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Of
the many challenges that have been faced during the development
of PWR 2—balancing of writing and speaking, pacing and intensity
of work, differentiation from PWR 1, importance to sophomores—there
is perhaps a lingering issue: how do instructors assist students
to be better speakers? There is a solid and thorough pedagogy
in place for teaching writing to be read—and for perhaps
even writing to be heard—but what are the nitty-gritty kinds
of exercises and activities that improve speaking? What kind of
sequence of assignments can be effective? What are some of the
sources we can look to in order to inform such choices?
This fall
I sat down with Kevin DiPirro to talk about how his background
in drama helps him approach the complex challenges of teaching
PWR2. These classes, required for all sophomore students, focus
on the oral presentation of student research and the rhetorical
choices that students have at their disposal in planning and practicing
for their presentations. Kevin’s class, “Family Dramas”
examines four quite different plays; the roster changes quarterly,
but this past fall it was: Arthur Miller’s Death of
a Salesman, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive,
Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog, and David Auburn’s
Proof – each of which centers on families, their
pathologies, their idiosyncrasies, and their dynamics. Each student
chooses a particular play to focus on and a particular family
matter to research. Student research proceeds from a number of
quite different disciplinary perspectives: drama and performance
studies, family studies, psychology, and sociology. Students produce
a research paper, and give a number of formal presentations throughout
the quarter, culminating in an academic style presentation.
How
does your background in theatre and performance inform your teaching
of PWR2?
Slowly I’ve
been drawing on my theatre experience in more formalized ways.
The other day, for example, I used a theatre exercise that is
based on walking like your character. I had students stand up
and start walking. This is a 9 am class so I had them walk like
they’re sleepy. Then I had them start talking about whatever
they want, in their sleepy voice. They know what this is –
low-pitched.
Then I had
them add in an annoying gesture. Of course, I did all this myself
first so they could watch me make a fool of myself, in case they
needed confidence. Then I pointed to one person and had him say
two lines with these three things going. Then I had them climb
out of sleepy posture, but keep the sleepy voice and the disagreeable
gesture. Everyone, to a person, said he got clearer. It was simply
because the body straightened up. It was quite evident to people.
Then I said
get out of sleepy voice. Again, there was one more level of clarity
that came. Most of them noticed how his pitch went to its rightful
place – not too low, not too high: a pitch where you don’t
have to push and can be clear. One student remarked that in classes
he tends to speak in a deep gravelly voice, to sound more authoritative.
This is a very common phenomenon in voice studies. Another student
admitted she often did a throaty “Dorothy Parker”
thing and never knew why her voice was always giving out on her.
Lastly I had them remove the annoying gesture, which usually means
another one shows up.
So there it
is: a simple little theatre exercise designed to get people into
the physicality and voice of a character in this case becomes
a way to get students more consciously into their own bodies and
voices.
(continued...)
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