In International Conference on Performing Arts in Language Learning - Rome 23/24 October 2014

Theatre Education for an Empathic Society

Pr Joelle Aden
Université du Maine
Le Mans/France
Joelle.aden@gmail.com

Abstract
In order to face increasingly multicultural societies, teachers, educators and facilitators are in need of
new creative ways of helping learners to become aware of their own linguistic cultural and emotional
potential and to develop an empathetic attitude towards others. To what extent can theatre education
nurture the capacity to relate to others?
Recent developments in neuroscience, particularly research on empathy, are to play a significant role
in addressing this crucial matter as they offer new ways of understanding the connexions between
physicality, imagination, emotion, language and reason. Theatre techniques incorporate physical,
emotional and aesthetic simulation that can help students to put themselves in somebody else’s
shoes, thus supporting them in the process of acquiring an empathetic attitude.

“The concept of empathy is of vital importance to teachers of language and culture, because the
development of cross-linguistic and intercultural awareness is very much dependent on the learner’s
appreciation of the feelings and attitudes of the ‘Other’.”
Thirioux, Berthoz [1]

1. Introduction
According to Rifkin [2], there is an urgent need
to shift from a post-industrial era to what he
calls an empathic society. The awareness that
humans are interconnected in a fragile and tiny
biosphere calls for education founded on
cooperation and empathy, but instead, today’s
education still reflects an industrial,
consumption-driven civilization where one
must acquire knowledge in order to serve
one’s own material needs and where
cooperation is viewed as cheating.
In the last decade, philosophers, psychologists
and neuroscientists have identified empathy as
a key ingredient for the regulation of social
relationships. Generally defined as the
capacity to distance oneself from an egocentric
viewpoint and adopt the other’s perspective in
order to understand him/her, empathy is seen
as valuable for pro-social behaviour, namely in
conflict resolution. However, empathy is a
complex construct and may have dark sides
too. A high level of cognitive empathy, for
instance, can nurture altruism in some and
mental manipulation in others. At the other end
of the spectrum, a low level of emotional
empathy can foster autistic or psychopathic
behaviour. So, even if the notion is becoming
increasingly popular among educators, it
needs to be well understood before it is
introduced in the curricula.
2. Change of paradigm
Language educators need to acknowledge at
least two major growing trends:
-­‐ The ecological turn in language education:
the students we teach no longer live in
monolingual/monocultural environments; they
grow in what Bloomaert [3] defines as
‘linguistic landscapes’. The model of
“source/target” or “native/foreign” languages
taught in a “we/them” dialectic is obsolete
and inhibits empathy. According to Martin
Buber [4], we need to rely on the “I/you”
relationship if we are to acknowledge other
persons’ subjectivity regardless of their
cultural background. When individuals or
education systems dehumanize the “other”
by ignoring his/her identities, this generates a
low-empathic attitude consistent with racist
attitudes that lead to violence and exclusion.
-­‐ The theories of complexity and emergence:
Varela’s enaction theory [5] defines
“languaging” as a living experience, which is
mediated by our bodies in action. For him,
the need to language with one another is a
biological necessity and is linked to emotions
and love. Drawing on his definition, I have
described "translanguaging" (le
translangager) as the dynamic act of relating
to oneself, to others and to the environment
through which meanings emerge.
Translanguaging implies combining all
available language repertoires, both verbal
and non verbal, including kinaesthetic and
emotional resonance [6]. This model expands

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In International Conference on Performing Arts in Language Learning - Rome 23/24 October 2014
the traditional task-based activities into
emotional-shared experience.
These evolutions reshape the sense of
belonging inside national or federal borders
and call for more flexible and transdiciplinary
ways of dealing with plurilingualism. They also
require a change of paradigm in language
education.
3. So, how do drama and theatre fit
into the picture?
As early as 1980, Stern [7] suggested that,
among other positive effects, theatre in
language teaching could increase a capacity
for empathy and lower sensitivity to rejection.
This idea was consistent with the intercultural
turn that developed into an ethnolological
approach to languages through drama that
could foster tolerance and reduce self-other
distance (Fleming) [8]. These studies referred
to empathy in the field of psychology as the
capacity to share, react and understand the
lived experience and associated mental states
of others, and brought together the emotional
and a cognitive dimension of empathy that
Davis [9] had highlighted.
In 2008, using available literature in
neuroscience as a theoretical background -
namely the discovery of the Mirror Neuron
System - I showed how performing a character
in a play in an EFL class jointly developed
emotional, communicative and linguistics skills
through empathizing physically and mentally
with the characters [10]. An interesting
outcome lay in the fact that the actress running
the workshop found it difficult for the students
to build their characters because of
preconceived and stereotyped ideas they had
formed through the study of the play in class.
According to her, the bodily exploration of the
characters should have come first. Her idea
was in keeping with the phenomenological
teaching of Jacques Lecoq [11], who urged his
students to explore their characters physically
before using words. Later in 2009, I showed
how the same students, performing for an
audience in the language they were learning,
resorted to improvisations whose function was
to sustain empathy with the audience [12].
They created mediating techniques, as actors
would, and used intuitively and effectively “this
silent language that emotionally connects
people beyond words” that Lecoq saw as a
prerequisite for authentic acting. Having
documented the effects of physical acting
techniques on the capacity to develop creative
language, I embarked on a project aiming at
observing how professional actors used
kinaesthetic and emotional empathy when
 
