Yes, and…! Enacting Inclusion By Way of Theatre Improvisation

• In Event: Practicing the Possible: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Improvisation Toward Remedy and Inclusion

Abstract

This study explores improvisation as a process that engages students and educators in a practice of seeing each other through an asset lens of acceptance and encouragement.

Data for this study comes from a dissertation project in which I explored the pedagogical moves and mindsets held by teaching artists in a creative writing- and theatre-based artist-in-residence program for fourth grade students (Author, forthcoming). The initial project showed that teaching artists’ drew on expertise in theatre improvisation to cultivate a playful and asset-based learning culture (Flint & Jaggers, 2021). I engaged in thematic analysis (Fugard & Potts, 2020) of field notes and interviews (n=5), and specifically investigated how the ubiquitous theatre improvisation tenet of “yes, and” was enacted in the program.
Paraphrasing seminal texts on improvisation by Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone, Barker (2016) describes the “yes, and” tenet of improvisation as the ability to

make your partners feel safe and look good, which can be achieved by being attentive, responsive, and humble…listen[ing] alertly for and to others’ verbal and physical offers, accept[ing] all offers, and apply[ing] these ideas to the context of the unfolding scene. (p. 23)

My research questions were: How did these “yes, and” “moves” (Barker, 2016) emerge throughout the program? What underlying belief(s) about students or learning are presupposed by these moves? I engaged in holistic coding of the data to answer both questions. For the first, I broke down Barker’s description above into phrases and used them as etic codes; for the second, I engaged in values coding of the sections of data in which those moves surfaced (Saldaña, 2016).

Here I highlight two ways the “yes, and” improvisation tenet was enacted. First, through the classroom “agreements”: every idea is a good idea and every idea can be revised, support each other’s ideas, and respect yourself and others. Teaching artists reviewed these agreements and modeled them implicitly and explicitly through facilitation of the lesson plans and in personal interactions with students. Second, through teaching artists’ improvised performances of students’ writing. In both examples, teaching artists demonstrated how to “yes, and” students’ contributions.
Implicit in these enactments of improvisation was the belief that teaching artists and students had to see themselves and their peers with the expectation that they would inevitably raise valuable ideas or contributions that were worth engaging with (rarely a bygone conclusion in many classroom cultures). This expectation reflects hooks’s vision (2014) of a radically inclusive pedagogy grounded in the “recognition that everyone influences the classroom dynamic…everyone contributes. These contributions are resources” (p. 8).

These findings suggest, through ongoing participation in theatre-based improvisation, educators and learners relate to each other in ways that foreground “interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence” (p. 8), and perceive the self and others as having valuable contributions. This improvisational way of being and seeing offers a process of enacting asset-based pedagogy in which we invite, accept, and engage with students’ diverse contributions in a learning space (Authors, 2024).

Author

• Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison