“In Order to Be [You] Must Become”
Should a classroom be a safe place? Should the realm of education remain neutral? It depends, on whose is benefiting from the safety of a neutral classroom: the students or the teachers? As bell hooks points out: classrooms, as a safe place, “usually translates to mean that the professor lectures a group of silent students who only respond when they are called on” (hooks 532). This translation of a safe classroom is not safe at all. It objectifies the student, and I am assuming, relies heavily on the banking system of transferring facts, thus, the students leave the classroom not only victims of objectification but also, they have no real knowledge to show for it. This does not sound like a safe classroom to me. Truthfully, it sounds like a very dangerous classroom.
Yes, I believe a classroom should be safe and neutral, but not for the safety of the teachers and/or the school system. The classroom should be safe and neutral for the students’ evolution—much like a cocoon is a safe place for a caterpillar in transformation. Critical thinking is imperative in the classroom; it provides the students an invaluable tool that will teach them a non-aggressive form of discourse and it will ultimately help transform the students into autonomous human beings. The classroom needs to be given back to the student; we, as educators, need to serve their interests, not the interest of the ruling class that oppresses us as well. The teachers and school system need to embrace controversy and allow the students the right to engage in critical dialogue and practice dealing with the difficult issues themselves in a safe place that supports growth. The students should be shown and encouraged to engage in dialogue addressing issues such as differences in race, gender, sexuality, politics, economics, and anything else that might divide them. When schools claim neutrality as a means to avoid the controversially issues, they are, thus, allowing the issue to remain controversial.
I will have a neutral classroom. However, my neutral classroom will not provide safety from controversial issues. My classroom will provide a neutral playing field, which will embrace controversy and teach students how to harmoniously exist in the space between. This is a necessity, given that in the United States of America the actual physical space that divides a person from the “other” is shrinking—if not completely disappearing—and being replaced by a gray area “of real potential”.
My classroom will be a borderland. A borderland, as defined by Renato Rosaldo's, is a “declaration of interdisciplinary freedom …[a] zone capable of nourishing a rich grid of ‘crisscrossed’, multiple identities, a celebration of ambiguity as the condition of the postmodern self, and is now the space of real potential”(Weber 532). My goal in creating a borderland classroom is to better prepare my students to face the ever-growing necessity for an understanding of the ambiguous existence of truth. So the students can find their personal “space of real potential”.
Although, I plan to support this classroom with multiple pedagogical theories, two of the most import will be Paulo Freire’s “Problem Posing Education” and Augusto Boal’s “Poetics of the Oppressed”. These two theories both stand on a strong Marxist foundation and they both want to kill a “culture of silence”. However, Boal’s Poetics of the Oppressed picks up were Freire’s Problem Posing stops; Theatre of the Oppressed supplies a safe place to physically practice change, not just dream it. As Boal points out: “often when a person is very revolutionary in a public forum he envisages and advocates revolutionary and heroic acts; on the other hand, he often realizes that things are not so easy when he himself has to practice what he suggests” (Boal 139). Freire’s Problem Posing Education gives the students the tool to open their minds to possibilities and teaches them how to speak out, however, he does not give the students a place to practice their “possible utopias”, that is where Boal comes in. With Theatre of the Oppressed, the students get to act out their possible utopias. The only way to truly create a “praxis of the oppressed” is by combining these two theories in a classroom. So, the students will learn to talk the talk (Freire) and walk the walk (Boal), and hopefully engender action!
According to Paulo Freire, the educational field relies too heavily on the dehumanizing banking system of transferring knowledge. Banking is when the teacher, as a depositor, fills the student with facts—devoid of any real understanding. What the student is memorizing is isolated from the world. Therefore, the students are at the complete mercy of the teacher. They can’t extend past what the teacher gives them, nor can they synthesize the facts. However, what the teacher gives to the students isn’t knowledge, because knowledge can’t be transferred. Knowledge must be experienced. Knowledge is engendered through invention, synthesis, deconstruction and reinvention.
