On the 19th March Peter Dyer was the facilitator for our Teacher Development SIG Day at the Glasgow IATEFL conference, which was very successful. In the next Newsletter you will find an interview I had with him.

Here’s a taster:

Peter: The acting side of the workshop was really about why we act or respond to stimuli. As I mentioned before, every action causes a reaction, the gestures, the voice, the intonation. Looking in particular at the questions all teachers should look at, such as: Who am I? What am I? Where am I? These three questions are vital because they take care of the How. I demonstrated that with an empty chair exercise yesterday.

Barbara: So what were your instructions?

Peter: I put the chair in the middle of the room and I just asked one question: Where is the chair? We had a man come in who sat down and it was obvious he was late for the cinema.  So we did that for a while, and then we looked at the chair again. But then with a different question. This time it was: Who was using the chair? The who was important. Then we talked about what the chair user was doing. They all interrelate you see. I was trying to demonstrate that.

Read: Robert Benedetti “The Actor in you” and “The actor at work”.

[email protected]

Please tell us about your experiences with acting.