by Sofia Thanopoulou

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.

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: Why Is The Academy Drama Class The Perfect Place To Shape Conscious Citizens?

by Sofia Thanopoulou, Academy Faculty

We 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? 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?

The struggle to construct identity started emerging in student responses: “I tend to nitpick about things that others hardly notice”; “I was never aware of how others see me”; “everyone is wrapped up in their own insecurities”.

I began to feel a reflective ability had been established and they were now ready to construct their Social Identities³:

What groups of people do I share my values and beliefs with?

What privilege or oppression do I receive because of my socio-economic status, sexual orientation or ethnicity?

Which of these identities have the strongest effect on how I perceive myself, or on how I want others to perceive me?

Another round of sharing responses yielded new results as students started reaching new conclusions about themselves:

“I had more in common with certain people than I thought I did”.

“I am undecided about so many things, I have some work to do”;

“I realized I take pride in my beliefs”;

“I feel so fortunate for where I was born”.

Discussing and analyzing these results felt like my old class: everyone was engaged, this new syllabus - “myself” - was new, undiscovered and exciting. The last step almost created itself:

Who do I want to be? The Role Models activity was something I had personally experienced⁴ in the past.

Which three people do you respect and admire? What do you respect and admire in them? Which of these values do you have in common and what stands in your way of becoming like them?

By identifying their role models, students accidentally set the bar for themselves as social and moral beings.

They singled out features like humility, kindness, service, hard work and resilience. They understood where their own character converged with these values and most importantly the distance they needed to cover to be more like the person they wanted to be. I was very pleasantly surprised by how my online class turned out. Through completely different means, the same learning outcomes were achieved: moral education of the whole child, social emotional growth, a heightened awareness of thy Self and his/her position in a world that really needs Conscious Citizens.

³Adapted for use by the Program on Intergroup Relations and the Spectrum Center, University of Michigan. Resource hosted by LSA Inclusive Teaching Initiative, University of Michigan (http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/). ⁴Professional Development workshop at ACS Athens, 2017