by Yean Tsai
&
Kuo-Jen Tsang
Professors at the College of Communication National Chengchi University, Taiwan
Paper presented to the 35th Annual Meeting Association for Gerontology in Higher Education
San Antonio, Texas Feb. 25 – Mar. 1, 2009
Give them history –
A learning experience in a Taiwanese acting course
Abstract
“We’ve made history in this class after we had a chance to perform on stage with a group of grandpas and grandmas aged over 75 this semester. Although they were not as agile as us but they did show much affection in personating characters comparing with us inexperienced youngsters. I was agitated when I saw ‘Black Cat,’ the 90-year-old grandma, sang the Chinese opera on stage, and I wondered what I would be when I became ninety. Would I be as passionate as she is to acting?”
The above note came from a student’s class review held in early January, 2008.
The class, entitled “Acting,” was offered to 15 junior students in the Department of RTV, National Chengchi University. In fall, 2007, impromptu acting exercises and games were applied to the class, with a very different teaching approach for the first time. The class then invited ten senior citizens, all having had previous acting experiences, to join in the class. These seniors agreed to play and share the same stage with young students at the end of the semester for a final presentation. A new play was created and attracted 300 unexpected crowds from the campus.
This paper intends to report the teaching strategies and learning results happening in the abovementioned acting class. Influences from these older adults upon the students in the Acting course are emphasized, and attitude change from students toward the aged are specifically observed. Finally, future possibilities of having seniors to join some of the university courses are discussed.
Key words: gerontology, acting teaching, impromptu acting
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is threefold, 1) to report an unexpected teaching and learning experience in a university classroom in Taiwan; 2) to document an experiment which is possible to be useful in improving a future teaching method; and 3) to generate research topics related to classroom communication and communication with senior citizens. The paper is organized in sessions such as background, the course, method, observations, and finally conclusion and suggestions.
Background
“Water makes the river flow.” This is an ancient Chinese saying which serves as a metaphor when mentioning the background of such a particular class experience.
Generally speaking, the proverb means that things come natural when they are ready;
so is the current paper which, in fact, is resulted from both a long-term research project and teaching experiments.
For the first part, it is important to care for our seniors around us in Taiwan and to prepare our society of a time to come. Taiwan has a senior (65+) population of 2.31 million, which is 10.1% of the total population of 22.91 million. The current ratio of children and seniors, or the index of aging, is 46%, meaning every 2 youngsters have to support one senior adult in the society. According to the recent increasing rate of seniors in Taiwan, it is expected to have more senior citizens than children 10 years from now and in year 2025 there will have one fifth of the population being aged.6
6 From the Taiwanese public database issued by the Executive Yuan, http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/public/Data/78291743271.pdf
The Social Welfare Department of Taipei City Government has noticed the aging phenomenon and established programs, including those on health, economic and insurance, education and leisure, psychological and social adaptation themes, for people aged over 65. In order to promote the well-beings and to extend life experiences for the elders, many non-degree schools and courses are being offered by different nonprofit organizations as well.
However, current programs in regular educational institutions or civilian training schools often neglect the importance of social interaction or communication needs among the aged. After a quick review of all the current programs and courses offered in the universities and research centers in Taiwan (see Appendix), we find gerontology in general, and social welfare, policy making, management, medicine and psychological care for the elders and their families in particular, are the core concerns of adult education in colleges and universities. Attentions to perspectives on humanities, arts, philosophy, communication in an older adult’s life, however, have not been emphasized yet.
The authors of this paper have thus organized a research team, since the year 2000, to initiate a series of research topics on gerontology and communication with grants supported by the National Science Commission of Taiwan Government; some using senior citizens as research targets, while others on how these seniors being represented and were storied in the news media7
After seven years of research and several papers published in academic journals .
8
7 The authors have worked together as a research team to study media representations of older adults in Taiwan. For more details see
,
http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~kjt1026/gerontology/. (in Chinese version only)
8 The authors have published several articles in Taiwan’s communication journals, including: Tsai, Y.
& K. J. Tsang (2008). Emotion and memory of the elderly in reading news stories. Chinese Journal of Communication Research, 13, 1-35. Tsai, Y. & K.J. Tsang (2008). Self images and social roles of the aging people and their contacts with the Internet. Mass Communication Research, 97, 1-43.
Tsai, Y. & K.J. Tsang (January 2007). Research on gerontology and communication. Si Nan Min Tzu
a course titled “Communication and Gerontology”9
It is also a sincere concern of this course to offer the students an opportunity searching for a good lifespan attitude with others since all of us are social beings in a communicative environment. Most important of all, as many of the students taking this course are communication majors who may choose communication as their future career, promoting a healthy aspect toward the aged and aging in general is therefore necessary and contributive.
was offered, first time in Taiwan, by the second author in spring 2008 with purposes to remind university students of noticing the global aging phenomenon and to request them to pursue positive communication skills with the aged.
In the meantime, it is equally important for the authors to propose another course on the subject of gerontology and communication. This time an emphasis on narrative is appropriately chosen since it fits the first author’s main educational and teaching background.
The Course
This course, entitled “Acting,” has been run our times before 2005 without making much difference in its core syllabi. Shakespeare, Sophocles, Tennessee Williams and Chinese stories plus some student works and impromptu pieces were staged previously as class projects. Starting fall 2007, experimental elements began to
Hsue Po, 148-151. Tsang, K.J. & Y. Tsai (2005). Reconsidering news reporting and time narrative: A research proposal on aging news stories. Mass Communication Research, 83, 1-38. Tsang, K.J. & Y.
