Reading Like an Actor: Changing the Culture of Literary Reading Through “Rehearsal Room” Pedagogy

• In Event: Reading as Possibility: Constructing a New Theoretical and Empirical Foundation for Equity and Imagination in Reading Education

Abstract

In her critical analysis of the state of adolescent literature study, Ladson-Billings (2010) noted that the literature textbook’s rendering of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was bereft of intellectually promising signifiers: “Nothing about the presentation of the play said, “You are a reader who is likely to read for pleasure and for your own information. Instead it implied you are not smart enough to read this play so your textbook will digest it and feed it to you. Incidentally, your teacher is not smart enough to really teach it to you” (p.19). Such distortions of literary texts and reading are pervasive in K-12 reading and literature programs, and now Common Core standards. This paper presents a critical sociocultural analysis (Moje & Lewis 2007) of the ways two elementary and middle grade teachers implemented a drama-based pedagogy that disrupted normative assumptions about their students’ (and their own) access to Shakespeare. Both teachers were part of a cohort of thirty-eight 3rd-12th grade teachers, in high and moderate poverty schools, who participated in an intensive professional development program, supported by a partnership between the UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company and a Midwestern university. Their training introduced teachers to the practices used by the RSC’s professional actors, who learn to perform Shakespeare’s words as an ensemble, through collaborative reading, multiple embodied forms of meaning exploration, repeated reading with varying inflections, and movement to narrated speech (Berry 2008; http://www.teachingshakespeare.ac.uk/).
Using an adapted cultural historical activity theory model for data collection and analysis of artifacts, teacher and student interviews, program descriptions, video, audio, and fieldnotes in classrooms and workshops, I present findings from two case studies that show how teachers and students engaged with and resisted ‘rehearsal room’ practices for reading complex literary texts. Findings support research on the value of drama-based activity in reading education while showing more precisely how these practices systematically promote close reading and disrupt hierarchies of knowledge and ability among participants. Furthermore, this research points to the potential for reading and literature education to be transformed by a multimodal practice that views its participants as socially adept, intellectually engaged and expert.

Author

• Patricia E. Enciso, The Ohio State University