One way to produce raw, self-scripted written material is to provide access to a variety of image styles. I do this by physically introducing students to different imaginary “worlds” or “environments”. When working in environments or worlds, it is important first to introduce the idea of “neutral” so students have a place from which to depart and return. Any teacher who has studied yoga, acting, martial arts, meditation, or another discipline that engages this idea can use their own language to introduce the “neutral” body.
Find a room that is large enough that the students can get on their feet and walk around. Ask them to leave a notebook and pen somewhere where they can easily return to it when they need to. While the students are moving around the room, feed various instructions, such as: “breathe deeply three times, shake out your arms, shrug your shoulders, make as many different facial expressions as you can think of. Create a body that is neutral: eyes are at height, the body is hanging loosely off the frame, you aren’t making any expression. Keep walking around the room. Trying saying hello to another person in this body. Try sitting in a chair and standing up again.” Etc. Once the idea of neutral is established, start to develop a “Threatening Environment”. Tell the students “from the neutral body, imagine that everyone and everything in the room is becoming more and more threatening.” You can use the idea of a scale of one to ten with ten being the most threatening, and turn up the level of “threat”. Switch back and forth between neutral and threatening. Then develop a “Non-Threatening” environment the same way: start in neutral, and tell the students that everyone and everything in the room is non-threatening. They are filled with a sense of ease and peacefulness. Have the students try different tasks, like shaking hands with someone else, sitting in a chair, etc, in each of the three bodies. Have the students go to their notebooks in each of the three bodies and write for five minutes, on the clock. When five minutes is up, they must stop, even if they aren’t finished. Leave the students in non-threatening as the last of these three bodies. After students have mastered these three environments, the teacher can introduce any source word or image style, such as, “Imagine everything you see and touch in this world is blue”, then have students write for five minutes in the world of blue. Other image styles include open, bound, grotesque, and beautiful.
Have students pair up. Pick person “A” and person “B”. Have A tell B a story from her life in three minutes or less while B scribes, writing down every word that A says. B is not permitted to comment or talk while A is telling the story. B should be writing like mad, trying to take down as much as possible. It’s very important that the partners don’t discuss their stories beyond telling and recording. When the stories are told, the partners trade papers so each person has their own story, as recorded by their partner.
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Copyright Hilary Peach 2007