Improvisational Theater as a Case of Affective Learning in the Assemblage

• In Event: Learning From Arts-Centered Communities: Possibilities for Educational Justice and Organizational Transformation

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the unique potentials of theatrical improvisation to create powerful movements of learning and embodied affect. While the role of improvisation in learning has been considered by scholars in the learning sciences (Sawyer, 2004), teacher education (Grau, Whyte, & Karabon, 2015), and sociocultural theory (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, 1998), these discussions do not capture the collective nature of the learning of the group that is evident with improvisational theater. In this case, we need a robust examination of learning practice that considers how a group comes to know over time, how groups are coached, how group-action develops, and how groups fall apart and are re-constituted as part of learning and identity transformations. Toward this end, along with social practice theories of learning we draw from Deleuze & Guattari’s (1987) metaphor of the assemblage, formed through rhizome-like relations. The rhizome is described in qualities of movement and process, including “variation, expansion, conquest, capture” (p. 21). Assemblages come together through different qualities of movement, dynamism and difference-creation; humans are constantly reconstituted by entering into relations and flows with other objects, ideas, elements, and materials. For learning theory, the assemblage is not just a perspective on the distribution of learning within a system; rather, it constitutes an onto-epistemological shift with respect to where “social practice” is located, to how human and non-human entities interact within it, and how practices change.
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of the rhizome also prompts us to ask how the improvisational performance—as praxis—can deterritorialize “the world" of which it is a part, or create new possibilities and relations for people. Such a praxis of (rhizomatic) worlding involves the creation of new relations of energy and affective attunement. The qualities of these affective flows—their rhythms, forces, relations, and movements (Stewart, 2011) are at the heart of our inquiry into the affects and effects of social justice pedagogy.
For our data and analysis we draw on our experiences of practicing improvisation during which time our learning-with-groups has been affectively charged and transformative. We also draw from the stories of improvisational players who are fellow members of our groups and of a local training center to foreground the experiences of artists of color and LGBTQ and multilingual players as they use improvisation to amplify the experiences of subaltern communities, challenge sociopolitical injustice, and explore new social possibilities.
We address the call to engage with community and organizational leaders by documenting our own research and collaboration with the leaders of a local improvisational arts training center. Together with these leaders, we consider some of the ways in which improvisational practices, including a conception of the assemblage, making and accepting “offers” of ideas, and staying committed to emergence can be folded back into the practice of co-leading efforts at educational change. Additionally, we document the grounded formation of a teacher-improv arts artist working group, through which teachers have begun to re-imagine their teaching practices toward the goal of more vibrant, artistic, and joyful learning communities even in high stakes and scripted contexts.

Authors

• Kevin M Leander, Vanderbilt University

• Laura Carter-Stone, Vanderbilt University