Transcript

Decision Making Through Theater | Nivedita Bhattacharjee | TEDxBESC

[Applause] A very interesting topic and a topic which I have been teaching and doing for the past 35 years. My mother, my ma, she has been the person who inculcated this one big passion in my life. My love for theater. It has been a passion for a very long time. It has helped mold my thought processes, my ability to communicate, my ability to try and understand personalities and why they feel and behave the way they do. Human beings are interesting as no two are exactly the same. That has been both a boon as well as a challenge when it comes to teaching life skills which I do. I also teach speech and drama and my experiences have taught me that perhaps one of the best effective methods of teaching life skills is through theater. I therefore feel that like in many countries Italy, Israel, students have to go through mandatory military training. It would do a lot for character building if everyone in the world had access to basic theater training. But before I continue any further, I must clarify one point. A point that has been a bug bear for me when dealing with some parents and guardians. This method of teaching life skills through theater is not aimed at training young and men and women to become actors. Well, I'm not going to discourage any such talent either, but the process is primarily aimed at teaching life skills, not acting skills. Many times in our lives when we react with passion, energy, enthusiasm, anger, excitement, love, sarcasm, and a whole gamut of other emotions. The reaction that we often provoke is don't be dramatic. Now people who respond in this manner may be oblivious to the famous lines by Shakespeare. All the worlds are stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts. I therefore feel that real life is very akin to a theater show. Once we're on stage, we have just one chance to prove ourselves. Miss a crucial line and it's over. No retakes. Given that, it logically follows that if we prepare for real life as we prepare for a theater show, test out all the various options that are available to us in a given situation and then choose the one with the best possible outcome. we will have less chances of going wrong. To qualify, let me also say that even if there is a chance of things going wrong, we are better prepared for the consequences because we have foreseen them to a certain extent. The fact is that these rehearsals for life are conducted in a controlled situation. There is an expert watching over us, a teacher, trainer or facilitator. And we are rehearsing among people who are on our side, who have got our back. Mistakes made here will not lead to disaster and can be corrected repeatedly. This is a huge advantage. Real life does not give us that option. Using theater in education is not at all a new concept. It has been in practice for years. The oldest triotize on theater in Sanskrit from India of course is the Nata Shastra through its various detailed chapters dealing with the aspects of ancient Sanskrit theater. It justifies the fact that the vehicle of drama can be used for the enlightenment of the masses. Since ancient times, a number of forms of theater have been prevalent in India. We have the Jatras of Bengal and Orisa. The Nanki of Uttar Pradesh. Bhavay Gujarat. Tamasha of Maharashtra. We have Chao of Bihar. Then we have Har Kata of Southern India. Kalari Payatu and Katakali of Kerala. Nakal of Punjab, Pandavani of Madhya Pradesh, Swang of Rajasthan and so many other forms. All these forms aimed at educating not only the privileged classes but especially the Hoy Polloy in the remote villages. They taught lessons about life. Often they were the only form of education for the masses. I'm not even going to try to get into the details of world theater here, but I must mention the Brazilian theater director Austoto Bal's theater of the oppressed, which is perhaps the best example of participatory theater. It draws not only upon the experiences and interpretations of the actors but also the audience. In his book theater of the oppressed, Bual outlines his joker system of theater. In this system, there is a joker character who exists in the time and space of the audience and represents the views of the author and the arguments of the drama. The joker is the protagonist. The audience just does not come to watch a play. They come to participate in a brainstorming experience very much like this. The joker is the link between the audience and the actors who conducts the whole exercise so to speak. After the performance, members from among the spectators join the actors on stage to find an alternate solution to the situation presented through the performance. Perhaps Dr. Ibru Gozag of Turkey, she explains it the best when she says that the word joker had in Bual's mind the same significance as the joker playing card. A card that has much more mobility than any other card in the deck. Just like the card in this technique, the joker plays many roles within a particular context and circumstance, including director, uh, referee, workshop leader. The joker leads the audience through an educational analysis of what is happening and then asks the audience to react through action at the end of the performance. The audience therefore ceases to become mere spectators and actively participates in the process of theater. They are in fact making life choices through theater. I'm really not going to go into any more details. That would be the topic of a separate talk by itself. Now in modern times many forms of theater have been used to teach curriculum as well as other subjects in many educational institutions. Medium of theater encourages the students to participate in the learning process instead of just simply sitting there and try to assimilate what is being told to them. This makes the process not only more interesting but also boosts powers of retention. When I teach my students to prepare for life through theater, whether they are high school students, college students, management students, one of the first words that goes upon my blackboard is imagination. In order to choose the best possible option available to us in a given situation, we