cosmicomedy
by lavinia plonka

Climbing Out of the Hole

In one of my many careers, I was a mime teacher. Truly a niche career as a colleague of mine once said. Now mime has kind of a bad reputation in this country. Robin Williams once did a sketch on Saturday Night Live where the mime was so irritating and incomprehensible that his roommate shot him. The audience cheered. I cried. So one of the things I always stressed in my own performance and in the work of my students was clarity.

Chris presents a special challenge. The first day the students are to perform assignments, he eagerly raises his hand to perform, like all the other children. At his turn, he jumps up and runs incoherently around the room, gesturing madly.

Now, I am a seasoned pro, I can interpret almost any child’s attempts to communicate through mime. But I draw a blank. I ask him to explain.
“First, these guys were chasing me. Then I ran up to my room and hid under the bed. While I was there, I found my old bicycle and when I tried to ride it, it fell apart. I jumped out my window and there was a guy selling hot dogs. So I ate one and then flew away.” I am at once stunned by his imagination and irked by his sloppy performance. The perfectionist in me wants to criticize and dismiss Chris. But he’s not like the other children in this expensive drama school. The other children arrive scrubbed, dressed in kid haute couture—color coordinated, covered in logos, accessorized. Chris has dirty socks with holes in them, hand me downs and he emanates a faint, unwashed stench. I want to root for him.

“But Chris,” I say, trying to sound kind, “the homework was to walk down a hall and listen to what’s behind the doors!”

His crestfallen face sends a guilty pang through my heart. “I did listen at the door. That’s why they were chasing me.”

Chris defies endearing. He can’t sit still. Not that many eight year olds can, but he seems particularly uncomfortable in his body, shifting and sprawling, breathing mucusy, asthmatic wheezes, humming tuneless melodies.

“Chris. Please don’t sing while the others are performing.” He looks surprised and hurt. “Chris. Stop crawling around.”

Part of my job is to teach children focus, concentration. Many of them are stressed out kids dropped off by stressed out parents desperate to find an alternative to Ritalin, Xanax, Zantac. For two hours, I try to provide an environment for letting go and learning. I give them plenty of opportunity to run, scream, freeze, create statues, roll on the floor, play imaginary football, chase alien monsters and blow up imaginary buildings. And then we pay attention—to each other, to our actions, even to our breath. Chris doesn’t get any of it.

As the weeks go by, Chris becomes more reluctant to participate, edgier, more woebegone. Then one day, I notice him squeezing back tears as two children are talking.

“I showed my homework to my mom yesterday, and she told me I really looked like I was brushing my hair with a real brush.”

“When I showed my family the part about catching the burglar, they all acted really scared!”

Chris looks so abandoned, I’m amazed his parents remember to pick him up after class.

After 8 weeks of classes, the final assignment is to create a piece where you find yourself trapped in something and find a way to escape. Chris surprises me, eagerly raising his hand. I’m nervous, picking him. The last few weeks he has either “forgotten” to do his homework, or was obviously making it up on the spot, trying to tap dance his way through the assignment. But this time, it’s clear that he has practiced, that something about this piece has engaged him. He lucidly portrays falling down a big hole and tries to dig himself out. He claws with his fingers at the imaginary walls. He tries to burrow like a dog underneath. The children are enthralled. I bite back grateful tears.

He picks something up, then sighs and looks at me sorrowfully. “I’m no good. You don’t get it. I’ll never get out.”

“No, Chris,” I implore. “ It’s great. We all saw you fall down the hole. You picked something up. What is it? How do you get out?”

“I can’t.” He sits down in his self made prison.

“Don’t give up, Chris. You can.” He looks at me doubtfully, the invisible object still clutched in his grubby fist as if it was real. For a minute we don’t speak, looking into each other’s eyes. I remember the words of Jean Louis Barrault, a great mime and actor, who said, “Mime is not a substitute for words. It is that which cannot be put into words.” In that silent moment, everyone in the class understands what is happening between me and Chris. He is waiting for faith. My faith in him. Not just the words. Because if I truly believe that he is capable, he will succeed.

It’s not about being a powerful teacher. It’s not that his own faith is not strong enough. We are co-creators in this moment, this shift in reality. My friend Jerry once neatly paraphrased Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. He said, “The situation changes based on the attitude of the observer.” We both need to shift. Because Chris’ uncertainty is as much a part of my beliefs as my judgementalness is part of his. I slowly nod to him . He looks down at the invisible object in his hand. It becomes a rope, which he tosses upward, climbing painfully hand over hand out of his imaginary hole. The class cheers.
“You see, you can do it!” I’m as pleased as if he’s escaped from a real hole. Chris beams as another toe pops through the holes in his sock.

 

Lavinia Plonka, whose DNA was programmed for adversity by parents who survived Nazi Prison camps, is endlessly delighted to find that life’s challenges can be met with elegance and laughter. She teaches folks new alternatives to struggle via the brilliant strategies in the Feldenkrais Method® of Movement Education. [ laviniaplonka.com ]