Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03

Teachers learn Stage Presence and Poetry Speaking
or
Eternity's Sunrise

by Robert McNeer, Italy

I'll call her Ursula. Healthy, interested, henna hair, light make-up, smiling, she has volunteered to speak her poem. She has a slight tendency to turn her gaze inwards when she talks. Is this shyness, trying to avoid the others' gaze, or is she just looking within for her thought? After a one-minute warm-up, a circle prayer from yoga to focus our collective attention, Ursula immediately takes center stage, before we've yet sat down.

She doesn't fall into the common trap of explaining the poem, or worse, explaining how she really wanted to do another poem, but had to do this one instead. She jumps right in. So fast, in fact, that some of us are still getting seated. I'm tempted to stop her and have her wait for silence, but it's too late. She's already 2 words in, and my stopping her now would inflict a didactic point onto a very personal energy which she's brought to this moment. I keep my mouth shut, hoping that her energy is high enough and the laggards' sensitivity great enough to calm the waters through the poem itself, which is in fact what happens.* She does a poem which I think I recognize. I'll try to transpose exactly what I understood on a first hearing: "He who something something himself dah-dah, doth the winged dah (emphatic gesture downward). But he who kiss something joy dah-dah flies (half-convinced hand gesture upwards and out at elbow level), lives in ete...something sunrėse (accent on "rise").

At the poem's finish her eyes flutter momentarily back to a point on the floor about a meter in front of her, and then to me, smiling, asking, "What now?" She physically relaxes. The point on the floor had been the focus of her gaze for about half the poem. It is just short of the first row of the audience, and from that point she could monitor them without encountering their gaze. For most of the rest of the poem her focus was just above the 2nd and last row, likewise a point to monitor without meeting their eyes. She glanced at me once during the poem, immediately after beginning, a look which I interpreted as an unconscious question: "Is this OK?" It happened to be just as I was feeling good about not interrupting her, so she got a big smile from me which unfortunately distracted her, making incomprehensible the words immediately after "He who..."

Ursula is German, and speaks excellent English. The fact that I understood only half the words of the poem is of course in part due to the slight hesitations inevitable to 2nd language work, but would not be unusual in a native speaker. Any encounter with a text not your own, especially a poetic text, with the density and complexity of its rhythms, is a challenge to any speaker.

So Ursula is looking at me, smiling. She's exhilarated, she's a little afraid, she's waiting for instructions. She's vulnerable. This is often a very beautiful moment, and I don't like to rush it. I like to stretch out that questioning without speech, in the hopes that the others can sense its mysterious beauty. I find many teachers overanxious to get the student to the answer, thereby stealing from him many of the most poetic moments en route.

On the basis of Ursula's interpretation, my understanding of the poem thus far is as a 2-part recipe; first part bad, "He who does something himself...winged ["bad" gesture], 2nd part good: but he who...kisses...joy...flies....lives...sunrise" This sounds familiar. I ask if anyone else knows the poem, Some do. I ask them not to tell, and ask the others to describe what they perceived. Some responses: "Smiling. Warmth. Shyness." Words? Most of the same I heard. One woman heard "Eternity." What gestures can they recreate? The 2 I've already mentioned are quoted, as well as an apparently involuntary movement of the right hand on the word "kisses." Was she talking to us? Everyone agrees she was not. Who was she talking to? A moment of reflection. "Herself. To someone in the past."

At this point, of course, I could just tell her to look into people's eyes as she speaks, and leave it at that. But there's been something inward in her gaze which I think wouldn't change even if her eyes were to point themselves at mine. I feel telling her to look into the eyes of the others would be too simplistic an indication for the level of her spiritual engagement with the material. And the unconscious movement of her hand on the word "kiss" has given me a softer idea, one that might better respect her individual reaction to the poem. I kiss her, and ask her to do it again. Ursula, a little surprised by the kiss, smiles and begins. There's something softer in her voice, more open in her body, but she's still not engaging the others fully. This time I interrupt her immediately. Speaking quietly so the others can't hear me, I suggest that she speak the poem as she approaches someone in the group, and finishes the poem by kissing that person. She does so, and the poem begins to have an intention which it lacked. In the meantime all the words have become clear. It's a poem by William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sun rise.

The performance has certainly become a moving experience for the person kissed, now the question is how to include everyone. We try the reverse, that she kisses someone and then backs up into the playing area, consciously including each of us in her action, as if inviting us to play. Everyone agrees she's now unquestionably speaking with us, and her emotional movement seems to be in accord with an expansion in the poem, but I feel there's still something vague in the interpretation, which lacks the immediacy of the thought. This can be very tricky to find, as we so often confuse thought with analysis, which is far from the nature of poetry. I ask if anyone can explain to me what the poem means, and when Sabina begins doing so, I ask her to come in the door, greet us as if we were her class, and begin a lecture on the themes of this poem. As she does so, I take Ursula aside, telling her that when she feels the teacher is in difficulty, at a loss for words, she should come in, kiss her, and tell us the poem. Sabina starts her lecture confidently, a little jokingly, but as she continues she begins to realize the enormity of what she's trying to say, and begins to slow down, to search for words. Ursula is very discrete, not wanting to interrupt and, I feel, also intrigued by Sabina's words. But at a certain point Sabina can't get any further. She's bogged down, she's frustrated. and its now that Ursula, like a guardian angel, enters, kisses the teacher gently, and speaks to us words both deeply felt and true. For just a moment we too are in eternity's sunrise.

*Had I found it appropriate, I wouldn't have hesitated. Sometimes an interruption can help a person relax into a poem, leaving her stage fright behind in the first false start. In that case, however, the interruption has to be the right length and temperature. I find it helpful to end with a gentle joke: everyone laughs together, and the second start can come directly out of that warmth. Ideally the joke would come from some sign of the performer's nervousness, but this only if the nervousness is not so great as to be potentially paralyzing.

lupo.teatro@libero.it

Robert McNeer has worked as a professional actor in Switzerland and Italy for the last twenty years. The special considerations to acting in a second and third language , as well as the evident parallels between the art of acting and the art of teaching have helped him to develop a vocabulary for working with teachers on stage presence. His work focuses on the perceptive field created between audience and actor, and borrows form such sources as Noh theatre, Dylan Thomas, children's circle games and alchemy. It's not as weird as it sounds.