Story-Based Processing

Good morning!

​We spent the first part of today processing our genocide memorial visit from yesterday. In true story-based learning fashion, we began with theatrical warm-ups (standing in a circle, passing energy from person to person, and some simple voice and movement exercises). Though we’d played these games during our meetings before we left, they somehow had more weight now. We were all dedicated and devoted to the task at hand, not distracted by the workload of last semester. We were led through creating a simple theme and structure for a story, and then putting it into our bodies. The final stories were OK, but it was the process that was important, since we’ll be using it to train teachers next week.

Though not everybody was on board with the story-based model of processing at first (including me), it was a good activity that brought us all much closer together. For 9 students who had never truly worked as an ensemble before (with many being basically strangers), this was a much needed activity. In a rare occurrence, we were granted the afternoon off - we earned it!