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“It is the teacher’s greatest tool.” The human voice, says tutor Robyn Hewetson, is a divine gift and every human being can say: “I speak because I have been gifted with the power of speech – I have my own voice.”
Robyn Hewetson has been teaching at Taruna for 12 years. She began tutoring on the Diploma of Rudolf Steiner Education and now teaches on most of the Taruna courses. Her teaching scope is wide. “I cover everything to do with the healing art of speaking including, drama, speaking, story- telling, verse and prayer. “ On the Diploma of Rudolf Steiner Education, the final term with Robyn brings the study of drama and voice into focus.
Through studying speech and drama, Robyn says, a teacher can learn to speak creatively not habitually.
“It isn’t about elocution or diction, but working with the power and the majesty of sound.”
As she and the student teachers work hard to prepare their performance piece for the end of November, Robyn has this to say about their experience.
“Drama is preparation for life – when we cast the play it shatters into pieces. We pick it up and then finally accept the role we have - then we work on our ‘piece’ ...in the end the only way it works is if I play my part well and then everyone else can play their part.”
According to Robyn, in the original Waldorf schools, every single speech and drama exercise was given to the teachers first and the teachers took speech and drama lessons for much of their lives. “So they could get directly in touch with the source of inspiration. What most children want is a teacher that is inspired...live performance – which is what a teacher is doing every minute of the day.”
Inspired sound awakens the imagination, says Robyn. A teacher that wants to be inspired should know that “the level of their inspiration is in direct relation to the amount they exhale while they’re speaking. You have to breathe out while you’re speaking in order to have a vessel that can be inspired.”
Inspiration and listening go hand in hand. Creative speech can enhance the listener’s experience of sound so that “rather than (just) listening to the content, we listen much deeper to the activity of the way a person is speaking.”
Robyn tells us that the ear is a profound a diagnostic tool.
For the teacher to truly listen to the child provides an insight into the child’s individual signature: “To hear the way they speak, the way they sound, the way they stand, the way they breathe” conveys a message about who the child is.
So we listen - we are spoken to - and we speak again. In speaking we consider the listener’s experience: “to speak to a listening person in such a way that we enter the experience.” Like the actor to the audience. In order to inspire audience participation, the actor must deliver the words authentically. “If we don’t do it then we awaken the critic.” After all, says Robyn, “a play is only words. The greatest task of the actor is to bring these words like jewels to the audience and whether we dress it up or not or put lights on it is neither here nor there. If a part could be played so well it wouldn’t matter what you looked like, the audience would create the images around you.” As with the actor - the teacher brings “not stones, but bread” to the child.
This is inspired live performance. This, as Robyn so beautifully puts it – this is the true meaning of being “well-spoken”.
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