Homo Ludens gives the swing; or the needed momentum to the art of living

Transcription

1 ISSN Vol. 5 No. 1 April 2014 Drama Research: international journal of drama in education Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing; or the needed momentum to the art of living Lidwine Janssens National Drama Publications publications@nationaldrama.org.uk

2 Homo Ludens gives the swing; or the needed momentum to the art of living Lidwine Janssens Abstract In the year that we celebrate the 75 th anniversary of Homo Ludens, this article introduces Ludic Pedagogy (LuPe) as a rich base for drama as education. LuPe aims not only to prepare participants for society but also for the art of living. Firstly schooling is examined, in relation to Victor Turner. Then LuPe is introduced. Concepts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are presented to indicate some of the richness of preconscious sources and its working in play. Csikszenlmihalyi s concept of flow is used as a rich focus to facilitate and guide drama. LuPe children are in moments one with the action, complete here and now, even sometimes beyond ego borders. Out of their I boxes, they discover in those moments the I fields of inspiration, intuition, initiative and insight. Enriched they can return to the daily life of no nonsense, rationalism, performances, products and they can make little differences in essential elements of living. Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 2

3 Introduction Playing creates, brings order. It realises in the imperfect world and the confused life a temporary, limited perfection. Huizinga (1938: 10) [personal translation] The purpose of this article is to introduce Ludic Pedagogy (LuPe) as a rich base for drama as education. LuPe aims not only to prepare participants for society but also for the art of living. The wolf comes to Western Europe not only concretely; but hopefully also abstractly as this article aims to show. Ludic Pedagogy strives for The Art of Living. Just as the wolf long ago was invited as the first dangerous animal to live with people, she invites us now to research intuitive - probably even illogical - paths. For those who live in the post-religion sphere, in personal life art becomes more and more important. Religions no longer describe laws for living; everyone need to find one s own way. Socrates already asks his audience this in his dialogue Alcibiades. The work of Dorothy Heathcote is widely known and explained, so the article doesn t go into that. The digital area is relevant, but this article has not the scope to explore it deeply. Firstly schooling is examined, in relation to Victor Turner. Then LuPe is introduced. Concepts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are presented to indicate some of the richness of preconscious sources and its working in play. Csikszenlmihalyi s concept of flow is used as a rich focus to facilitate and guide drama. School is a Western luminal ritual In From Ritual to Theatre, Victor Turner introduced two important ideas when researching rituals of non-western societies: he referred to the Latin term limen, meaning threshold, and to van Gennep ( ) who applied the term limen to a transition between. It can be taken that the term liminal applies to rituals obligatory for full acceptance in the society, and the term liminoid to chosen or social rituals. For most people in the Western world, holy rituals can be seen as liminoid but not liminal. One ritual however is seen as liminal or obligatory in Western society: education. Schooling is a long-term Western liminal ritual one with myths (the necessity of this teaching approach) and secrets (hidden curriculum), but also strict boundaries (guidelines) and rules. Curriculum for example is not chosen freely but enforced. Instead of a relative short-time-ritual becoming an adult in aboriginal societies, Western children have 10 to 14 years of the liminal educational ritual forced upon them. In some countries schools have uniforms, opening and closing ceremonies. Sometimes a myth is told to begin the day. The question remains whether those Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 3

4 features collectively have the effect of a ritual. Schooling takes place over too long a period of time for any ritual. There are too many real-life interruptions. School requires an excess of rational thinking and written knowledge. Simultaneously it limits the opportunities afforded by play, dance, and music to create the intensity of experience that could raise it to 'holy' moments. School exists between the real world of home and the written world away from daily life, between the here and now and focusing on the future, between being taken and threaten lightly as a child and seriously as an adult. Participants generally experience study as work, not as leisure, and not at all as play. Turner states that leisure is a 'betwixt and between' concept; it is neither work nor play; it is ideally playful work. If schools were to realise an interaction between work (skills and crafts) and play (freedom to experiment) a kind of leisure would thus become available at least occasionally to everyone. If the education focuses not on career and status after school but on today s questions, observation, interests and dreams, participants might become more dedicated to their studies. Youngsters need group creativity, negotiation skills, research and experiment, impulsive creations, new forms, and openness to the unknown, not only facts and absolute data. They are experts in their own mixtures of intelligences. With playful experiments (live and digital) in chosen content - context and according to individual solutions, we come nearer to the betwixt and between situation of leisure. Turner sets us at ease with his observation: In liminality is secreted the seed of the liminoid, waiting only for major changes in the socio-cultural context to set it growing into the branched 'candelabra' of manifold cultural genres" (p. 44). In drama (live and digital) we recognise this seed. We can create possibilities for real insights that can lead to major changes. Liminoid rituals in the long-term school ritual Turner states: One works at the liminal, one plays with the liminoid (1992: 55). LuPes education can be very intense. At one time the author s own drama students created a ritual around J. Huizinga's Homo ludens. They were asked to assume roles, entering the stage on which the first edition (1938) was laid on a kind of altar. Behind that altar stood a big mirror. The participants needed to come onstage, look into the mirror, lay their hands on the book, and finish personally the line Times are changing, but playful play will The participants noticed the change from a discussion to active discovery of their views of drama as education. One student that day commented, Discussion is just an exchange of meanings, but this ritual touched Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 4

