Multimodal composition and the analysis of non-traditional texts have become important components in many writing program’s curriculum. Often writing instructors recognize the necessity of integrating multimodal instruction into their pedagogy, but most face a difficult transition away from the linear, logic of written text to the layered, textual/non-textual composition. These mixed mode compositions are fundamentally interdisciplinary, requiring knowledge and terminology from diverse fields such as art, music, film, photography, and computer design to name a few. Although the instructor and students may intuitively know why a mode does or does not work, discussing how the mode functions becomes a daunting task when the instructor’s and students’ knowledge of mode-specific terminology is limited. Multimodal composing is essentially interdisciplinary work—a scholarship that comes with a stigma—which might be why detailed frameworks for how to discuss the function of diverse modalities integral to multimodal composing remain sparse. Although it may seem counterintuitive to add a new genre to an already complex issue, one possible framework by which to discuss and experience many different modes is staged drama.
I posit theater is one of the oldest forms of multimodal composition and, as such, can be one way to bridge the modal gap between written and non-traditional texts. Whether a drama from classical antiquity, medieval passion play, Shakespearean tragedy, nineteenth-century melodrama, or Broadway musical, theater utilizes multiple, layered modes that occur simultaneously to create a meaningful production. Staged drama relies on the layering of many modalities—speech, gesture, facial expression, voice, blocking, and more recently set, light, sound, and costume design—and has always integrated multiple, separate modes to create a layered, whole work. Theater’s modes can also demonstrate the rhetorical function of mode. In a performance, modes are constructed to support an artistic plan; therefore, in every instance the director rhetorically frames the audience’s way of seeing the play. Yet, regardless of how the director directs the play, meaning does not emerge if theatergoers are not active participants in the performance. A performance’s ability to make meaning relies on audiences simultaneously perceiving and accepting individual modes because the multiple modes cannot simply be observed or read in stage directions—they must be experienced. The senses must be involved to see, hear, and feel the modes separately and as a layered whole. Theatrical meaning emerges for the audience through the mind-body experience of theater’s discursive and non-discursive symbolization.
Using both their minds and their bodies, the audience’s experience of theater produces meaning, and I argue a similar experience is necessary for students to fully understand the function of modes. Although all modes generally require the body’s senses in order to perceive and understand them (for instance the eyes are needed to see color, image, and design; the ears are needed to hear sound effects and music), gesture is uniquely positioned as a mode that is both created in and created by the body, and as such can provide students with a physical and mental means to access the concept of mode. The two primary modes of any theatrical production are speech and gesture, and more often than not, these two modes—mastered by an actor—work together to form a successful characterization. Actors have always been hyperaware of what their bodies communicate to the audience about their character’s social status, personality, and function in the play. In most (but not all) theater theoretical movements, actors are expected to embody their characters so as to realistically or conceptually present their or the director’s interpretive view of the play. Utilizing dramatic performance in the writing classroom renders the abstract concept of the non-discursive modes material by clearly positioning the abstract concept of mode within the body and the mind. Pedagogically focusing on the mode of gesture provides students with a physical connection to a seemingly intangible concept. This approach helps physicalize abstract rhetorical concepts by placing them in the composer’s body. Additionally, because drama is fundamentally multimodal, incorporating theater into the classroom not only teaches the rhetorical nature of gesture, but provides entry into other rhetorical, non-discursive modes important to the creation of multimodal compositions such as color, music/sound, clothing, and format/design. I will first discuss mode from a semiotic perspective and define discursive and non-discursive symbolization. In the next section, I will examine how theorists from different fields have discussed gesture’s meaning-making capabilities and then supply my own definition. Next, I focus on how movement, thinking, and writing are currently implemented in the composing classroom (both textual and multimodal), and finally, I will explore drama’s role in developing an awareness of non-discursive gesture and discuss how this awareness can enrich work already being done on movement and writing.
"Drama is the perfect place to begin the study of rhetoric."
“Will you be focusing on political theater?” asked a concerned and perplexed mentor when I proposed teaching rhetoric through a theatrical lens. Drama-as-Literature (literature with a capital L), like Shakespearean drama, is viewed as a respectable field of study, but drama-as-theater has long been considered “just art” or “just entertainment” because of its performance aspect. I anticipate some readers of this article may question a theatrical methodological approach to teaching mode and the non-discursive due to theater’s perceived unscholarly nature, a label scholars of theater have pushed against for a very long time. If you accept that theater is fundamentally multimodal and has been since classical antiquity, theater becomes incredibly important for learning, analyzing, and creating multimodal work.
Theater is capable of teaching students many different skills besides how to be a good actor, director, or designer, and it provides skills that are necessary in diverse fields—collaboration, leadership, problem solving, thinking outside of the box, and many more. But like me, Amy Petersen Jensen (2008), in “Multimodal literacy and theater education,” thinks theater is particularly important for teaching multiple modes of literacy. She argues that students learn best by doing, and theater is “uniquely positioned to substantially contribute to the new forms of literacy” emerging in our multimedia society (p. 19). My article works to illustrate how drama can contribute to multimodal/multimedia instruction.
