Fading through the story

My students are well on their way, learning and practicing their stories for class performances at lunch next week. Parallel to work in small Story Circles of four students each, we've had some all-class workshop time, exploring one's own body as a material for developing one's story for performance.

Some background, though: Reggio Emilia pedagogy utilizes a variety of artistic materials to encourage children to express and describe their ideas. This approach is grounded in the idea that children speak in a hundred languages, and the materials allow for more diverse expression, and deeper learning for both student and teacher.

So, being accustomed to artistic materials, I asked the children: What if you didn't have materials to work with, but instead, used your body as a material to make your story your own?

You could act out your story. The movement of your body could help you think of words that would be good.

I sort of agree, but acting is really different than movement. Acting is saying lines. While I am telling the story I would do the thing, the movement that goes with the story.

If your story has two perspectives you could go from one to the other. Like, Max and the beasts in my story, Where the Wild Things Are. You can switch off between perspectives.
How is your body going to help you do that?
It could help explain how they move. How they’re different from each other, and not the same.

I know that names put a color in my mind, so maybe you could put a movement with a name. You could think about what movement comes to your mind about a character, and then move like that character.

From there, we went to the workshop, exploring the perspective of familiar characters from stories I had told, as well as the characters of their stories. They went from the extreme of despair to the extreme of wonder as they walked, as a merchant, through the bitter cold up to a magnificent, magical castle. They went from being that merchant as he beheld the ugliest beast one could imagine to becoming that beast, and walking through the classroom as he would walk. They contemplated how the characters of their stories stand, walk, gesture, and express their thoughts on their face...

How was it? What did they learn?

It felt good. Just closing my eyes and imagining it, how the Beast looked and how he walked. It created a really good mental image in my mind. And I was able to act it out really well. I had a lot of space, so I could do whatever I needed to do. With materials, it’s different, because you can’t really change the way they look or move.

I think body motions really enhance the mental images for people.

It felt kind of strange to be transferring into those creatures. It was kind of fun to act out what the different creatures looked like, and maybe see what the merchant would look like, because I was also watching other people.

It felt like you were fading through the story, from one part of the story to the next.

As we gear up for our performances for each other next week, I gradually sense that these storytellers are actively making their stories their own. We talked about this early on - how necessary it is to learn a story, and then let go of the "original", so that one can develop one's own interpretation of the story. As they gather these experiences, I wonder what they are finding: How does a storyteller make a story their own? What materials are at hand and the most useful?