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  • Encountering Black Culture in Acting Classrooms and Beyond
  • Monica White Ndounou (bio)

I enter the classroom as an African American woman with production, performance, research, and teaching experiences, all of which guide my pedagogical approach. I recognize my intrinsic value, as well as the complications of the political, social, and historical intricacies of my identity, which resembles Anna Julia Cooper’s description of the contradictions of being black and female in a society historically plagued by racial and gender hierarchies. I experience a similar type of “double consciousness” as an acting teacher familiar with African American cultural perspectives and performance traditions alongside Western acting methodologies in the American theatre (Du Bois 314). My approach to teaching acting, developing out of the traditions of Stella Adler and Barbara Ann Teer1—actors who recognized the need to incorporate their respective cultural perspectives into their acting pedagogy—reflects this doubling. In class, I emphasize Afrocentric worldviews without privileging them as the only way of teaching or learning acting. This pedagogical approach evolves out of a postmodernist desire that, as Cornel West has described, aims for “the decentering of Europe—of living in a world that no longer rests upon European hegemony and domination in the political and economic, military and cultural dimension which began in 1492,”2 and repositions the traditional Eurocentric ideologies of theatre and acting by diversifying course materials: dramatic literature, critical theory, and acting methodologies. It involves inserting these multiple, doubly conscious perspectives into class discussions, assignments, and exercises. In this essay, I offer my “Beginning Acting” class as an example with the aim of demonstrating both the process and benefits of culturally inclusive acting pedagogy.

Afrocentric concepts of community are an effective way to encourage ensemble acting, which is an integral aspect of the classroom dynamic. Ensemble acting refers to a unified approach to acting that emphasizes the collective performance of the group, rather than focusing exclusively on individual performances. I establish a sense of community through interviews and introductions on the first day in a way that is reminiscent of the black church. My variation on this tradition requires students to interview one another and introduce their partners to the class, similar to the way that visitors to a black church service introduce themselves and the churches they represent to the congregation. This first step toward community building helps students learn about common interests and prepares them for the exchange of energy in our ensemble approach to actor training.

This sense of community is maintained through a series of “call and response”–influenced activities: questionnaires, weekly e-mails, and journal entries. The first homework assignment is generally an acting questionnaire in which students are asked to identify their personal objectives for the course. I actively integrate their objectives in my lesson plans throughout the semester. The call and response exchange continues through weekly e-mails and journals. Students keep private journal entries for each class meeting and outside rehearsal as needed, documenting their progress throughout the course. Students submit weekly e-mails summarizing their journal entries and asking questions or sharing their experiences for the week. These exchanges allow me to gauge the individual and collective progress in the course and revise my lesson plans as needed. I reassign the questionnaire as the very last homework assignment and return the originals so that students can assess their progress over the course of the semester. In general, I find that most students are better [End Page 95] equipped to answer the questions by the end of the semester, and most recognize a significant level of improvement. This intellectual and creative exchange between teacher and student empowers students by recognizing their active participation in actor training and encouraging them to evaluate themselves in the context of the goals they set at the beginning of the semester.

Due to metaphysical underpinnings of Afrocentric concepts of community, spiritual elements of cultural perception are also useful for teaching ensemble acting and “integrated actor training,” which refers primarily to the merging of theory and practice. Afrocentric concepts of community recognize fundamental metaphysical relationships among the individual, the ancestors, the yet unborn, and the present community (Myers 47). Techniques by Sanford Meisner and Arthur...

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