When people
spontaneously create something together, we are transported “to where and who
we are in that moment,” said Hayman. That in itself can be liberating as I had
already experienced for myself back in San Francisco.
This liberating sensation was again
reignited when Currie and Hayman had our group––thirty or so academic-types––who’d
gathered in a conference room for their session, spontaneously create and
record a song together in under 15 minutes. We used nothing other than a beat
provided by Hayman, a single microphone, and a computer program. Everyone in
that room, contributed to the song’s beauty, and in so doing were relieved of
having to operate with the calculation more common at academic conferences.
Instead, we got to experience collective and collegial spontaneity.
“We’ve been asked to play
inside inhumane institutions, and then we play off of each other,” said Hayman.
“Sometimes the play is, ‘Who’s suffering the most’.” Currie and Hayman remind
us the game can be changed. Who can be present? Who can be happy?****
With all this in
mind, I present four arguments for bringing storytelling and improv into
colleges and classrooms, especially, perhaps, those that are writing intensive.
1) Playing together creates goodwill and
explicitly teaches skills for interacting in a healthy, playful, and respectful
manner. Equally importantly, improv trains mind and body how to take risks and
greet “mistakes” with enthusiasm and curiosity. This is incredibly useful for
learners, especially inside a writing classroom where many students have
already experienced a deep sense of failure and shame around their writing due
to the rigid and punitive ways it is sometimes taught.
2) Improv is a concrete way to demonstrate what
presence (a mindfulness term indicating conscious awareness established in
equanimity) looks and feels like. Likewise, it can show, in real time, how an
absence of presence impacts us as social animals. After all, it is through
their ability to be present to one another, that actors create compelling
scenes. Even when the lines are fiction, the connection must be real. Improv games
can teach, among other things, how important the breath is in achieving
connection.
3) Wherever there are differences between
students and students and students and teachers in terms of race, ethnicity,
class, gender and/or sexual identities, improv creates a third space––a place
where each participant can try on and experiment with other discourses and
discourse communities with playfulness and abandon. At the same time, because
improv draws on the subconscious (very helpful to writers) society’s shadow sides
are also invited to come forward, and some of its “hidden” features are exposed
and more easily reflected upon. For example, the ways in which status and
hierarchy are conveyed and authority is maintained through even small gestures becomes
explicit in improv games.
4) Finally, our colonial histories are
ever-present and continue to shape classroom dynamics and composition
frameworks today. Some discourse communities and histories are favored and
celebrated, while others are ignored or denigrated. Our students’ home language
and ways of being are often named as something they must set aside in pursuit
of academic success. By bringing improv’s storytelling concepts forward, we can
show narrative’s rootedness in survivorship. This is a beautiful and meaningful
thread to draw on, one that can help students see and name something precious already
operating in their own lives and the lives of the their ancestors, family
members, and communities.
Much has been
written about improv principles and methods and the “rules” for many games can
be accessed online. I recommend starting with Johnstone’s Impro: Improvisation and the Theater. Better yet, make your way to
San Francisco and enroll in a BATS workshop and find out more about Currie and
Hayman’s connecting improv, education, health, healing, and social justice. Currently, they are working on a paper documenting their work and developing educator trainings.
Check back here for more information.
* I enrolled in
the workshop this summer as part of a semester-long sabbatical project, which
is described in more detail here.
** As taught by
BATS instructor Killiam, “Pick Me” is a game of exaggerated facial gestures
where players open their eyes wide, raise their brows, arrange their mouths
into near half-smiles, and slightly nod at one another. In this way,
partnerships are formed and reformed quickly. Group members make eye-contact
with one another, wearing their pick-me faces, in order to pair-up and create teams.
*** ”If it’s True
for You” is an icebreaker game with a lot of quick movement around a room. One
person starts by saying something that is true for them. “I love dogs,” for
example. Anyone who also loves dogs rushes to be near them, forming a clump of
like-minded dog lovers. A moment later, someone else, perhaps a non-dog lover, says
from across the room, “I don’t,” or “I love cats!” or “I eat bacon,” and anyone
else for whom that is also true reforms into a clump near them. In this way,
relationships are quickly created and lost and recreated again in a spontaneous
and surprisingly informative manner. Soon you will know who loves dogs, who’s
been to Rio, and who has never had the flu. The movement of bodies around the
room is key to this game’s success!
**** “Act Off” is a game Hayman and Currie taught that
walked us through this process, moving from dehumanization into joy. Each
participant took to the stage, pantomiming their role as they felt they played it
at their home institutions. Each enacted the gestures and body language of a
diminished self. Then, after a moment or two, we took a breath, stood loose and
tall, and reenacted a more liberated and empowered self, moving about the stage
as if there were no restraint and only freedom in performing our regular tasks.
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