The Interview with the course leader highlighted several points that did not allude to a direct need for Kinesthetic Empathy as a tool, but to issues of a bigger picture that dramatically affect the building of community and kinship within the cohorts. Thus, indirectly confirming a need for methods that can enable a better sense of collaborative approaches within the cohorts.
The issues mentioned were around:
Space: A lack of dedicated space that students could truly inhabit and shape, limiting their ability to immerse themselves in the work as a cohesive company or within a theatre-making residency model.
Group cohesion: Challenges emerged due to uneven levels of professional experience, dominant voices, and differing cultural norms, which at times inhibited equitable participation and made it difficult for some students to find their place within the group.
Time: Insufficient time to cultivate a collaborative environment or build shared experiences beyond the rehearsal space.
Skills: Limited time to both deliver the curriculum and support skill development for less-experienced students, particularly in foundational practices such as play, voice, and movement.
Students voices
“You can be very Free but at the same time work with the group and create something beautiful together” (Student Voice)
“It created an environment of Saftey and freedom” (Student Voice)
In general, the students described a sense of feeling more of a group as the workshops went on, as well as one student noting more specifically, moments when the group attuned and listened to one another, and when the group were less cohesive –and more individualistic. This reflection shows that a sufficient level of attunement was reached to be able to differentiate when the group moved cohesively or not, which suggests a high level of kinesthetic empathy was reached.
Themes that emerged from the students’ reflections were:
Play: The experience encouraged students to return to play and creative exploration. One described play as a form of research, allowing them to “use different angles [physically] to observe” (student Voice) and break habitual bodily patterns, while others described feeling more connected to peers during play. I link this sense of connection to Spolin’s age-old notion of play being democratic participation, as students explored and “researched” with their bodies regardless of differences in theatre-making skills.
“Play is democratic! Anyone can play! Everyone can learn through playing! Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person – mind and body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition …” (Spolin, 1986, p. 3)
Feeling: Sensing the other, “listening to the other without just listening but by responding to them”. These reflections point towards empathy by being aware of their emotional state, as well as that of the other.
Mirror: Students frequently reflected on mirroring and attuning to others. While they did not explicitly link this to non-hierarchical practice, the process of responding in real time to another’s improvised movement inherently gives space, voice, and presence to the other, fostering collaborative, non-hierarchical approaches to theatre-making (Bogart & Landau, 2005).
These three themes align with the course leader’s interview, indicating that across the workshops, space was created for a non-hierarchical way of working despite differing levels of experience. The group developed sufficient cohesion to feel safe, enabling students to attune to one another and engage in playful, collaborative exploration
Three thematic concepts that stood out to me were Transform, Expand, and Practise, which I had not initially anticipated. I relate these to practice-based research, suggesting that the project could be further developed to explore how kinesthetic empathy might function as a tool for research.
Bibliography
Bogart, A. & Landau, T. (2005) The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group
Spolin, V. (1986) Theater games for the classroom: A teacher’s handbook. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.