Tsai (2005). Interviewing the elderly: An observation on methodology. Communication Research Newsletter, 42, 17-22. Tsai, Y. & K. J. Tsang (2003). Aged audience and TV drama: Applications of personality theories and audience research. Chinese Journal of Communication Research, 3, 197-236.
9 The course was a big success and is to be offered again in 2010. To view the course syllabus (in Chinese only), see: http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~kjt1026/gerontology/
add in with hopes to improve teaching outcomes.
The first attempt was to invite a co-teaching colleague who might have owned practical theatric experiences. Undoubtedly the involvement of Shiao-Dee Wang, a well-known director who has been reputed for her TV sitcoms producing records, in this course has largely encouraged the spirit and the enthusiasm of the students; the pace of the course and the teaching method nevertheless remained unchanged and further adjustment was apparently needed.
The following questions later continuously popped out from the student reviews and stimulated the instructor to reconsider the reasoning behind teaching philosophy:
-- What would be a proper teaching/learning goal for both the teachers and students in such an acting course?
-- How would an acting class like this be additionally improved to fulfill the needs of the students in the College of Communication?
-- Should the teachers simply train the students to prepare them in general as future anchorpersons, TV hosts, or even drama stars?
-- Are we concerned with teaching the students more as “communicators” than as professional performers in theaters?
-- Should the course be taught more as a common course than as an advanced course normally given in an art school?
About the same time we had a chance to invite Director Yin-ju Tsai in fall, 2007, to join the Acting class as guest speaker who has been closely working with the Godot Theater Company,10
10 To view the Godot Theater Company, check: http://www.godot.org.tw/#
one of the most active theatric groups in Taiwan established in 1988, and supervised a troupe of a dozen of aged actors who called themselves
members of “Si Lin Men”11
Founded in 2003, Ms. Tsai and his senior troupe members have been busy in touring around to share their real life stories with elementary school students in Taiwan, hoping they would later be willing to share stories with their own grandparents or even great grandparents.
.
12
The concept of having the elderly share life stories with young children, mainly coping from Susan Perlstein’s well-known idea “Elders Share the Arts,”
13
As curiosity and interests indeed play a great part in the youth’s heart, it was also hoped that historical events from the pages of a textbook would then be much more vibrant and real after the elementary students had opportunities to listen personal stories orally narrated by the aged seniors.
was rather new in Taiwan. In Ms. Tsai’s “Living History Program” in Taiwan, it was purposed, if possible, to have young children skip Western fairy tales or folklores, including those vividly depicted by the Disney movies and cartoons, and instead to meet in a classroom with a granny or grandpa performing their own life stories.
14
With the same purpose in mind, Ms. Tsai’s group was then invited to the first author’s Acting class for one whole semester (fall, 2008). Other than to observe the possible interactions between the aged and the university students in the classroom, the project was taken also as a part of the university’s services to the community
11 Directly translated as “Happy Days Arrived,” the name also means “the happiness arrives right in front of the door.”
12 J. Harwood (2000) studied the communication patterns of college students with their grandparents and found there were more positive interactions between grandchildren with grandparents than between children with parents. See. Communication media use in the grandparent-grandchildren relationship. Journal of Communication 50 (4), 56-78.
13 “Elders Share the Arts,” associated to the New York City Board of Education, “links generations and cultures through year-long Living History Programs that transform life experiences into dance, theater, writing, visual arts and storytelling.” For further information, see its website http://www.cominguptaller.org/profile/pr80hismulti.htm
14 Ms. Tsai’s troupe has toured at least four elementary schools in Taipei, the capital city, before this paper is completed. Realizing the endeavor and importance of the Living History Program, the group plans to extend the program to other cities in Taiwan. See Wang, Mei (2009). Common Health Magazine, 122, 170-175.
which has maintained a few nursing homes nearby.
To fulfill the abovementioned purpose with a condition not to interfere with the students taking the Acting class, the troupe members, referring here as Group 1 in this paper, agreed to be trained by Ms. Tsai separately in the first two months of the semester, who then led these senior members back to the classroom in the final month working closely with the university students; the aged actors took no credit at all from the university, however. The time for observing the group interactions included the three class meetings, including one relating to the technical rehearsal, one dress rehearsal, and one stage performance.
On the other hand, the cooperating group, referred as Group 2 in this paper, was composed of 15 university junior students registering in this university in fall 2008.
The characteristics of Group 2 were much different from previous semesters mainly because of the five international students from other Asian countries.
The course, an elective one counted with three credit hours, had a class objective to train students, by using their senses, feeling, emotion and memories, to perform a new drama with impromptu methods. Once the characterization of a role was established, students were asked to improvise the lines and to plot the story through two or three rehearsals.
The syllabus posted for students before registration had clearly stated that there would be a number of senior actors joining in the class for the final performance, and it was expected by all students that the class would be quite different comparing to the previous semesters. Therefore every student in the class was prepared for a unique experience.
Method
The method used in this paper was a loosely structured observation. The course itself was experimental in nature but no rigid research method was applied. The class activities were planned while no learning outcome was planned to be controlled. The process of various lessons was run according to the scheduled dates on course syllabus, which applied to everyone in the class, including members in Group 1.
Information and events provided in this paper presents a relationship in time sequence. Detailed descriptions of the meaningful events are provided. The focus is placed on the communications in the two groups aged at least 40 years apart. It is also important to note the observed differences did exist between the two groups in terms of acting. Finally, the subject on learning history through drama is documented.
Feedback from students after the class will be utilized in the redesign of future courses. Some possible research topics related to communication, especially between learners in different generations, are discussed. Hypotheses generated from the class interaction are mentioned for future study.