This type of “learning” creates a nihilistic attitude on the part of the students because they are led to believe that they are not part of this world, but rather—like the meaningless facts in their heads—there is no purpose to their existence on earth, thus, they adapt. As Freire points out: “the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to the situation, the more easily they can be dominated” (Freire 209)
Freire’s alternative to Banking is Problem Posing Education. “Problem Posing Education is a [form of humanistic pedagogy that poises questions] related to the problems of men in their relationship with the world.... It is a practice of communication…and an act of cognition” (Freire 212). A problem-posing classroom overcomes and destroys the teacher/student dichotomy—it actually seeks to destroy the binary division that allows and supports the reality of the oppressor and the oppressed. Problem Posing Education seeks to reveal truth, “strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality” (Freire 213). It hopes to reveal to the student that they are part of the world, and it is their job to better understand that relationship. Problem Posing Education creates a subject out of the student, thus, makes them a conscious being.
Freire hopes to liberate the students, so they are no longer the “oppressed”. So the students will be the creators of their own “utopias”. However, there is one short coming, his critical pedagogy, Freire asserts: “liberation is praxis: the action and reflection of upon [one’s] world in order to transform it” (Freire 212; emphasis added). I will not doubt the Freire methods teach the student’s how to critically think; he nails the reflection part. However—and it might be due to my novice understanding of Problem Posing Education—it seems that Problem Posing Education only focus’ on how to be envisioners of utopia… not how to take “action” to invent them.
Action is necessary in a borderland classroom. The students must be provided a safe space to practice, or put into action, the wonderful revolutionary thinking they have all ready done with the critical pedagogical techniques of Problem Posing Education. Poetics of the Oppressed creator, Augusto Boal, states: “theatrical forms are without a doubt a rehearsal to a revolution” (Boal 141). Now, although, Poetics of the Oppressed isn’t real action—although it can be—it is just a rehearsal; it still supplies students a forum of physical exploration and a safe place to develop their relationship with the world; to take their utopias outside of the realm of imagination and practices the actual process of action.
Theatre has always been a venue for learning and entertainment. However, “Idealistic Poetics” (Boal 95), which is in the tradition of Aristotle and Hegel, has mostly “taught” the lessons of the ruling class. According to Boal, theatre has traditionally been a place for catharsis, or a way to purify the spectators of what the ruling class deems as undesirable traits. This is done mostly through empathy; the audience finds certain aspects of the protagonist attractive, thus, she is relatable. The spectators then imagine themselves as the protagonist, and vicariously succeed or fail with her. In the case of Tragedy, the protagonist is flawed—like all humans— so she will miss the mark and commit a hamartia (“The fault or error which entails the destruction of the tragic hero” [Hamartia, OED]). Consequentially, when tragic heroes like Antigone, Hamlet, or Juliet die—as a result to their hamartia—part of the spectator dies with the tragic hero because the spectator does not want to share the same fate as the protagonist. Thus, catharsis occurs and the spectators are purified!
This clarification of Idealistic Poetics draws many parallels to banking education. Idealistic Poetics takes the spectator out of the theatrical process—much like banking takes the student out of the learning process. Thus, the spectator accepts their place as only a spectator in the world, not a person capable of action. Most importantly, however, both Idealistic Poetics and Banking Education teach and support oppression, thus supporting the domination of the ruling class.
According to Boal, empathy is the most dangerous weapon theatre, or any other entertainment medians, has in its arsenal. Empathy is dangerous because “the spectator—a real, living person—accepts as life and reality what is presented to him in the works of art as art [;] Esthetic osmosis” (Boal 113). “Esthetic osmosis”, is much like the effect of Bank Education because the spectators (or the student) are objects to the actor’s (or the teacher’s) subject—meaning both students and spectators are unable to see themselves as creators of change. Thus, they are taught to take a passive role in this world.
Poetics of the Oppressed, like Problem Posing Education, takes the person out of the role of a spectator, and puts them into the role of the protagonist. Thus, the once spectator can now find their own way in action. In Boal’s theatre, the audience is no longer expected to sit back and enjoy their vicarious existence while they are oppressed through esthetic osmosis; they are expected to act.
Poetics of the Oppressed was created while Boal was working with Operación Alfabetización Integral (ALFIN). ALFIN was created in 1973 by the revolutionary government in
Since Boal was dealing with people that knew little to nothing about theatre, he had to create a system of theatre that was unpretentious, while taking the spectator out of his old ascription. Boal engendered a system of four stages that would slowly and progressively transform oppressed spectators into liberated actors. Boal outlines the following stages in more detail on page 126 of his book:
· Stage one: Knowing the body. This stage is a series of physical activities to help participants gain control of their bodies by making them aware of their bodies’ limitations, deformities, and strengths.
