ETHOS • FALL 2021
What social agents is this authority dependent upon? What is my role in the oppression I suffer, I cause or I witness? Students replay scenes from their own lives in this “life laboratory”, adopt different perspectives and test out different behaviors. Every “experiment” allows students to gain different understandings of themselves, of their moral values and their unique position in the world as responsible citizens.
Why Is The Academy Drama Class The Perfect Place To Shape Conscious Citizens? by Sofia Thanopoulou, Academy Faculty
W
e were in the middle of the Applied Theater unit with the Academy Drama elective, when we were forced into the second lockdown. Applied theater¹, based on the Theater of the Oppressed² by A. Boal, explores the relationship between the individual and the world. By reenacting real life situations students identify the external forces that pervade their lives and observe the ways they interact with others. Through improvisation, they physically step in the place of an oppressor or a victim and try to resolve real-life scenarios. Our work relies on the physical and emotional trust created within the ensemble, the sense of a shared space, physical proximity, eye contact and much more. Year after year, the same and more questions arise: How can you stop oppression when you are weak by definition? What is the responsibility of being in a position of authority?
When I found myself in front of the screen this winter, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could possibly teach my subject virtually. The elements of human interaction my very teaching toolbox - were now lying scattered on a screen: fragmented bodies, randomized compositions of two-dimensional tiles, audio delays and mediation tools, no sitting in a circle, not even eye contact. Clearly, this was not the classroom I knew of, and, having to work through my own resistances, I soon realized that my online class would look nothing like my physical one. I had to step back and ask myself two questions: What are the elements of my curriculum I absolutely had to address in the virtual version, and how... and what would I put in the place of the elements that I could not possibly address online? If anything, I thought, I want all my students to become conscious social beings, with a heightened awareness of their identity and their position in the world. Besides, I kept saying to my students, ‘probably not one of you will become an actor; but every single one of you will want to become a better human being’. With that in mind, and on a clean slate, the Identity Unit was born. My first thought was, how can I turn the premise of isolation on its head and to their advantage? The answer popped up by itself: let’s get to “know thyself”, since you will be spending some time with yourselves. The first series of activities aimed at synthesizing a Personal Identity. Students were probed to think of their status of influence in their home, class, or friends group; their likes and dislikes; their core values and beliefs. Then they were asked to reflect: How much of this can I answer with certainty? What does it mean to feel undecided? Character building started to emerge. But this would mean nothing without other people, so a round of peer interactions began: Am I perceived the same way I intend to project myself? If not, what gets in the way?
¹Taylor, Philip. Applied Theatre: Creating Transformative Encounters in the Community. Heinemann Drama, 2003 ²Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. Pluto Press, 2008.
