Abstract:

This paper aims to deepen a reflection on the fruitful relationship between actor training practices and education through the description of one of the workshop moments involving master’s degree students some of whom have given consent, on a voluntary basis, to participate in research project still ongoing at the University of Naples Federico II on the use of the Stanislavsky Method as a methodology able to promote meta-emotional skills.

Specifically, the above mentioned research work was carried out in the 2019/2020 academic year as part of the course in Developmental Pedagogy and Socialisation Processes held by Professor Maria Rosaria Strollo, during the second year of the Master's degree course in Developmental Psychology, at the University Federico II of Naples. A total of 10 female students aged between 24 and 27 enrolled in the afore-mentioned course took part in the experience on a voluntary basis. This workshop consisted of 4 meetings lasting 2 hours each, held by the Neapolitan actor Walter Lippa, a teacher of the Stanislavsky method, during which the male and female students had the opportunity to stage four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger and fear. In this paper, reference will only be made to the first meeting, the one focusing on the emotion of happiness. The research participants were offered a structured interview consisting of 28 open-ended questions. The female students were interviewed 10 months after the practical experience, which took place in November 2019, via Microsoft Teams communication platform, in line with the safety regulations related to the Covid-19 pandemic spread. The interviews were recorded and faithfully transcribed, following the completion of an informed consent form regarding data processing and research purposes. The process of analysing the material involved two stages, the first conducted according to the phenomenological method, with a panel of two independent judges viewing and analysing all the material collected, and a second stage of processing the collected material involved textual content analysis supported by the use of T-Lab software. The reflections on the research carried out seem to highlight as one of the fundamental dimensions the importance of designing educational pathways that, from an enactive perspective, allow students who are about to enter the world of work in educational and care contexts to begin to experience 'first-hand' an attitude of a 'reflective professional'. An attitude that allows not only to strengthen critical and reflective thinking but also to enhance the experiential heritage of an educational work that, like the Stanislavsky Method, requires the responsibility of being 'fully' involved in processes, and theatre has always taught us this, that are highly humanising.

Keywords:

Stanislavsky Method, actor training, enactive pedagogy, critical thinking, meta-emotional skills.