If you could make a scene of what your first leadership experience was like, how would you position the people? If no words could be spoken and no movements could be made, what would it communicate? These were the questions we were challenged to answer as a part of Silvia Bettez’s workshop Using Theater Techniques for Transformative and Social Justice. As a volunteer, I entered the workshop just planning on following my duties and listening to a presentation, but what I actually encountered was much more than that. Knowing very little about acting, I was out of my comfort zone. I was vulnerable and exposed to a whole new form of silent communication. This ‘tableau’ as she called it seemed very scary to me. As I met my group members and we shared our stories, the body positions seemed to come naturally. How? I’m not really sure. One story was about using a team instead of individual work and we organized the desks in a circle, sat, held hands, and looked at each other, somewhat smiling. We couldn’t move. The other participants in the workshop walked around us examining our faces and every inch of our body language. Then, they told us what they thought and what they gathered from their observations. Usually, each guess was spot on.
Leadership was suddenly illuminated in a way I had never thought. I think of leadership as being a personal experience. However, each group depicted a different scene that ultimately fell under several broader aspects of leadership like teamwork, encouragement, and responsibility. To see these components surface in such a raw way really fascinated me and left me to contemplate the essence of leadership as a whole.