facilitating plurilingual groups of teenagers
[13]. I documented the fact that they organized
activities in a continuum between awareness
of one’s own body in space (self-location
experience) and awareness of others in space
by progressively putting the students
physically, emotionally and mentally "in other
people’s shoes”, thus operating a progressive
change in perspective. At this stage I
suggested that empathy could be seen as the
basis for intercultural competence.
4. Taking stock of the available
knowledge on empathy
In the introduction to their book Mirrors in the
Brain: how our minds share action and
emotions, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia [14] quote
Peter Brook, who had told journalists that
neurologists were beginning to understand
what actors had always known. Indeed,
neuroscience is progressively uncovering the
basic mechanisms actors use that cause
spectators to feel moved, although both actors
and spectators remain well aware that nothing
on stage is real. Today, a significant body of
scientific literature confirms the fact that “the
act of understanding others, their intentions
and feelings happens not only through words
but also through imitation and empathy” [15]
and that empathy develops through enacting
the intentions and feelings of others and self.
[16]
Bérengère Thirioux [17] describes empathy as
“a complex, multifaceted socio-cognitive
construct” that combines “emotional/automatic
and cognitive/regulatory processes”. According
to the multidimensional model, “(t)he automatic
and emotional components of empathy
correspond to the internal reproduction of
another person’s subjective experience and
associated mental state, as if individuals were
experiencing this given mental state
themselves” [18] (p. 287); this is similar to the
first-person-like processes involved in
simulation (sympathy) and is associated with
low-level mechanisms. On the other hand,
“(t)he cognitive and regulatory components
refer to a controlled process whereby people
understand the mental states of others while
adopting their psychological point of view
based upon perspective-taking and self-other
distinction. These are very akin to the second-
person-like process involved in the Theory of
Mind” (idem.) The cognitive components are
reinforced by language, which gives
complementary clues to emotional states.
In drama workshops led in ‘other’ languages,
we use low-level mechanisms as clues to
understand verbal language. We consistently
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observe that students grasp the meaning of 5. From experiment to experience

things without using processes of analysis or
inferential reasoning. We think this can be
attributed to the phenomenon of motor
resonance linked to automatic imitation of the
other’s behaviour. This is in agreement with
the automatic low-level component in the
“Mirror Neuron System” (MSN) model, which
posits that the same brain regions are
activated both when an agent performs an
action or when s/he observes the same action
performed by someone else. Numerous
experiments suggest that the MNS not only
underlies the embodiment mechanisms, but
also mechanisms of self-attribution of another
person’s action, intentions or emotions (idem).
We can hypothesize that, in theatre workshops
facilitated in other languages, students use this
MNS: when watching the facilitator and others
perform, they understand their actions and
intentions and they can link this embodied
experience to the unknown verbal components
of the speech in which they operate. We also
notice that the students automatically mimic or
imitate the movements of the facilitators and of
others and they often translate or repeat the
unknown words related to the situation. As
there is no separation between mental and
bodily experience, both low-level and high-
level processes come into play when students
act.
I suggest that the actors’ flexibility in making
quick changes of perspectives in time and
space and their capacity to control their
emotions can usefully help students develop
pro-social behaviour. In the same line, Berthoz
[15] argues that it is crucial to develop
empathy in education, as it can help children
“leave the mental path traced by egocentric
conditioning and the isolating nature of a world
shaped by fanaticism” (p. 261). We have
evidence that acting in language class
facilitates self-agency, joint action and
cognitive processes, but working on automatic
processes in not sufficient. In order to nurture
altruistic empathy, students also need to be
exposed to the aesthetics of theatrical works in
many different languages, because art can
potentially uncover the stranger inside of us
and the self in the stranger.
We clearly see that there are no simple
answers to many open questions. Thirioux &
Berthoz [1] remind us that, “(t)he results of
neuroscientific research may indeed be useful
in helping us to understand in a more profound
way the processes of learning and teaching.”
They believe that “(…) neuroscientists need to
leave their laboratories. We need to
experience (and not merely “experiment” with)
self-other interaction. One obvious place in
which we could begin our investigations is the
language classroom.” (p. 56-57).

References

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[2] RIFKIN, J. (2009) The Empathic Civilization, Penguin.
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