· Stage two: Making the body expressive. Stage two is all about learning how to physically express yourself. For example, one activity has the students physically portray animals.
· Stage three: Theatre as a language. This stage presents “theatre as a language that is living and present, not as a finished product displaying images from the past”( Boal 126).
o This stage has three degrees: Simultaneous dramaturgy, Image theatre, and forum theatre
· Stage four: Theatre as a discourse. In this stage the participants are allowed to create whatever scene they desire to portray particular themes or brainstorm and practice certain actions.
Not only do these activities provide students a forum to critically think while using their bodies to simulate action, but I also believe Poetics of the Oppressed is a great way to create a theatrical community because Poetics of the Oppressed combats egocentric thinking. Egocentric thinking makes it impossible for a person to critically think because as Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder point out: egocentric thinkers “instead of using intellectual standards in thinking, they often use self-centered psychological standards to determine what to believe” (Paul 9). Boal’s practices take the pressure off of the individual. Poetics of the Oppressed is a team effort and no one member is more important then any other which causes the death of the ego.
Not only does Boal have workshop games to combat oppression and give theatre back to the oppressed classes, he also created “The Joker” system of theatre. The Joker is a system of theatre that provides rules for the audience to familiarize themselves with to avoid utter confusion—or worse yet rejection—of this ever changing and fluctuating form of social theatre. Thus, the Joker allows the play to assume a vision of the world that more closely resembles the audiences’ view. The Joker functions as a play with drastic alterations that makes the theatre a place of action. The rules of the Joker are as follows:
The Players:
· The “protagonic” is Boal’s compromise with the audiences need for a protagonist. However, the protagonist must resemble reality in all ways. She may never drop character, Boal states that the protagonist approaches her character with the Stanislavski system which demands the actor to portray the truth of her character. The protagonist is the “concrete, photographic reality” (Boal 181). She is, in a sense, the anchor that grounds the play in reality.
· ‘The Joker” is the all-knowing narrator/ translator/ actor that represents the voice of the director/ writer/ or production team. The Joker’s main function is to explain and relate the play to the audience. The Joker has no limits; he can play any character within the play. He even can step in for the protagonist when she must enact something realistic.
· Deuteragomist and Antagonist are the two groups that make up the chorus. The Deuteragomist chorus is all the characters that support the protagonist. The Antagonist chorus is all the characters that are working against the protagonist. Each chorus will have a coryphaeus, or leader. All the roles within the one of the chorus are interchangeable; therefore, their costumes must be simple and symbolic.
The Structure:
- The Dedication will begin the performance. The production can be dedicated to a person or event. There are no real rules for this; all that matters is that it is there and that it is related to the play.
- The explanation is a function of the Joker and should be in the form of a lecture. This can be done at anytime, breaking the continuity of the action, when it is necessary to provide the audience further information. The Joker is free to use any materials necessary to assist in the lecture. He may even, redo or rework a scene already preformed to emphasize meaning or show an important alterative. Lastly, the Joker may even bring in a scene from other plays to make comparisons. Basically, the joker can do whatever is needed to not allow the audience to passively watch the action on the stage; the goal is to get them to start critically thinking about what is happening on stage.
- Interviews are a key function to the Joker system of theatre; they perform two functions: first as a means of explanation, the Joker—much like a sports announcer—interviews a player to reveal their true intention. One key element to the interview is that the other players cannot be on stage, or else it would destroy the reality illusion. Secondly, interviews are used as a means for audience inquiry. The Joker at some point, or multiple points, in the show will take questions form the audience, that they can ask any of the characters to question the character’s motivation and/or reasoning. It is important that the players stay in character; the audience is not questioning the actor, they are questioning the character.
- The exhortation is the final part of the play. The Joker in verse, prose, or a song offers the audience some advice that will hopefully provoke the audience to take action. The beauty of this is the audience has been actively engaged with the production; they are less likely to blindly except the Joker’s advice. The active audience members will draw their own conclusion, whether it coincides with the Joker is not important but the audience would have considered it at least as a measure to judge their own point of view.
