From Image to Gesture

Yesterday I participated in an “applied theater” workshop. The term “Applied Theater” is new to me. From the CUNY website:

The MA in Applied Theatre degree program, the first program of its kind in the United States, uses theatre as a medium for education, community development, and the pursuit of social justice… Applied Theatre involves the use of theatre and drama in a wide variety of nontraditional contexts and venues, such as in teaching, the justice system, health care, the political arena, community development, museums, and social service agencies.

Developing real life skills through the arts is a theme that is near and dear to me, especially in recent months. One of the things we were asked to do in the workshop yesterday was to find three gestures that told a story about struggle and breaking through. I quickly realized that I do not think in gesture. We all have different communication and learning styles so it didn’t surprise me. I’m visual and aural. So the work for me was to start with images and sounds and figure out how to interpret them into gesture. And to interpret them in a way that didn’t feel cliche.

I was taken back to choreographing pop songs in elementary school – something we would do for fun during recess. Looking back, the moves were super cliche. If you choreographed a dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as a kid, then you know what I’m talking about! But the feeling back then was real–exciting, creative, rhythmic, and fun.

The gesture exercise asked me to consider all the different ways that “struggle and breaking through” can look like, sound like, move like. The tempo, fluid or choppy, soft or loud. Working back and forth across the senses–what a fun thing to have permission to do. And how useful it is to stretch our minds in this way so that when we are struggling with problems in real life, we can tap into multiple senses and ways of seeing, hearing, moving, thinking to work our way through.


related post
Working Back + Forth