A Drama conference, if you choose your sessions appropriately, can greatly resemble what I imagine a hippy commune is like. Start your day with yoga; move into a session of ritualised stomping, group death, and reanimation; then conversely, head over to experience your birth as you exit your egg and blindly interact with a stranger. This was just in my first morning in Christchurch. Why is this relevant to you? Am I trying to get you all to experience Shaku-Hachi as part of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training? No. Although to be honest this was the most alert and present I have felt in ages. Am I wanting you to experiment with dissonant vocal sounds as you explore waving a scarf using four means of movement? No. To be honest that session, which was the last one of the weekend, was dreadful and I wish I hadn’t gone to that. Am I wanting you to explore the world blindly for the first time and have your only connection be with a stranger’s hand? No. Well, actually, yes. To be honest, I would love nothing more than to get the whole staff to try out this wellbeing exercise as it was truly extraordinary and the fact that afterwards everyone was able to locate their stranger was amazing and a bit woowoo. But I doubt I would get many willing to do that. Any takers, let me know. My Year 13s will be subjected to this in the coming weeks. What is relevant are the messages that came through again and again in these sessions about being creative, being strong, and being resilient. In order to further develop these key conference themes, the keynote address was delivered by Dr Viv Aitken an expert (unironically) on Mantle of the Expert. Aitken based her talk around ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion’ by Jonathan Haidt. A subject she noted she had considered changing given recent events. Dr Aitken entwined Haidt’s theories on morality and righteousness with the theories of the Mantle of the Expert’s creator, Dorothy Heathcote. Here is where you come in. Brotherhood is part of the Mantle of the Expert process; Mantle of the Expert being the approach where participants take up the specialist knowledge required to perform a task. For example, a student could take on the Mantle of being a Roman baker and discuss bread fraud (which, fun fact, was a real thing) as part of a group’s exploration of life in Roman times. As part of this Mantle of the Expert work, you pause before a moment to think of the people who have taken a similar step/action as you are about to undertake. This could be in the present in New Zealand or throughout history and throughout the world. You are joining that brotherhood. “All those who” is a phrase attributed to this work. Aitken tasked us with adding in the opposite view too. Could we also think of “all those who don’t”? Those who would be adversely affected or would be opposed to the step/action. This is a fitting consideration in our current climate. Do you often consider the worldview of others? In fact, how can you consider the worldview of others? Have you ever considered your own? Have you, as Haidt explores, considered your righteous stances? An acting process that can be helpful in this also comes from Heathcote. This is her exercise on the 5 Levels of Meaning:
It seems a very important time to consider our actions, motivations, models, investments, and values. In education, we are not teaching the views. We are teaching that there are views. Contested and contestable. Who are your brothers? Who aren’t your brothers and why? Does it really matter? Considering our brotherhoods (a term that the feminist in me is a little snarky about using) is an interesting and illuminating challenge. Because we are not immune to the viruses of hate, of fear, of other. We never have been. But we can be the nation that discovers the cure. -Jacinda Adern ~Lauren Mackay
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June 2019
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