- The Genre: in the Joker no genre of theatre is off limits, and the play and transition from one genre to the next. All that is important is that the genre is the best choice to support the goal of the scene. Since the play can range from realism, to absurd, to naturalism, to commedia, and end at surrealism, it is important that the Joker—as part of his explanation—clarifies why a particular genre was chosen.
As seen above, the Joker system of theatre is really like a science experiment, a research paper, or a trial preformed on stage. The audience is given a particular perspective—a thesis—in the form of a dedication. The thesis is to support and test with detailed explanation and vigorous questioning on the part of the Joker and the audience, and lastly it is concluded with the exhortation. The audiences like a scientist, reader, or jury is left to make the judgment, no one makes it for them. Yes, the Joker does give the production’s conclusion; however, since the audience has been critically thinking throughout the entire process, if they do accept the production perspective it will not be through esthetic osmosis. The Joker system of theatre—like Problem Posing Education—engages the audience’s in a dialogue to insight curiosity, which leads to production of knowledge, and will hopefully promote action. Either way, however, spectators become active participants in the action—thus, catharsis is avoided—and autonomy is the product.
As an English and Theatre teacher, I strongly believe that by combining these two Critical Pedagogy techniques would be the most effective way to engender a borderland praxis—a praxis of “real possibilities” that demands autonomy, respects diversity, and promotes not only dreaming up the utopia but putting them into action. The synthesis of Problem Posing Education and Poetics of the Oppressed in a borderland classroom would look something like this:
Aim While reading act III, scene I of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I will engage the students in critical thinking activities—using Freire’s Problem Posing Education and Boal’s Poetic of the Oppressed—to hopefully allow the students to see Romeo and Juliet in a new and different perspectives. I want students to see how the play relates to their lives and how is doesn’t. However the ultimate goal will be, to use the play as a tool to critically portray some aspect of their lives, not the other way around.
Learning Objectives
Knowledge
· The student will gain a better understanding of
o Romeo and Juliet and Elizabethan times
o Critical Thinking using guided worksheets
o How to use theatre as tool for social change
o Different Theatre Genres
o How to except and compromise with other perspectives
o Augusto Boal’s Poetics of the Oppressed
o Paulo Freire’s Problem Posing Education
Skills
· Students will enhance their writing skills with journals, a formal paper, and playwriting
· Students will enhance their performance skills with lots of rehearsal and a formal performance.
· Students will enhance their reading and interpreting skills by reading and questioning Romeo and Juliet
· Students will enhance their ability to work in groups with formal and informal group work.
· Students will be practicing their critical thinking skills with
o A formal guide in the form of a worksheet. Questions Using the Elements of Thought” worksheet—taken from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking
o Class and group discussion
o Improvisational activities taken from Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors
Procedure
Day 1
· The lesson will start off by using Boal’s activity: “Photo-romance theatre”,
however, instead of providing the students a scenario from a trashy romance novel, I will provide them with the scenario from III.i.
o I will break the class up into groups: Deuteragonist and Antagonist.
· The Deuteragonist scenario: You just got back from their secret marriage to the daughter/son of their families greatest enemy and you are confronted by your new wife’s/ husbands cousin who wants to fight you. What would you do?
· Antagonist scenario: Last night the son/daughter of your families greatest enemy crashed a party at your uncle’s house, you run into him on the streets. What would you do?
o I will give the students 10-15 minutes to brainstorm and come up with their own solution to the problem then within their groups they will improvise their scenarios, each student will have the opportunity to act out their solution, then as a group they will decide which improvisation is the best solution. They can also come up with a completely new one.
o Both groups will then perform their scenario in front of the class.
· After their performance, much like the Joker would, the students will explain their choice and also allow the audience to interview the character, not the students, to clarify their reasoning further.
o This activity will hopefully, open the dialogue and create curiosity to make the students want to read the actual scene.
· Homework: Now that the students have a personal perspective and various others perspectives. For homework the students will read III.i. After reading, in the form of a journal reflection the students will compare and contrast the resolutions the class came up with and what actually happens. I will also have them start thinking about why there might be difference? How do social standards of Elizabethan times differ from todays, or from your own standards? What questions does this scene raise? How might you need clarification?
