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Research in Drama Education: The

Journal of Applied Theatre and
Performance
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Reframing The Rainbow of Desire

as embodied self-reflexivity in initial
teacher education
a
Rachel Forgasz
a
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC,
Australia
Published online: 30 Sep 2014.

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To cite this article: Rachel Forgasz (2014) Reframing The Rainbow of Desire as embodied self-
reflexivity in initial teacher education, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied
Theatre and Performance, 19:3, 280-286, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2014.928008

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 RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2014
Vol. 19, No. 3, 280286, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2014.928008

Reframing The Rainbow of Desire as embodied self-reflexivity

in initial teacher education
Rachel Forgasz*

Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

This is a photographic and textual account of research that reframes the Boalian
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technique The Rainbow of Desire (TRoD) as a form of embodied self-reflexivity

within initial teacher education. In particular, TRoD is applied as an embodied
reflective process to provoke reflection on the emotional dimensions of learning to
teach. The application of TRoD in this research subverts the traditional privileging
of logicalrational knowledge forms and processes within higher education. As
such, this research produces a new, politicised purpose for TRoD itself, which has
traditionally been categorised as a therapeutic applied theatre practice.

Background and introduction to the study

Research suggests that pre-service teachers (PSTs) experience a range of powerful
emotions when learning to teach (Bloomfield 2010) and that difficult emotions must
be reconciled in order for teachers to engage in professional learning (Malm 2009).
Nevertheless, there is a distinct lack of research resources to support PSTs
developing understanding of the complex nature and role of emotion in their work
as teachers (Sutton 2005). In this research, I sought to create and evaluate an
approach to engaging PSTs in reflection on their often-neglected emotional
experiences of learning to teach.
In designing the research, I was influenced both by Jordis (2011) argument that
since we experience emotion in our bodies, the body should become a content focus
for reflection on emotion, and by Pagis (2009) proposition that the body should also
be the process for reflection on emotion, what she calls embodied self-reflexivity. As
a drama educator, I saw the potential of both the entire system of The Rainbow of
Desire (Boal 1995) and the individual technique within it, which is also called The
Rainbow of Desire (TRoD), as examples of Pagis embodied self-reflexivity that might
engage PSTs in emotion-based reflection on and through their bodies.
With its focus on emotional and bodily held feeling, the applied theatre
approach to reflection undertaken in this research marks a significant departure
from dominant, cognitive-linguistic modes of reflection (Dewey 1933; Schon 1983;
Brookfield 1995). And while other branches of Theater of the Oppressed (Boal 1979)
have been applied and researched in teacher education contexts (Placier et al. 2005,
2006; Sanders 2004), this work is distinguished by its sole application of The Rainbow
of Desire and the attendant singular focus on PST emotion.

*Email: Rachel.Forgasz@monash.edu
2014 Taylor & Francis
 Research in Drama Education 281

The larger study involved 10 PSTs who volunteered after their first practicum
experience to participate in two workshop explorations of techniques from The
Rainbow of Desire, including TRoD. Multiple data sources were collated for the project,
including: PST journals during the practicum, after the workshops and during their
next practicum experience, full workshop transcripts, workshop photographs and a
researcher journal. Data for the larger project were analysed both via the standpoint
of researcher observations of the workshop process and via thematic analysis of all
PST data.

Account description and discussion

What follows is a brief account (in words and in pictures) of the workshop
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exploration of TRoD. It focuses particularly on the case of Dane, since he was the
participant who took on the role of the protagonist in this process. TRoD takes as its
starting point the protagonists story of a moment of oppression. Danes narrative
was originally drawn from his placement journal and was recounted by him during
the workshop:

Dane: [The diagram] Ive got on the board, the students have in front of them Ive
given them ten minutes [to fill it out]. And, then I was going to bring it back to the board
and we were going to do it as a group and I get it wrong. It was like a fatal error. It
wasnt my diagram. It was something that the teacher had given to me. She gave me the
diagram to work from and I got it wrong in front of the class and she steps in and says,
look, Im really sorry but Im going to have to stop you. Thats not right. This is actually
the way it is.

