 What is the origin and transformation of the group performance project that you do in your course, Humanities and the Expressive Arts? When it began, it almost came because I needed something to do with my students because I was going to be away with another class in the Southwest. So I had a kind of teaching dilemma of what to do with students while I was gone. That would be meaningful. That would be a part of the course. So I ran many ideas through my mind, but I somehow have always been interested in performance, but I had never really been trained to teach performances. And I thought it would be intriguing to give students the freedom to take these stories and translate them into some other kind of artistic medium that's in the humanities and use music, use theater, use dance, all the kinds of things that they might do. So initially it came from that, but as that project, as I saw the results of that project and how students felt about it, and for some it was a very powerful experience to even do something like that. For others it was frustrating because it wasn't enough time and the groups were too large. It was two groups of ten students each, and they each chose a different novel. The River Why and River Song. And so some other things happened. Since the students had each read the one novel and not the other, as an audience they didn't necessarily know the other's story. Even though that was conveyed through the performance, there was a lot that was missing in terms of the audience's connection to what was going on. So I realized that it would be better if we all read something together so that the audience had a sense of already knowing the story and so that that would improve the performances or the reaction of the students to the connections there. So what happened really was the next time, a year later when I taught the humanities expressive arts again, and I focused on our connection to animals, our animal selves, which is an interest of mine, is how we think about animals, what our relationships as humans are to them, how we think about ourselves as animals if we do and what that means, and but to using literature in the arts to explore that. And one of the things that struck me was a number of experiences I had, one when I was in the Southwest a number of years ago teaching a course on Southwest American Indian literature and culture, and I took students, this was from another college, from St. Olaf College, took students to Hamas Pueblo and we went for one of the King's Day dances, it was on January 6th, and we were there before the sun came up and as we watched the dancers came off the mountain, they came down and they were they were deer, you know, see these deer dancers and then there was buffalo dancers also some eagle and another animal, I think like antelope or something, there were some young ones, and what I what was amazing was that they moved, the dancers moved down the mountain the way those animals would move so that from a distance it looked like a group of deer coming down and when they came closer you realize of course they were humans and in wearing certain things but also imitating the kind of movement. So I had those kind of images in the back of my mind about animals and the humans ability to shape our movements the way animals do and so so in this class the very first day we did some kind of animal charades in a way it was a you know a kind of game version of the very first day of class let's break the ice and embarrass ourselves laugh at each other but also show each other that in fact we already know a lot about animals and about how they move and we can convey that not just by what we say but through our bodies and through our movements through our recognition and so so that was it was really challenging because there were some students right away who did not want to perform in front of others were felt very self-conscious but when everyone is forced to do it in a certain way they they did it and I tried to be supportive of them but but also push them to actually do do that and it was so that kind of set a tone and so we did a various exercises in that in that class kind of performance when we read the play equus we did it one day which I didn't announce ahead of time partly I didn't want them to worry too much about performance but just to do what they could do in the kind of in the moment more in a more spontaneous way but they had read the play but that they chose a scene as a small group and they discussed it and then I said okay now your group needs to plan a performance of that just you know they could use the books to read and so forth because we're gonna do it at the end of class basically so I gave them about 45 minutes and they're off planning and of course someone were frantic but and a nervous and it was it it was wonderful what they did though because everyone again knew this play so we all kind of knew what was going on and we knew we weren't they weren't necessarily being actors in a sense that this was professional that they were just doing it right very quickly but a lot of great things came out of that in terms of their dialogue in terms of taking the play and and internalizing it in some ways actually becoming some of the characters rather than just talking about the characters in all my classes I'm always trying to create a variety of assignments to meet different student strengths that is and so some students are very good writers and or very good at discussing a class but others have gifts in terms of art the kind of artistic expression in terms of performance you see you open up that in a class and all of a sudden other students who seem quiet who don't really share they can shine in a different way and that was very exciting so in insects I think it's surprised other students because some students who seem quiet and not so much part of the intellectual discussion shined in terms of the artistic expression and that fact