Note: Learning how to move and be comfortable in our bodies is central to high school Theatre classes. I researched high school Theatre classrooms as part of my dissertation focused on wide-awakeness.

Wide-awakeness lives in the body and mind.

The body plays an integral role in Monique’s, one of the teachers I studied, teaching. Her fundamental philosophy of drama teaching is informed by the idea that the body, mind, and voice are the tools an actor uses to explore their experience, create character, and bring characters to life on stage. She repeated this mantra so frequently that students knew it by heart, and very quickly learned to repeat it when asked. More than just repeating these words, it was evident the students had internalized the message in the way they would intuitively and enthusiastically go to the stage following announcements and warm up, fully engaging in physical exercises she facilitated. By connecting the body and mind together in the classroom, she clearly situated the body as a primary aspect of the students’ work.

Becoming Characters

Body leading provides an example of the way in which Monique allows students to connect with their bodies. A “body lead” is the idea that different characters have uniquely characteristic body parts and postures, and an actor can identify and explore those unique attributes, through a particular walk, for example. Monique describes body lead: “I can’t remember why I am so attracted to body lead and why it just seems to work. You know you try something and it just seems to work. I see them, the kids… I see them becoming characters when they do that. It seems to make sense. Physically walking around in someone else’s person seems to be the thing that gets them.”

The Way You Move

Monique explained the idea to her Beginning Academy students, “A character that is intensely cerebral could lead with his head, or the cowboy that leads with his hip moving deliberately from left to right. … The way you move says a great deal about who you are as a person.” One example of Monique exploring the concept of a body lead occurred when she had her students move around the stage using different parts of their bodies. She guided this activity by moving through the space, encouraging her students to engage with their bodies. They started the activity by doing a “toe walk.” Some students moved around the space like teenagers coming home after curfew or like great ballerinas preparing for a tour jete. Monique offered suggestions and encouragement: “Really commit to the movement.” “Who are you?” “Make bold choices.” Monique wove her way through the space offering specific advice and pointers. One student, in reflecting on the activity, stated that the toe walk, “made me feel elfish.” A stomach walk made a student “feel like Santa.” At one point a male student said, “Moving with hips is a womanly type thing.” Monique understands the body lead as “one way into a character.” Through body leading it is possible for students to try on different ways of being in the world; to literally walk differently, stand differently, and perhaps feel differently than they would navigating the world as they normally do.

Connect With the Body

Connecting with the body within the context of Monique’s classroom centers on the notion that the body is a vehicle for meaning making. The body provides students the opportunity to fully explore experience. Warming up prepares students to be fully present in, and aware of, their bodies. Through the exercises Monique leads that focus on the body, the body becomes a vehicle by which a student actor becomes aware of and responds to his or her physical presence and the presence of others.