Day2
· I will start the day with a discussion about what they thought of the scene, I will then take a step back and let the students discuss, I will not step in unless it is absolutely necessary for the emotional safety of a student.
· After they complete the discussion I will break the students up into troupes of 9 people and tell the students that with their troupes they will be performing this scene in a manner that would reflect a social issue that is important to them. I will go over Boal’s Joker system of theatre so the students understand all aspects of what is expected.
o I will explain to them the importance of the role of The Joker as their voice in the scene, that they would need to write a script for the Joker. The Joker is the one that will explain all the choices you made and will be the link to the audience’s active participation in the scene.
· Homework: I will give them “Questions Using the Elements of Thought” worksheet—taken from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking as a guide to interpret the play and help them engender their own interpretation. For the next two nights they will work on answering these questions in regard to Romeo and Juliet. These questions will be workshop with their troupe.
Day 3
· Today, I will lead the troupes through various Pedagogy of the Oppressed games to create a community in the troupe and hopefully to work against any egocentric thinking.
· Homework: Work on the “Questions Using the Elements of Thought” worksheet.
Day 4-5
· The students will start to investigate the possible paths they can take their scene down. They will be expected to improvise and brainstorm everyone in the troupe’s idea before deciding on a final perspective to put into production.
Day 6-10
· The students will start preliminary rehearsals; these rehearsals should be very fragmented because it is in these rehearsals that they will be writing the Jokers script. . I will be rotating between the troupes to make sure they are on task and to answer any lingering questions.
Day 11-15
· The student’s script should be pretty much complete—of course there is always room left for change; this time will be only for rehearsal. By day 13 they should be completely memorized. I will be circulating between the troupes to make sure there are no huge holes in their productions.
Day 16-18
· The student will have the whole period to perform. Although scene is short with the added elements of Joker theatre, I believe the student might feel a time constraint. After each performance their will be 15 minutes so the class can discuss the judgment they made after watching the scene.
Day 19
· I will wrap up the activity with a class discussion to asses the knowledge they have obtained from this experience, and we will start think about how they could take what they learned and apply it into their everyday life?
· Homework: They will have 4 days to answer the questions addressed in the discussion in the formal paper, so I can asses the students experience with this activity. Also this will be a tool to see where I need to make any changes.
The fusion of Problem Posing Education and Poetics of the Oppressed is a natural one. Both men, although they used different terminology and work in different mediums, had the same goal: to fight oppression and create autonomy. Freire and Boal both aimed to destroy the apparatus of control that engenders a false binary world, allowing for the dichotomy between the oppressor and the oppressed to exist. This is my goal, as well, in creating a borderland classroom. The combination of Freire’s and Boal’s techniques create a perfect borderland praxis (In a Theatre or English classroom) that provides the students a strong base is Critical Pedagogy and allowing students to practice living in borderlands. Borderlands are where the utopias exist, in exploring and negotiating the ambiguity. I want to help my students cope, balance, and navigate the internal borderlands, the borderlands of our nation, and ultimately the borderlands of the world.
Borderlands, although a place of great possibility, can also be a very scary and dangerous place. As Gloria Anzaldúa points out in her novel, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza:
“la mestiza( a women of mix blood) undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war…living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of references cause un choque, a cultural collision” (Anzaldúa 100)
In the
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
Ca: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
Boal Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. Trans. Charles A. & Maria-Odilia Leal
McBride.
“hamartia.” The
University Press. 30 April 2007
hooks, bell. “Embracing Change” Playing with Ideas: Modern and Contemporary
Philosophies of Education, ed by Jaime G.A. Grinberg, Tyson E. Lewis, and Megan Laverty, 527-537.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harper Collins Publisher, 1978.
--- “Teaching is a Human Act”. Playing with Ideas: Modern and
Contemporary Philosophies of Education, ed by Jaime G.A. Grinberg, Tyson E. Lewis, and Megan Laverty, 527-537.
Paul, Richard & Linda Elder. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and
Tools. < www.criticalthinking.org >, 2007
Weber, Donald. “Form Limen to Border: A Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turners
for American Culture Studies”. American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3. (Sep., 1995)525-536
