Rasaboxes

During our senior year, Ms. Mxdxxxx introduced yet another one-time lesson out of nowhere that accomplished absolutely nothing.

(I've come to realize that most of her memorable lessons came during our senior year. Whether that's just the result of it being the most recent year in my memory or whether she suddenly felt an inspiration to try that year, I'm not sure. But I have noticed it.)

The lesson was called Rasaboxes, and while it was based on a real theater lesson that other educators have used, the version we ended up doing was so bastardized that it was barely worthy of comparison.

The real Rasaboxes lesson involves setting up squares on the floor that correspond to different emotions (the “rasas”). Each actor takes turns standing on a square and using their body, voice, and movement to fully embody and exhibit the emotion. Then they move on to the next one and repeat. An actor is supposed to practice transitioning between the emotions and interacting with other actors along the way, and a crucial part of the exercise involves following up afterward with analysis and conversation about what they felt and learned.

We didn't do that.

I'll give Mxdxxxx credit; the lesson started closely enough. She did set up squares on the floor of the black box corresponding to different emotions, and we did take turns moving through them. We did even, well, emote our feelings to each other, to a point.

But she didn't explain why any of that should have been useful. Her idea of channeling the emotions was to make a smiley or frowning face, like any child might do. After introducing the assignment, she went to sit at her computer in her office.

I remember Karina standing on the rasabox for sadness and looking out to the rest of the class, making herself shed tears. Josh seemed to enjoy the “bored” box, as he just stood there happily doing nothing (although probably not to Mr. Cxhxx's standards). Other students smiled for happiness, rubbed their chins for confusion, or put their heads in their hands for worry. That was, uh, pretty much it. We did that for the entirety of the class.

Note that we did not follow up with the analysis portion. We did not discuss what we felt or learned, and we did not connect the lesson to any real pieces we may have been working on. There was no point to any of it. We just stood and emoted and then stood and emoted again, absent of any context.

As always, Mxdxxxx wasn't presenting the lesson in good faith — it was just to kill a class period. She set up something to occupy us that didn't require her to actually say or do anything, and then let it run unmoderated until the bell rang. This lesson was yet another example to throw onto the towering pile: something that looked legitimate to an outsider, something that could give her plausible deniability if called out by an administrator, but that did absolutely nothing of value for anyone.

Actually, before researching the Rasaboxes technique myself, I assumed the whole thing was complete bullshit. I mean, if there was but one lesson I had internalized in all of my years in drama, it was that actors play objectives, not emotions. That was supposed to be sacrosanct. Going onstage and merely “acting sad,” or any other emotion divorced from the situation, was not a thing. Yet here was a lesson teaching exactly that. If someone had told me that Mxdxxxx simply made the lesson up one day or discovered it through a series of forwarded chain emails, I wouldn't have questioned it for a minute. But Rasaboxes are real, and I guess they're legitimate… if they're applied correctly. Our teacher couldn't have cared less, and somewhere up in heaven, the poor person who created the real lesson is crying and spitting on her.  ❒

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