TRoD takes the protagonists narrative as the starting point for up to nine exploratory
stages, with the total number and sequence of stages determined at the discretion of
the facilitator. With limited space, I am unable to present the findings in relation to all
the nine stages of Danes TRoD process. Instead, I briefly describe stages one and two
because they lay the narrative and character foundations for the remaining workshop
phases. I then go on to analyse more closely the powerful reflective learning enabled
by Danes engagement in stages three and nine since they demonstrate the
particular benefit of embodied (as opposed to discursive) reflection when encour-
aging PSTs to reflect on their emotional experiences of learning to teach.

TRoD stage one: The scene is improvised with the protagonist (Dane) playing
himself.

TRoD stage two: The protagonist creates an embodied image of every fear, desire
and emotional drive that he felt as the incident unfolded. The participants offer
other images they imagine he might have felt. If the protagonist identifies with
those images, they are added. Each image is adopted by a workshop participant,
allowing the protagonist to step back and examine the full spectrum of his rainbow
of desire.

TRoD stage three: The other participants continue to embody the protagonists fears
and desires and the protagonist approaches and addresses each one in turn. In a
 282 R. Forgasz

stream of consciousness monologue, he clarifies why he felt each individual feeling

that the participants now embody:

Dane: I am like you Dane: I am you

because I am because I am
capable of having extremely
moments of pent embarrassed in this
up rage that cant moment. I dont
be exorcised. want anyone to see
You are a very my face, especially
basic level of my the individuals that
instinct. I am trying to build
a rapport with and
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gain their respect,

which is being
challenged at that
moment.
Dane: I am like this Dane: I am like this
because I have a because I value
temper and it does knowledge and I
flare up at times enjoy the process
and it has been a of imparting my
point of something knowledge on
to grapple with in others. I have a
my life. It is sense of pride in
something that I my work and in all
have become facets of my life.
better at
controlling.

Dane: I am like you Dane: I am like this

because I would because I am also a
very much desire student in this
to scold the person process. I am like
whos just put me this because I enjoy
in this very being a student as
compromising much as I am now
position. Its just stepping into the
the desire to want role of being a
to scold someone teacher. Yes. I am
whos much older like this because in
and more this moment I
experienced. wanted to all of a
sudden turn
around and sit
where you are.
 Research in Drama Education 283

These personified fears and desires are the focus of the remaining workshop
stages. In each instance, the protagonist sits outside the action, sometimes directing
it, always watching how his various fears and desires play out under different
conditions. At all times, he is removed from his embodied emotions, watching their
effect through the multiple mirrors of the other participants. Spectating the various
interactions from the sidelines, he effectively relinquishes control over how they are
represented and played out. In this sense, the embodied personification of the
protagonists emotions in TRoD provides a collaborative approach to reflection that
may be understood to elicit deeper insight than what the protagonist may have been
able to achieve alone.

Significantly, in TRoD, emotions are explored through their embodied representa-

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tions rather than by naming and labelling them as one might expect in a discursive
reflective process. This enables different facets of the same emotion to be kept in
play, explored and expressed from different angles. The power of maintaining the
multifaceted nature of each emotion was most powerfully evident in our workshop
during the final workshop stage: stage nine.

TRoD stage nine: As different facets of Dane, the personified emotions confront one
another, challenging the others right to exist in a series of improvised scenes. In the
following sequence, Caitlyns personification of Danes desire to suppress his rage is
pitted against Massimo, a representation of Danes ego:

Caitlyn: We both know that Massimo: Mould your

we need to be able to emotion. How long can you
present a controlled and a mould your emotion? Are you
confident exterior in front of not worried of moulding?
these kids Because of that, I was thinking of moulding
I am going to try and mould water. Has anybody tried to
my emotions and suppress mould water?
them so that I can be the
student teacher that I am
supposed to be.

In the exchange, ego refused to accept that, as one of Danes emotions, it could
be suppressed. In Massimos poetic refusal to be moulded, Dane saw the emergence
of another emotion and interrupted the improvisation:

Dane: Sorry, I feel like there was one [emotion] missing, and it seems to have been
achieved by [watching] these two together. There was one centre of control, that
emotion of patience and control that seems to have kind of balanced itself out.
Moderator: Can you embody it?
 284 R. Forgasz

Voice 1: Hes calm.