5 me as a complete person. Those beginning drama teachers felt personally more responsible for their vision. It could be seen how those students coped with the described ritual about Homo Ludens: some of them asked for more time; others just entered the stage and did their vows as if it were just a game. Inventive play cannot arise in mechanical (liminal) situations but needs organic solidarity (liminoidality). In school we can create rituals which participants can attend or avoid, perform or watch, and view as light or serious play in order to develop beyond mere knowledge. Good Schooling: Work or Leisure? In ancient Greek schole means having nothing to do. This definition raises major questions about schooling today. Aiming for a high level of involvement, LuPe seeks an enjoyable and challenging way for participants to learn. Victor Turner explains the concepts work, play, leisure, liminal, and liminoid in a way that challenges one to transfer these ideas much farther and into the school. His quotation of Joffre Dumazedier: having nothing to do is thrilling. What implications follow? Turner does not explain this quotation; but a correlation exists between having nothing to do and his concept of leisure time. True leisure exists only when it complements or rewards work" (p. 36 ). Can schooling become liminoid in the 21st century? Can society offer youngsters free choice in when to attend school and how to learn? Would such an approach discard a seed that might need to flourish later? Can school support the development of independent thinking and self-determination while still delivering the basic knowledge required in society? Man plays only when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is fully a human being only when he plays (Friedrich Schiller). Not only Schiller puts play at the centre of culture. Johan Huizinga (a historical, cultural researcher), Victor Turner (a cultural anthropologist), Lev Vygotsky, and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (psychologists) capture the reasons why play is at the heart of human development. Taking their viewpoint farther, play needs to be in the centre of education. Lev Vygotsky explains that during play children are a head taller, their playful learning occurs in the zone of proximal development. Dorothy Heathcote developed an exemplary method in education for a playful research. For the Netherlands I called her method: play compositions, see Csikszentmihalyi explains that the best way to attain flow is a playful approach to challenges. He proves that moments of flow are necessary for a healthy living and that flow can occur if challenges and skills are in optimal balance. Play as research in safe, as-if situations is the knowledge ahead because it uses impulsive, intuitive, and immediate sources of the here and now. One can see that playful research is worthwhile in science, arts, daily life and of great help in teaching the Art of Living. Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 5

6 Ludic Pedagogy Ludic Pedagogic teaching starts by giving participants ways of experimenting with unconscious, illogical, and irrational sources, combining various disciplines of art and science in a playful or Ludic environment. LuPe allows people to discover their own aptitudes and develop their own skills, encouraging imagination, improvisation, experiment, research, all means of giving form and performing. The result is useful in crafts and skills. Insight is not only in review and advancing in school or society but also in personal knowledge and wisdom. Five phenomena are needed to realise Ludic Pedagogy. Its facilitators need to develop (1) human core competences (2) through essential cultural elements (3) in an inclusive learning setting (4) with artistic guidance (5) in a playful way. Only by integrating all five can (6) qualities (of imagination, intuition, inspiration and so on arise. In this playful way consciousness can arise through the un- and preconscious. The pyramid of Ludic Pedagogic is formed by combining five smaller pyramids. The fifth pyramid rests on the first four, and a sixth one arises upside down in the heart or centre such that the space between the fifth and the first four pyramids contains the sixth. The Ludic and fifth pyramid influences the circumstances of learning and enables the quality of the sixth. Merleau-Ponty (M.-P.) helps to explain why. LuPes approach to teaching uses core concepts of Merleau-Ponty in Phénoménologie de la perception (1945), and others. [Read further /library Lupes Pyramid] Play as education Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 6