should first be able to imagine the various aspects of each particular option. We should be able to imagine the details involved. The type of behavior we will face from others, the reactions we will have to put up with. Are the things that will change as a result of us making that decision. Then and only then can we take an informed balanced decision. It is like a stage rehearsal, a dress rehearsal for life. So I am in love and I'm very young. Please use your imagination actively here. I'm very young and I am in love and I decide to get married at a very young age and then continue with my studies, my professional courses, my job goals. Now this can be the right or the wrong decision for me. I cannot look into the future. All I can do or what I usually do in such a case is I take a decision based on what makes me happy or what seems reasonable at that given moment and then hope for the best. But suppose I have a group of friends who are ready to play the roles of the people in my life who will react to or can influence that decision. Now these friends imagine and take on the personalities of those people. Identify with their thought processes, justify the reasons these people might have to support or not support me. They can also foresee look into the future and play the roles of people who will come into my life as a result of my decision. My friends also help me to imagine the living conditions I will face and other factors. They now surround me with all this information. Just think, wouldn't it be easier for me to gauge if my decision is right or wrong when I'm faced with all these realities? Of course it would. Things can still go wrong as life comes with no guarantees. But even then, I'm better prepared to know what I might be facing. I get a chance to work out my reactions, my answers, be prepared, anticipate questions. If I may be allowed to go so far, I can say life will still remain a risk, but it will be a calculated risk. So I'll come back to this scenario of my parents helping me make the choices in my life through roleplaying. Now while they are roleplaying for me they themselves are learning an important life skill. The ability to empathize with others, the ability to put themselves in another person's shoes, and the ability to see the justifications inherent in different points of views and opinions which are very different from their own. For example, a friend is playing the role of my father who say is completely against this idea of my early marriage. Now this friend will have to identify with my father's thought processes, his education, his background, his feelings, his experiences, his justifications. So even though my friend does not agree with my father, he will be able to understand where my father is coming from and why he feels the way he does. This is empathy. The ability to see the justification inherent in a point of view that is very different from your own. If all of us develop this quality, I promise you we will have more tolerance and patience and less conflict and hurt in our lives. Coming back to this example of my friends and me working out a solution for a situation in my life. To make these scenarios as authentic and as lifelike as possible all of us have to adopt independent thought processes which is not dictated by a teacher, trainer or facilitator. The teacher, trainer or facilitator is only there to facilitate the process which will encourage independent thinking. They are not there to preach, to dictate or to pontificate. They can at the most make us aware of certain realities based on their own experiences and their own background and provide us with wellressearched unbiased crucial data. However, if the teacher, trainer or facilitator tries to thrust their ideas and opinions on us or hold a grudge against us because we differ, the whole process loses its meaning and purpose. This is very unlike a regular classroom. In a regular classroom, the teacher lectures and the students are mute spectators only called upon to react when their ability to assimilate what is being told to them is tested. They're not really encouraged to have a differing opinion or a differing point of view from what is being taught in class. When they come to learn life skills through theater, these same students develop a certain amount of intellectual maturity, the ability to make judgments, the ability to evolve opinions independently. I must also mention the feeling of camaraderie that this kind of a process brings about. For this kind of a process to work, the participants have to work as a team. They have just one aim to find the best possible solution. Keeping this aim in mind, they have to work out what their own contribution would be and what they would have to get done so that the team succeeds in its purpose. This kind of teamwork requires discipline. It requires respect not only for each other's knowledge and expertise but also for each other's time. It requires the ability to appreciate the contribution made by another person which is very different from my own. Look, just because I run around and get things organized on an active level does not mean that I should look down upon the contribution of the nerd in my team who sits in front of his computer at home for hours going through case studies to find out crucial information. Everybody contributes in their own manner. Let me end with my imagination running riot. I imagine educational institutions preparing their students for real life situations through true-to-life scenarios where the students are able to test out at least most of the options that are available to them. Where they're able to prepare for at least most of the crucial moments of their life. where they learn empathy, the ability to work with people who are very different from them in temperament and background, where they prepare to put their best foot forward in the game of life. What a confident, unbiased, articulate, what should I say, dependable, analytical group of people. we will soon have. Let this thought excite you as much as it excites me. As the famous Chinese saying goes, "Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember, but you involve me and I will understand." Thank you.