TOOLS THAT CAN ENCOURAGE Peer-to-peer learning and reflection
top ten training discoveries
Here is an example of a ‘Top Ten Training Discoveries’ PDF that I recently created for a group of learners commencing a rehearsal process for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. The PDF’s content was generated by a learner group who had recently experienced a Chekhov-based project with me. Wherever possible, I try to create inventive ways for learners to share good practice with their peers. I’ve often found that actors-in-training can describe quite complex theatre-making methodologies in ways that are wonderfully clear, direct, accessible and user-friendly. At the conclusion of each theatre project that I lead I gather the ensemble together and invite them to create a list of of the top ten practice discoveries that they made during our process together and that they feel would be helpful for me to pass on to the next group of learners whom I work with. I then create a Keynote presentation based on their helpful quotes and share this in my first session with a new group. It provides a warm and friendly starting point and can help to demystify what the members of the group might expect to encounter when working with me. I also create an accompanying PDF that can be emailed to each learner as a useful reference, and this image is an example of one such PDF.
PADLET LEARNER-REFLECTION WALLS
‘A LATICEWORK OF “YES!”’
At the conclusion of each performance project, MA Acting International learners write a reflective journal in which they discuss each of the change-points in their practice that they encountered during their process. When I began to asses these journals, I was struck by how lucid and insightful learners' observations frequently were and, if shared peer-to-peer in some form, I wondered if these learner-led insights could be potentially helpful as a training tool...
This image is the front cover and Contents page from a PDF guidebook that I curated and edited and which resulted from an MA Acting International rehearsal process for Chekhov's Three Sisters. The PDF booklet, including its title, is wholly comprised of extracts from the learning group's reflective essays, which I organised into question-based chapter headings, each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the training process that they experienced with me. Electronic booklets such as this one offer actors-in-training a rich archive of their and their peers' learning during the timespan of a project. Moreover, they can also be helpful to the following year's cohort as a learner-authored guidebook, introducing them, in an accessible way, to the practical tools and techniques that they'll encounter within my rehearsal room.