MOVING IMAGES
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND THE PHYSICAL THEATRE
by RON EAST
copyright © 1994
THE PROJECT:
This book with illustrations and photographs is the result of 25 years of professional teaching experience, and pedagogical research carried out in Canada and in Paris, France.
BACKGROUND:
Experiential learning is becoming a popular term. It can mean many things, from providing hands-on experience, to the use of high technology in learning. I employ this term to describe a carefully structured process of active, schematic learning techniques designed specifically to challenge the individual to engage his or her creative potential. By applying these physical training experiences the participant develops creative responses to a wide variety of focused opportunities. This process involves perceptual identification - a discovery. This perception is then transferred into applicable responses - play. The physical recognition of these responses over time creates a transformation into original patterns, and a personal style of presentation emerges. This learning, unlike most linear information processing, is similar to learning to swim or ride a bicycle, in that it remains in the physical memory as a useful active part in each participant's creative development. As the learning experience takes hold the student absorbs the process itself, continuing to employ it by transforming it independently for career and personal development.
The applications are far-reaching. As we move further into the computer age the demand for creative, original responses to schematic processes becomes increasingly essential. We are being superceded by the machine in processing information in all sectors of society. In our formal education we have developed linear `left-hemisphere' training processes to a powerful level of sophistication. How do we train our intuition? How do we develop our creative faculties? How can we develop our ability to be inspired? How can we train our schematic mind to equal our deductive reasoning; and how do we marry these two processes into whole-mind thinking? These are crucial questions for educators as we move into the next millennium. This book contributes to the development of a new vision for creative education.
THE AUTHOR:
Ron East has been teaching, performing, directing and writing for the theatre for thirty years. He studied at the University of Alberta, apprenticed at the Stratford Festival, and trained at the famed Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques LeCoq in Paris. He has acted with the Stratford Festival, Theatre Calgary, and Canada's National Arts Centre, as well as performing his own productions across Canada. He has created and directed sixteen original plays, taught in professional Schools including the Vancouver Playhouse School, and the Canadian Mime School, and has operated the School of Physical Theatre for the past eighteen years. He has taught at Brock and McMaster Universities, The Ecole Jacques LeCoq, at Stratford, The National Ballet, for Skate Canada and Theatre Ontario. He is also a consultant for stage, film, and television.