7 Human beings are full of intentions, preconscious, unconscious, conscious. Personality occurs in the expression of these. Merleau Ponty admits: as long as the organizing spirit functions autonomously, there is no play. We are not playful out of reasonable motives. M-P. gives the following characteristics of play: - Enjoyment, for playfulness cannot exist without joy; - Freedom, for playfulness cannot exist under constraint; - Relaxation, for effort is needed without stress. We can read M-P. s notes (see below) as a prompt to develop both impression and expression, to recognize the subjective level of impression and to enrich the expression parlante as a way to conquer the pre-conscious. He writes further about the twilight of the body in experiencing the complex relation between internal and external. He encourages respecting the body, the irrational, knowledge, and preparation as sources for further development. Concepts of Merleau-Ponty L existence Humans exist primarily without awareness, without real understanding. The subject holds priority over causal and temporal relationships. The world takes on meaning thanks only to dialectic interplay between self and the outer world. This occurs according to a coherent unity and assumes that unity despite all contradictions. Merleau-Ponty understands fixed existence and human self-motivation as facets of one reality: le sujet-objet. Sujet - Objet In classical Greece no distinction was made between observer and the observed. After the Middle Ages in Europe that distinction began to be nurtured. The subject is more than merely ideas; the office also applies senses, emotions, aesthetics, and ethics. The concept transcends materiality; it combines and is recognised by consciousness, freedom, and morality. Human consciousness actually originates deeply in the preconscious; no one can verify it. The researcher M.-P. challenges us to recognise impersonal (both un- and preconscious) aspects that influence our subjective awareness. Perception Awareness can be understood as the way I'm affected, as the experience of myself in relation to the surrounding. Reality appears visually as an intentional activity. Viewpoint is in fact no more than visualization. This necessarily insufficient realization is redefined as visualization (I see/think this) with awareness (this is). We naturally create reality and interact with a creation, with a personal coloured reality. Le corps sujet Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 7

8 In the Mythical Paradigm body and mind are one, in the Ontological Paradigm they are separated, in the Functional Paradigm they are intertwined, a double unit or two sides of the same coin. Crucial in M.-P. s vision is the preconscious physicality. That is, as he writes, the kernel of our existence, the root of all human phenomena. The body represents the origin of consciousness; it is a quality, not just a quantity (Descartes). The human is to be seen as a kind of developing body and mind. The whole body has petites subjectivités (awareness). How do all these little things become one? M.-P. claims not to know the answer, but he refuses to link it with anything but the body. The one body is the source of multiple petites subjectivités. How this plural awareness becomes a single concept that we don t know. The body and mind uses practised experience and creates new experience. It is preconscious, sensible, subjective and acts spontaneously on its own in dialogue with the world. In word and deed, insights unfold themselves. Facts are coloured by felt values, subjective awareness, emotions, aesthetics, and ethics. All of these form M.-P. s circular causality. J en suis The French term j en suis can be unclear. As M.-P. uses it, I body is a way of being, not an association. It combines both the material and spiritual. It is pure in neither matter nor spirit, but it is the association of both. Body and mind are abstract concepts and separated; each is insufficient to approach reality. We live however always from the inside outward in what we see, hear, and feel. Human beings do not exist in idea, in the future; we are always everywhere immediately. To M.-P. j en suis is possible in two ways: bound through a concept and involved through commitment. Freedom requires distance, not merely agreement with observations and sensations. Out of bondage arises varied kinds of imprisonment and addiction; out of commitment arises richness and realism. Out of noncommitment arise unrealism, egoism, and destruction. Parole parlante parole parlée Merleau-Ponty s recognition of people as the unity of body and mind is based on the observation of spontaneous thoughts. The light exists pre-eminently in thinking, the instrument, for that is the language. Parole parlante is the original expression that gives new meaning to old words and lets them speak accurately. This seeking of spontaneous expression arises in the physical twilight. Paroles parlées have a fixed meaning. L impression l expression Impression is also expression. Le corps sujet constructs the world as a visual, sonorous, tactile field. This is a preconscious expression, we are expressive without realizing that we express. We use the reflection as a return, so we can improve our expression. Instead of engaging the expression, we examine our expression and judge her. Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 8

