The ability to direct actors is not something we are trained to do. But we must embrace that challenge. In my own opinion, directing actors is about looking for possibilities. We keep our inner sonor ready to find the moment in the scene to milk just one sentence or even one word, if it has emotive power to become a chant, a little scene, etc.
We just have to learn to embrace the bizarre moments that occur to us while doing the CI. We do that in stories anyway. Jason plans nothing, he lets everything emerge. That can be called trust. Trust the RT scene to happen without our heavy hand controlling everything, squeezing the life out of it. Same in stories. I have written about that here:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/30/staying-in-the-moment/
It is possible that, if we can’t muster the mental discipline to let go and let things flow, we might as well not even try to do Reader’s Theatre. Jason lets go. Does that mean he doesn’t follow a template? Of course not, but his template is imprinted in his mind to such a degree that he is not conscious of it.
This letting go of technique is exactly what we see in the great ones, and we should all aspire to greatness. Look at the virtuoso on the violin. Do we really believe that they are thinking about technique, holding the bow, shifting to higher positions, when they are playing Bach?
Jason’s template sits there in his mind, making sure that chaos doesn’t erupt in the scene, keeping kids from texting, refocusing the class in all sorts of ways, keeping them aware, But, in the meanwhile, his heart pours joy into the scene. Jason’s heart pours joy into the scene.
In Jason we see a beautiful blending of mind and heart. in that sense he is a model for what human beings of the future might look like once they get rid of their fatal grasp on power, their avaricious natures, and their desire to have everything to themselves.
This greed describes many current language teachers. They know grammar and computers and suppose that if they know those things they can teach a language. Then, when they hear about comprehensible input, in some underhanded way, they refuse our invitation to dance. On some underwater level know that it takes joy to dance and they swim uglily away.
We can have joy. If Jason can show us joy, then we can show our students joy. We don’t have to say that this method is not for us because it “doesn’t fit our personality”. That’s the cop out. Unless, of course, if we don’t WANT joy in our jobs, in our lives, in which case we can teach until we dry up and blow away like the old teachers.
Jason sets forth a goal that we can attain. He models for us a blending of mind and heart. Of course we need a template for our mind, and it will dominant our coming experimentation with RT (once we get the template), but I would caution that once we get a template, it may not be enough unless we are willing to open up our hearts to the fear that comes with trusting in life.
But, if we want RT to work, we don’t necessarily need to “have that kind of personality” (which is a true cop out), all we need to do is try to be happy. This is all about Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development, which I interpret to mean that it is through human interaction (read joy) that we actually learn languages.