Acting Out

A strategy I encountered often during my time as an English teacher in Houston was called Reader’s Theater. The basic idea behind the strategy was simple: students act out things they read, whether it be a scene from a novel, a short story, a poem, or even a rather dull passage from a science or social studies textbook. The strategy was said to be particularly effective for English Language Learners for obvious reasons. The kinesthetic motion of Reader’s Theater got them to connect physicality to vocabulary. For adolescents, when Johnny stabs Bob in The Outsiders, performing that literary moment is much more engaging than answering questions about it.

Of course, I never actually did Reader’s Theater in my class. I endorsed its transformative powers and encouraged other teachers to try it, but I never got around to appropriating the class time, dividing my students into heterogeneous groups, divvying up the different roles, allowing more time for rehearsal, and creating rubrics on which to grade their performances. Sometimes, when rubber meats the road in education, the rubber melts.

However, it seems in Tirur, Reader’s Theater has been resurrected. Not with my new Indian students, but with me. I have found in some circumstances, the best way to get my point across is to act it out. And not just some subtle hand motions. We’re talking about full body motion with sound effects and facial gestures.

For instance, the other day I needed to take a rickshaw to the train station in order to book tickets for our Christmas trip to Kochi, where we will meet my parents. In the past, saying, “Train station” to the rickshaw drivers has proved sufficient. Not for the driver I came upon this day. He stared at me blankly as I said, “Train station. Train. Station. Train….station. TRAIN… STATION.”

I resorted to Reader’s Theater, mindful that I was standing in the middle of a bustling intersection: I laid my left arm out flat and pushed it along as if slowing punching a boxing bag as I made the universally recognized sound for train: “Chugga chugga chugga chugga…whoop, whoop!” The driver smiled and his eyes lit up. “Ahhh…” he said. I got in the rickshaw glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed my performance. Luckily, no passing pedestrians had thought it strange for a big white guy to be making Thomas the Train noises in the middle of the road.

In another instance, I asked the manager of a local Internet café where I could get a beer. (There are limited options in Tirur, a town of mostly pious Muslims.) The manager did not understand my question, so I made a motion as if picking up a big bottle and drinking it slowly, making sure to imitate the, “Glug glug” sound with my throat. “Water?” he asked unsurely. I shook my head. I repeated the gesture and then stumbled around a bit afterwards. “Ahh…” he said with eagerness, as if a charades answer was on the tip of his tongue.

Yet another time, I wanted to order a fried banana at a local restaurant. But I will spare the details of that ordeal.

Of course most of the gestures that get me through a typical day are more innocuous. Nothing is big unless I splay my arms out wide like DaVinci’s anatomical man. Nothing is small unless I hold my fingers an inch apart and squint. Too expensive is always accompanied by me rubbing my thumb and first two fingers together. Too hot is always accompanied by me feigning to wipe my brow. If a meal was delicious I pat my stomach and smile when the waiter comes with the bill. If food is too spicy I open my mouth wide and wave my palm rapidly in front of my face.

Sometimes, I can parse together complete sentences with a series of gestures that could quite possibly win me a spot on Whose Line Is It Anyway? Twice a week I make a short bus trip to a nearby town called Valancherry to teach a morning English lesson. If my co-workers in Valancherry spoke English, I might have simply said the other day, “I was in a hurry to catch the bus, so I had to eat breakfast quickly and down a cup of tea at the local chai stand.”

Instead, I pointed at my watch with a scared face, mimed shoveling food into my mouth, then I ran in place (again glancing at my watch), raised my arm as if hailing an invisible taxi, then I topped off the performance by throwing back a shot of what could have been make-believe whiskey.

I think the point was made, though some of it might have been lost in translation.