9 What is the meaning of Merleau-Ponty s concepts in Ludic Pedagogy? Play intensifies sensual input and delays awareness, allowing us to see details, hear nuances to arrive at inner awareness. Play exists beyond the real world with her consequences of deeds. Play includes awareness of slips and automatic action and reaction. Play arises from what is already there: position, possibilities, senses, and thought. It confronts the players to transform thoughts into action. In contrast the abstract excludes the body, does not produce real effect. Players can trust their own ideas and impulses; they can decide their own interaction. Such play includes experiments in different times, places, contexts, and intentions. Play as an as-if existence gives rich opportunities for examining the Art of Living. It allows experimenting with one hypothesis but different conclusions. Players can observe the same thing and share their individual versions. They can act the same role and make real the differences in interpretation. From role playing can arise the insight that awareness is usually influenced by personal view and prejudice. Through reflection players can discover the effect on expression of their own impressions. In this way they can upgrade the quality of both. In play can arise the realisation of unconscious judgement due to spatial, temporal, and bodily movement in past experiences. Play uses the parlante: inspiration, impulse, intuition, and improvisational reaction, so that players become aware of these sources. Parlante uses spoken, re-uses words in another meaning, so players need to allow each other to search for suitable expression. Theatre text becomes parlante when players really feel, hear, understand their roles within. Play also confronts players with what they did not observe but fellow players did. Play helps one to observe and experience through questions about how an object feels (weight, texture), and tasks to express this in their playing. Reflection allows players to discover the body s innate wisdom. Play is in a way the knowledge ahead: they already knew and did but were not aware. Through reflection players ask: how does this affect you? what does it say? what would you like to do with it? and, what can you do with it? Play nurtures awareness of the two ways of thinking: dialectic (commiseration nuances) and dualistic (confrontation choice). Such description is very helpful; players can discover when and why they use one of the two. Play allows experiments with only yes or no reactions on actions of a co- player (dualistic) and in another improvisation nuanced reactions: personal colours, rhythms, associative ideas (dialectic). Flow in play Csikszentmihalyi (1997: 95 96) describes flow as a state of high concentration and immersion, of complete involvement in original, inventive activity. Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 9

10 It pushed the person to higher levels of performance and led to previously undreamed states of consciousness... In this growth of the self lies the key to flow activities (1990: 74) In his study Flow, The Optimal Experience, Csikszentmihalyi suggests that flow enables awareness and creates a new reality of discovery and inventiveness. His work inspires to subtler ways of coaching that reflect participants' individualities. It stresses that flow needs time to develop and that it represents the ideal conditions for creating. Standard rules in schools are concerned mainly with generic guidelines. Learning takes place in the freedom to seek within permitted guidelines. Such freedom presents participants with the questions What do you want to learn? and What drives you? Enabling this freedom is only the first, rough step and thus is very simple to do. Facilitators themselves often work from their own imagination and values instead of finding ways to spark the imagination of others. The coach s art in questioning and reflecting does not get enough attention. Facilitators should almost always withhold their own associations and solutions when it comes to context and problem-solving. As Dorothy Heathcote used to ask, I wonder why or I don t know, but do you have a suggestion? Such facilitating gives participants the freedom to develop a certain content in their own way. Vygotsky s and Csikszentmihalyi s insight is shown in similar diagrams used. Vygotsky asks teachers to balance the challenges relative to participants skills, as below. Csikszentmihalyi asks adults to balance challenges and skills in order to enable daily flow in their life (see below). Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 10

11 Respecting both versions we can create a third diagram to develop creative abilities: If we live only in daydreams, our ideas also stay abstract (below the line). Daydreams need imagination and play (challenges), facts and crafts (skills) in order to realise them. Weaving a path between both allows creativity to rise. The concepts exotelic and autotelisch for an individual are the equivalents of liminal and liminoid for a group. Liminal (forced) actions with exotelic motivation (good Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 11

12 result) does never offer flow moments, liminoid (free chosen) actions asks autotelic (enjoyable) motivation. This knowledge has implications for education. Csikszentmihalyi's conditions for flow present questions for education: how participants can enjoy learning. His research began in leisure activities, but he discovered that flow experiences also apply during work. Alienation gives way to involvement, enjoyment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control, and psychic energy works to reinforce the sense of self, instead of being lost in the service of external goals (1990: 69). In learning body and mind are at one with the action, and conscious reflection is switched off, they are completely aware of their actions from inside out. In flow the participant forgets time and is freed from daily cares and worries. Such a condition results in high motivation by stimulating concentration, considered action, and awareness. Participants are carried along by an action while remaining active themselves. Their attention is concentrated on the activity, and irrelevant stimuli are excluded because the fields of influence are limited. Of course such moments are holy and may not be disturbed by the school bell or another interruption. If all six pyramid elements work optimally together, youngsters experience flow. They flourish! (For guidelines see How can we develop this?). Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 12

