Whereas much of history has favored the intellectual mind over the sensual body, in theater, performers embrace the reciprocal relationship between the mind and body. Non-discursive gesture—a non-discursive mode that ambiguously and inarticulately communicates and expresses—extends out from this relationship. Professor, director, and actor, David Zinder (2007) theoretically examines Michael Chekhov’s (1953) “psychological gesture” method for insight into the characterization process. In his article, “’The actor imagines with his body’ – Michael Chekhov: An examination of the phenomenon,” Zinder probes “the necessary or unavoidable nature of the relationship between … the human mind and the body that contains it” (p. 8). He coins this mutually supportive relationship the “bodymind,” a methodology that sets up “the moving body as a catalyst for the creative imagination” and the images created reverberate in the body which creates new movement and so on (p. 8). Zinder developed improvisation activities to help actors connect body to imagination. He argues that there is an “associative capability of the imagination” so that the body stimulates the mind and the mind moves the body. To help fine tune actors’ awareness of this connection, students work in pairs—one as the sculptor and one as the sculpture. The sculptor moves the body of the sculpture into positions, and then the sculpture describes what the position calls up in the mind. Thus, the response of the body and the mind is reciprocal; Zinder calls the result of this relationship a “focused dialogue between the body and the imagination” (p. 12). Through this “bodymind” performance, actors embody their intended character, rather than just visually portray them, because they have more completely and reciprocally joined the text to the mind to the body. This technique, I believe, can be integrated into the classroom to aid students with both written and multimodal compositions.
One of the scholars already moving composition and rhetoric instruction in this direction is Dunn (2001). As we saw earlier, she uses movement as a bodily representative of the words on the page, and she understands the connection between the body’s reaction and the mind’s production. That said, I believe Dunn does not use movement’s possibilities to their fullest. Although I find Zinder’s (2007) activity a fascinating exploration of the mind-body connection, I do not believe, in its current form, that it is appropriate for composition students; however, integrating instruction on gesture bridges Zinder’s and Dunn’s use of the body. The possibilities gesture offers for both expanding current arguments on writing and movement and multimodal instruction are exciting. Zinder’s “bodymind” process more fully reveals the connection between gesture and thought and allows us to explore how an awareness of gesture enables students to make mode a tangible rhetorical concept.
Among humanity, gesture is everywhere, or rather, if a human is involved, there will be gesture in all its many forms. Gesture is not just a mode that we daily—consciously or unconsciously—use; it is a mode that we also daily respond to and are persuaded by. Awareness of this mode, both how it can be used and how it can be analyzed, should not be reserved for those working in theater alone, but remains a vital component found in everyday rhetoric. In a world so visually oriented, it is imperative students know how to use and analyze gesture, but more than that, connecting with gesture—a mode created within and by the body—enables students a pathway into other less physical modes such as design, color, image, sound, etc. Focusing first on gesture as mode gives students a reference point because it enables them to better assess how the mode is persuasive and in what ways it functions best. That said, students may never be fully cognizant of gesture’s communicative and expressive power if they never learn to be aware of their own bodies.
A good place to start learning this awareness is to use improvisation, an activity espoused by Moffett (1967) to teach language development and expansion of ideas, but with a focus on non-discursive gesture, this activity helps students expore how they use gesture when reacting to common situations and engaging in normal conversations. Initially, improvization is used in small groups, and each group tapes their sessions for later analysis. After each session, students view the tape and analyze the data as well as journal about their experience as actor and viewer. Situations and conversations should vary from calm interactions to mild altercations to difficult issues, allowing students to see how emotion and complexity of topic becomes a factor in gestural use. Later, students move away from conversations (a traditional place to locate gesture) and toward non-discursive gestures by miming a “hunt for their cell phone” or a “moment studying for a difficult test.” This activity forces students away from only thinking of gestures connection to words and instead asks them to consider how thought and emotion are linked to gesture. Both activities will take time for students to feel comfortable thinking on the spot and being observed, but it helps them become aware of their natural reactions to everyday situations. Instructors should point out particularly telling gestures; those that are particularly moving, persuasive, and meaningful so that students can work toward an interpretation of their bodies and an awareness of how this mode acts rhetorically.
When students are ready, text can be introduced to help them learn gesture awareness through rhetorical analysis, and then discover how to enact those qualities and characteristics through the body. The text can either be one they have written or one they are closely analyzing. Although students should be instructed in a close analysis of the text, they must be continually reminded that it is the body or the combined body and text that acts powerfully and not just the words alone. Moving students away from a reliance on the text may prove challenging since they have been taught to privilege text over the body’s senses and emotions, but it is vital that they do so. One way to keep students from relying on the text is to ask them to mime the action of their text without words; in this way, students will feel the gestural mode rather than rely on the voice to express what the whole body should. Gesture can be an aspect of the final product (as in delivery of a speech) or a component of the brainstorming or revision process, but either way, the gesture should be privileged over the text. Like the writing process, gestural awareness develops recursively, and teachers must encourage students back to mime and improvisation every time their performance of the text appears too textually centered. Through this process, students learn how their bodies symbolize discursively and non-discursively, they begin to understand the rhetorical nature of mode. When instructors introduce new modes, they can use student’s intimate knowledge of gesture as a way to discuss the composer’s methodological frame and the mode’s rhetorical effect on the viewer because starting with a mode that is connected to the user’s mind and body, gives students a base from which to assess the function of other modes.
"The actor imagines with his body.
He cannot avoid gesturing or moving without responding to his own internal images."
Aside
More on “The Psychological Gesture” as well as the “Imagination and
Incorporation of Images” can be found in Michael Chekhov’s (1953), To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting.
Chekhov, nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov and a renowned actor, was the star
pupil of Russian, Constantin Stanislavsky, the developer
of the psychophysical approach to theater. Chekhov’s acting abilities and his
skills of observation enabled him to develop the “physical acting technique,
incorporating imagination and body as well as intellect” (Micha). In this
acting method, it is clear the mind, body, and intellect are each required to
physically embody any character. The same remains true for students learning
the rhetorical capabilities of gesture.
If the plunge into improvisation and mime seems extreme, there are less dramatic ways to integrate gesture that provide students with ways to think with their hands. For instance, consider working from a speech into a traditional argument essay or a visual argument essay. The tricky part of this method being students must incorporate their gesture’s discursive and non-discursive symbolization into the new text. In both cases, from speech to essay or multimodal composition, students have to translate gesture into other modes. Another way to integrate gesture without all the drama is to insist students go on group brainstorming walks. This gets students’ bodies, hands, and thoughts working, which undoubtedly produces a wealth of ideas that should be recorded by a tape recorder as they walk. Additionally, if you have embraced online peer review like have many writing instructors, be sure to have students converse face-to-face in class about their comments. This time not only helps students clarify their comments and ask questions of their commenters, but explanations are accompanied by gesture, which helps both the commenter think through their ideas and the author better understand them.