Voice 2: Its humble.
Dane: It is humble.
Voice 3: Its calm and strong.
Voice 2: I suppose determined as well.
Moderator: So, the pride [embodied by Massimo] that you [saw to]
be destructive is now like self-worth. The positive side of Massimo is
the pride in yourself that allows you to be humble, to have humility
in the face of your own error. It does away somehow with the need
to suppress the emotion [embodied by Caitlyn], because its a way
of actually being in acceptance of the way that things are rather
than in judgement of yourself in that moment.
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Seeing the embodied commingling of two emotions, Dane saw the possibility of
another, which he came to realise had been there all along. The recognition of the
existence of this additional aspect of himself was powerfully transformational for
Dane. In his post-workshop journal entry, he wrote:

It was quite outer bodily, effective and galvanising. [It] showed me I had responded
more maturely and productively than I could have realised whilst in the moment.

In his placement journal, he described deliberately evoking this sense of self-worth as

an emotional stance during difficult moments during his next practicum experience:

There is this great sense of trust in my own ability that has formed; I feel more like a
driver than a stowaway in a rear carriage trying to hang on for the ride.

Implications for teacher education and for applied theatre

The illustrative case of Danes experience points to some promising implications of
this work for the field of teacher education. Henry (2013) observes that many
teachers are afraid to deal explicitly with student emotions. Likewise, Lawrence (2010)
describes educators ambivalence about inviting students to work with, and in, their
bodies in higher education contexts. Such attitudes are reflective of the academys
deeply entrenched privileging of reason and simultaneous fear and suspicion of
emotion and the body as legitimate knowledge forms and processes (Forgasz &
Clemans, 2014).
But far from creating an unsafe environment, the embodied aesthetic space of
TRoD offered Dane an access point for reflecting on his emotional experiences of
learning to teach. And, as evident in Danes post-workshop journal entries, the
resolution of negative emotions about learning to teach enabled further advances in
his professional learning about teaching.
Participating in TRoD enabled Dane to reflect on his complex and multidimen-
sional emotions, which in turn offered him access to new learning about teaching.
The case of Dane confirms the value of emotional pedagogical practices within
teacher education (Malm 2009) and within higher education (Henry 2013). And it
makes an argument that emotion counts as a form of knowledge. No less significant,
 Research in Drama Education 285

it proposes that theatrical embodiment is a worthy approach to producing such

knowledge about emotion. In doing so, this work challenges traditional logical-
rational approaches to teaching, learning and reflection.
As well as challenging established concepts and processes within teacher
education, this work also challenges established understandings of The Rainbow of
Desire itself, which has traditionally been categorised as the therapeutic branch (Boal
1995) of Theater of the Oppressed. But its application in teacher education and higher
education contexts produces a new, politicised interpretation of this established,
therapeutic, applied theatre practice.
Boal was accused of selling out to the middle classes when he developed TRoD
because it focused on liberating participants from their internal, emotion-based
oppressions, rather than overtly political ones (Davis and Osullivan 2000). In his wry
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allegory The Political Master Swimmer, Boal (2002) justified the emotional turn of
TRoD by asking whether it is ethical for a liberator of political oppressions to ignore
the suffering of individuals simply because doing so falls outside of some
preconceived notion of the purpose of his mission.
In applying the therapeutic branch of Theatre of the Oppressed to teacher
education, however, the emotional turn of TRoD is simultaneously a political turn.
Because in the context of higher education, the foregrounding of emotion and its
expression through the body as legitimate knowledge subverts some fundamental
assumptions about what counts as teacher knowledge, what constitutes teacher
professionalism and the manner in which we come to learn and enact each of these.
This new application of an established Boalian process invites possibilities for
further integration: integration of cognitive, emotional and bodily knowledge and
integration of the intellectual, political and personal dimensions of learning and
experience.

Keywords: reflection; embodied reflection; teacher emotion; teacher education; Boal; The
Rainbow of Desire

Notes on contributors
Rachel Forgasz is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University (Australia). In her
research, she explores the possibilities of performance as an embodied approach to self-
reflexivity, especially as an approach to engaging pre-service teachers in reflection on their
emotional experiences of learning to teach. She publishes in the fields of embodied reflection,
teacher emotion and self-study.

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