13 Flow in liminoid school rituals Schools can provide liminoid learning to participants who enjoy both the experience and the challenge. Such participants naturally find new abilities and appreciation. Working at a freely chosen liminal level, offers flow experiences, and school tasks that may have started as liminal become liminoid. Now a day s youngsters work inside and outside school with their ipads, laptops, computers. For them digital work is playful work and creates liminoid learning. The border between liminal and liminoid is flexible and often out of their attention. Digital possibilities can be used in all phases of a play composition or Ludic research. Flow moments in Ludic Pedagogical situations respecting imagination, impulse, and intuition have the same intensity as rituals (see drama ritual Home Ludens earlier). However such actors are not in trance and can return to everyday reality at any moment. They can jump into (acting in role) and out (as observer but still in role) of the ritual without disturbing the process for others. Playful rituals can be created but need to be taken seriously. If a ritual is only an as if moment, there is no flow. Individuals can feel a flow moment at different times, so the facilitator needs to observe and coach carefully. A high level of involvement in liminoid ritual rarely arrives for everyone at the same time, if at all. Nonetheless such individual flow moments are the motor that influences and encourages others and can bring about deep learning. The pleasure of flow challenges participants to flourish; they make discoveries and achieve quality in their research, grades, or artistic performance that thus are transformed into liminoid rituals in leisure time. Conclusion The mastery of a LuPe facilitator is the creation of liminoid moments in liminal school situations, in which players and co players represent reality from their own imagination, interests, and aesthetic abilities, using unconscious, illogical, and irrational sources, as surplus of their daily learning repertoire. in a Ludic combination of various disciplines of art and science, in an environment that creates deep involvement and flow. Lupe brings to life the essence of human motivation in a lively reflective practical philosophy which support lifelong the Art of living. As result LuPe children are in moments one with the action, complete here and now, even sometimes beyond ego borders. Out of their I boxes, they discover in those moments the I fields of inspiration, intuition, initiative and insight. Enriched they can return to the daily life of no nonsense, rationalism, performances, products and they can make little differences in essential elements of living. Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 13

14 References Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow, The Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. Dumazedier, J. (1968) Leisure. Sills, D (ed.) Enclyclopedia of the Social Science New York: Macmillan and free press. Huizinga, J. (1938) The Homo Ludens. Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink. Kwant, R.C. (1968) De wijsbegeerte van Merleau Ponty. Antwerpen: Aula boeken. Kwant, R.C. (1968) Mens en expressie in het licht van de wijsbegeerte van Merleau Ponty. Antwerpen: Aula boeken. Merleau Ponty, M.(1997) Fenomenologie van de waarneming. Amsterdam: Ambo. Schiller, F. (2005) Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag GmbH. Turner, V. (1992) From Ritual to Theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications. van Gennep, A. (1960) The rites of Passage. London: Routldedge and Kegan Paul. Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge, Cambridge University Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 14

15 Notes on Author Lidwine Janssens ( ) The Ludic element was always there, as long as she remembers. As drama teacher she found Dorothy Heathcote on her road of I do it my way. She guided schools, developed play compositions out of storylines, moments of Teacing in Role and Mantle of the Expert. Over the years all the arts played with. She published drama books and articles. She trained at teacher universities (national and as guest lecturer international), established with others the start of IDEA. These last years her theories came together in the pyramid of Ludic Pedagogic, you will find a summary in English in info@kunstpedaogiek.eu Article 13 Homo Ludens gives the swing, or the needed momentum to the art of living 15

16 About Drama Research National Drama Publications permits the sharing of this article, in print or electronically, in this specific PDF form only and should be accompanied by the following acknowledgment: This article was first published in Drama Research: international journal of drama in education Volume 5 No 1 April 2014 at: It is one of a wide range of articles on drama/theatre in education available by subscription to the journal at: Access to the journal is free to members of National Drama. Drama Research is an innovative, international refereed e.journal that provides a forum for practitioners and researchers across the spectrum of drama in educational settings. We encourage, gather and publish research- based articles from established and new writers to promote knowledge, understanding and dialogue about drama in learning contexts.