How do the key ideas in your chosen topic translate successfully into education practice? What are the challenges facing those who try to translate the ideas you have been addressing into education practice? Provide references with formal citations to at least three pieces of evidence-based research, as well as videos, infographics and other media you might find. Comment on at least two other peers’ updates whose topics may connect with yours, directly or indirectly. How is your thinking developing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP1Nkr1kc5o

Researching this topic of “mimesis” luckily guides me to many discussions of its use in the arts, which happens to align precisely to my topic of arts education. Imitation has long been a controversial tenet of orthodox education, encouraging (if not directly forcing) students into rote memorization. Memorizing facts and dates is a mimesis of the text and lesson plans with minimal critical thinking. In mathematics, is not the solution of an equation a direct copy of every other correct solution to the same equation? Students are instructed to solve these problems in the same way. With the arts, however, there will always be an underlying sense of subjectivity that distinguishes itself from reality. It is this subjectivity that makes it art in the first place. How does this translate to education practice? In her article “Redeeming Mimesis,” Anne Mamary quotes Carnes Lord, who sees “poetic imitation” as a bridge between orthodox education and world experience, “Poetic 'imitation'... imitates action in a manner designed to bring out the universals of action. In doing so, it renders action imitable by its audience.... There is a striking congruence between what poetry provides and what prudence 'phronesis' requires. Prudence is an intellectual habit or a kind of knowing which encompasses both particulars and universals. It requires both an experience of the world and a correct understanding of that experience. It requires an ability to adapt the universals of moral and political action to particulars, to the contingent circumstances of moral and political life.... Only poetry, as it seems, provides the proper combination of generality and specificity that is necessary for the development of prudence.” (qtd. In Mamary, 2001, p. 80) By imitating a specific action, that action itself can become recognizable to a student or audience member who relates to it but understands their more unique connection to it. Hence, the action becomes both specific in experience but more general in observance. In his article, “Mimesis, Duality, and Rhetorical Education”, Robert Terrill claims that “Students shaped through a mimetic pedagogy are inherently bifurcated, influenced by their individual motives as well as their understanding of cultural norms and traditions. Such training renders students ‘simultaneously active and passive’. . .” (2011, p. 300) Mimesis almost always creates a duality within students that forces them to explore multiple modes of cognition simultaneously. These ideas are perfectly encapsulated by perhaps the most mimetic exercise in actor training: Meisner technique. This involves two acting students facing each other. One will make a simple observation about the other (ie “You have a silver nose ring.”) The other would then repeat this same sentence back to their partner, and vice versa. This continuous repetition could go on for as long as the instructor seems necessary. The objective is to let the repetition of the words trigger organic reactions on either side, especially if that reaction is coming in response to their partner’s action. The “wrong way” to complete this exercise is to contrive new reactions for the sake of changing it up or to intellectually choose a response one would “think” is appropriate, even if it is not organic. The prudence comes from this unusual phronesis that halting intellectual thought would lead to more organic and interesting behavior. In other words, the activity releases oneself from thinking and over thinking would result in a product that stimulates just that: metacognition of what worked and did not, reflections and discussions of what constitutes interesting behavior, how it can be applied to performance, how it can be applied to real life, etc.

A challenge to this type of pedagogy is a possibility of a student going on autopilot. Whether the techniques and the exercises work or not, it may only serve the artform as a whole while doing little to serve a less powerful participant such as the actor. This could be a problem in an education setting, where though repetition and mimesis engenders sincerity and organic behavior, the actor themself only achieve this through following directions. This certainly was where the dehumanizing label of “model” instead of “actor” or “performer” must have been inspired by in the first place. Take Martin LaSalle, a non-professional, new actor who played the lead in Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket. To foment a certain emotional attitude from his “models”, he would often force them to repeat an action ad nauseum without explanation. (Naremore, 2012, p. 36) Without explanation, therein removes the educational element of the direction. If the actor does not know why they were supposed to imitate the same action over and over, they do not learn how the tenet works or how it can be used in the future. Or do they? While Bresson was not a teacher in the traditional sense, intentionally or not, he did create an opportunity for his “models” to make these discoveries about their performances themselves. For instance, during the filming of Pickpocket, Bresson tasked LaSalle with forty takes of simply walking up a flight of stairs. Though its purpose was initially unclear, LaSalle found great value in its ability to provoke emotion, finding “an inner tension that would be seen in the hands and eyes.” (qtd. In Naremore, 2012, p. 36) “I think, even if we are only models, as [Bresson] says, we still take part in and internalize the activity. I felt as if I were living the situation, not externally but in a sensory way.” (2012, pg. 36) Still, to formalize this pedagogy in an online, asynchronous model, the facilitator/instructor must assign copious amounts of reflection and metacognition assignments as a means to further stimulate these new learners’ brains. This could enforce a sense of critical thinking that after years of training become more intuitive skills.