A teacher did some RT last week and reported back:
…my one disappointment was my actors – should have fired them. I have to work on that….
This speaks volumes. It shows that we all need to deconstruct what Jason does – which includes very strict classroom order and discipline – and build it into our own version of RT.
RT is more improvisation than planned theatre and so there is no one way to do it. But most of us take that too far. We see Gayle do it in Los Alamitos and we just try to imitate that in general terms and it doesn’t work for us because:
a. we are not Gayle Traeger.
b. we lack a template to follow.
A template would give you the information you need to not have to fire actors. It would give you a flexible plan, based as much in the teaching cells of your body as in your mind, and that fact would give wings to the process of coaching and directing kids.
RT is so much more than we think it is. It will make our storyasking 100% better. You won’t have to fire actors anymore because they won’t dare cross your lines any more than professional actors would cross their director in a rehearsal. All discipline will emerge from and be a function of the template.
I once asked Jason in a workshop years ago how he did something awesome in a demo he had just done and he didn’t even remember it. This also tells me that we need a template. A template would allow us to see the things that he is doing (I wrote notes as fast as I could) and then take from it what works for us via lots of practice and courage.
If we can learn to ride the PQA bicycle and the story bicycle, we can also learn to ride the reading bicycle, but that bike ain’t getting rode until we build this piece in. RT is the missing piece to Step 3, in my opinion.
I’ll just keep adding RT posts over time and we can keep talking about it and trying it (it may be a good springtime change from stories) and see what happens. We can aim for blastoff in the fall on this deal. We will no longer have two strong steps, but three, as the reading piece is given wings with RT.