It has become evident to me that in actor training environments, in both university and drama school settings, there are some individuals who have difficulty in reading without effort, and physically articulating and processing language and speech sounds. This can be in conjunction with other characteristics, such as distractibility, disorganisation, anxiety, and physical awkwardness, despite their possession of literacy, intrinsic motivation, athletic movement skills, acting talent and intelligence.
My initial introduction to these perplexing features, (displayed by some individuals), was when I was teaching in the drama schools in London. Although my training as a voice teacher on the Voice Studies postgraduate course at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama had specialised in methods of textual communication, specific guidance on how to assist those
with reading challenges such as dyslexia was not included in the course
syllabus. Although I gained the pedagogical knowledge to build technical
prowess in spoken communication of the words on the page, I had no tools, nor knowledge of underlying theory to facilitate dyslexic barriers.
The obstacles blocking some individuals with dyslexia from being able to contribute freely to planned sessions on text, raises pedagogical problems for the teacher; especially located within the larger student cohort. When conducting Shakespeare workshops, Stredder (2004:128) relates: ‘...I was taken by surprise, having failed to anticipate what differences there might be in a class and how they might impact on the work and the needs of individuals ...you may find...that a lively student chosen to read something aloud is dyslexic and cannot sight read’.
This pedagogical conundrum emphasises issues about student and teacher anxiety, placing the individual in a vulnerable position as they are unable to fulfil tasks amongst their peer group. The teacher lacks the expertise to support
the individual, enhancing a depression of ability in the student, while promoting feelings of inadequacy in the teacher.
My subsequent research investigations have revealed a paucity of literature, theory or knowledge in pedagogical understanding, inclusive support or training initiatives for actors with dyslexic difficulties. (I am talking here about practical actor training, not the Disability Learning Support offered to students in higher education institutions). Moreover, since I began this PhD study, Leveroy has also recognised this gap in information, and has embarked on a PhD study on how to support individuals with dyslexia in actor training and in the acting profession (Leveroy 2012:89 ). I have considered her publications on the subject in the literature review in the following chapter of this study. When peer-reviewing an article I have written on this subject (Whitfield 2009) wherein I describe some of my students’ reading difficulties, Professor Hague, director of the BFA Performance course at Auburn University Alabama remarked (2009):
The author rightfully states that it is becoming increasingly common to find dyslexic students in our classes. Instructors are not, in general, prepared to deal with the special needs of these students and there is a limited body of research on which to draw in order to facilitate and empower these actors when
they come to us for training. The Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research, (CEDAR - based at the Institute of Education at Warwick University) in their Dance and Drama Awards Strategic Review (Neelands et al 2009:61) mentions that dyslexia (and dyspraxia) was the most ‘common concern’ in disability amongst the ‘exceptionally talented’ students (ibid. 4) who had won a scholarship for conservatoire performing arts training.
Montgomery (2003) has drawn attention to the need for specialist provision for those with ‘double exceptionality’, who are highly gifted but with a disability, (such as dyslexia), and argues that dyslexia is one of the most common forms of double exceptionality. Their abilities not being perceived and adequately
catered for, risks grave educational outcomes for the talented dyslexic (ibid. 43).
1.6.1 Reading Shakespeare in the contemporary environment
The readability of Shakespeare for the modern young person can present unchartered terrain. At the beginning of the Shakespeare unit, my acting students commonly relate that their school experience of studying Shakespeare was restricted in scope, and that many of them found Shakespeare’s writing incomprehensible.
The CEDAR report from Warwick University, undertaken for the Royal Shakespeare Company (Strand 2008) tells us that 46% of Year nine and ten students thought that studying Shakespeare was boring and that 49% found Shakespeare’s plays difficult to understand – the answers gathered in questionnaires collected from ten secondary schools.
Amongst my acting students, there are some that can read effortlessly, but still find Shakespeare’s meaning hard to grasp. Hall (2003: 10) deliberates that in another two hundred years it is likely that Shakespeare will ‘be only faintly visible’ and will have to be translated, as our human circumstances, cultures and language transform through the passage of time.
English scholar Simon Palfrey ruminates on how Shakespeare’s ‘… language remains strange and difficult no matter how familiar we become with it’ (Palfrey 24 – 25). He advises that the reader should:
… take the words as they are, in the order they are given and with the referents they evoke, and make of it what we can…there is not a word in Shakespeare that is not doing just what he wanted.
In their research disseminations psychologist James L. Keidal, literature scholar Philip Davis et al (2013) have labelled Shakespeare’s language as a ‘neurological tempest’ because of his surprising idiosyncrasies in idiom, syntax, ellipsis, word omissions, contractions and word order. In their
investigations into the activation of differing areas of the brain when reading Shakespeare, Keidal et al found that Shakespeare’s shift in the linguistic domain triggers an alteration in the neuroanatomical domain, such that brain networks involved in processing non-literal aspects of language are turned on
(Keidal et al 2013). Davis emphasises how Shakespeare’s frequent shifts of
grammatical function can excite the imagination, but also deviate from expectation and conventions; for example where the adjective is energised into a verb, such as: ‘him have you madded’ (Quarto 4.2. 40 - 44) or there is a change of a noun into a verb: ‘Nay godded me indeed’ (Coriolanus 5.3, 10-11) (Davis 2008:267 – 268). Davis suggests that such functional shifts produce ‘a sudden electrical charge in the brain by not simply going along with an explanatory language … but getting closer to the very roots of sudden mental- verbal formation…more primal in meaning-making’ (ibid. 267). Although such language adaptation is ‘electrical’ for some, for others who are less used to reading in the Shakespearean style, it can become nonsensical.
As chronicled in Winston (2010: 102) Shakespeare’s ‘intense and beautiful’ dramatic language can be the very thing that alienates the young reader. Issues of class, exclusion, and power are historically entangled with the reading and ownership of Shakespeare and Stredder (2004:18) cautions that ‘mastery of Shakespeare’s language is associated with cultural exclusivity’. These aspects all increase the barriers for the reader with difficulties in accessing the words.
1.6.2 The current situation
For some individuals, additional hurdles remain in place, when endeavouring to find their way into the text. The difficulties I describe below are exhibited by the individuals who have been assessed as dyslexic by an educational psychologist either at the Arts University or at school before coming to university. This is despite undergoing reading practice in various forms, in acting and voice classes over a two year period. These difficulties reveal themselves across much of my syllabus of voice teaching when dealing with forms of language, (sight-reading, phonetics, accent study, public speaking,
articulation), but become particularly noticeable when working on Shakespeare, with the additional pressure of unusual language and heightened performance.
I am referring to the act of reading classical text aloud, in a variety of situations such as within the larger cohort of the class, in voice exercises, scene rehearsal or alone in a tutorial situation. Moreover, these word difficulties can
permeate beyond reading, into the acting and speaking of the text in
performance, such as: the ability to process sounds received aurally, adapt an accent or one’s speech from a habitual model, break out of embedded intonation patterns in the speaking of the text, dual task through speaking the words while physically doing something else, and the precise formation of the syllables within the words. It is apparent that some individuals have an inability to read aloud, with a smooth unbroken flow without regular hesitant stumbling and insecurity. The individuals explain that sometimes this is because they have forgotten how to pronounce a word, do not recognise the word, do not understand the meaning of the word or the context, have to process the word letter by letter, the small words seem to swim about, or the print appears as meaningless marks on the page. In some cases, they cannot explain or understand why they cannot read the words within the given situation.