I was quite nervous preparing for this element of the unit, unsure that I would fill the allotted time well, hoping that I could engage my fellows and communicate something of my practice. I have never ‘micro-taught ‘before, so this condensed experience was new to me.
I decided to base my session around the shoe, using my practice as a set designer to frame the activity which enabled me to put it into both a personal and professional context. Centring an everyday object with rich cross-cultural significance, I wanted my learners to gain insight into the kinds of questions that a designer uses to create a character narrative and consider how they might reflect that story through a garment.
Using a process of description, deduction, and speculation, students can move from a careful material “reading” of objects to the framing of questions that link those objects to other forms of external evidence ( Shultz 2018)
Preparation
I have led sessions with a similar aim before, using photographs of people captured by street photographer Scott Schulman, but was intrigued to discover what engaging with an object would bring the exercise. Would the experience of holding a shoe in your hand and physically receiving information about the body that had worn it make it easier to relate to the character of the wearer? Would it encourage new ways of visualising and perhaps embodying the character?
As well as creating the central activity, I thought about making a teaching space that enabled and encouraged a relaxed atmosphere where learners could share and experiment with a spirit of play. This atmosphere, familiar to me from the rehearsal rooms that I work in, needs to be nurtured. I often borrow, when teaching, the techniques that actors use to put themselves in an open state of mind that encourages improvisation.
The last element that I considered was access – making sure that the materials that I used were as accessible as possible. I still have a lot to learn on this subject but in this instance, I made sure to use slides to support the session so that there would be resources to review and written instructions for learners to refer to during the session. I printed materials on low contrast paper and thought carefully about using straightforward language. I also selected shoes and images of shoes that represent a diverse range of wearers and cultures.
I had a great time mining the V&A’s online collections for shoes to add to my slides: I try and choose one picture source for a presentation so that I can introduce the students to a future resource.
I gathered my shoes from the theatre I am currently working in, raided the local charity shop and the shoe cupboard at home. I practiced the session on my family the day before to check my timings. The practice and their feedback were very useful and on the strength of it I choose to play some music to help keep up the energy in the room while participants were contemplating their replies to my prompts. I have done this in online sessions to encourage students not to “overthink” or become self-conscious about their answers, and to entertain those who finished the task early.
The Session
I created a plan for the session that you can find here:
and a power point presentation that you can access here:
The day arrived and I joined a group that I hadn’t worked with before. They were incredibly warm, engaged and supportive. We all actively participated in each other’s sessions, offered feedback with different perspectives, suggesting ways to extend or adapt the sessions. We became recorders through notes and images of each other’s work and Victor took notes of what happened. I was so grateful for such lovely students!
The session went to plan, though my timings went a little awry so I didn’t ask the group to place shoes in a way that reflects their characters body. Interestingly this came up as a way to extend the session, so I will prioritise this element in the future.
Feedback
The participants shared the following generous and insightful feedback immediately after the session:
Participants: Rebekah Guo, Emilia Sutherland- Netto de Oliviera, Can Yang, Monika Gravagno, Maja Mehle
- Inspiring to engage with objects and the way they facilitate storytelling
- Appreciated permissions to activate sharing and engagement
- Lots of ways to extend this –perhaps through embodiment “character building by asking the participants to try on the shoes” Yang C. (2025) Feedback Note
- Enjoyed the context and insights into of theatre practice
- Questions were accessible but led to deeper thinking
- Spatial relationships between participant and participant and speaker helps
Feedback and observation notes from Victor Guillen, our tutor, typed and emailed later:
- Allowing to be judgemental but space to dismantle stereotypes.
- Disclosure of sources is good as students can then follow up.
- Good icebreaker (favourite food) Encourages audiences to produce snap judgement on shoe. Creates safe atmosphere (e.g. don’t worry about the language in the description. Hands paper out (comment from audience, nice texture, you can be judgmental this time, no right or wrong answer). Plays music (song). Verbal instructions support by text on slide, use of key image on slides (shoe).
- Changes order of participants (anticlockwise) and checks everyone ready before proceeding. Acknowledges contributions positively.
- Positive reinforcement through clapping. Then asks encourages us to focus on one aspect of their shoe and link to the character. Nods and links to previous contribution or personal anecdotes and creates audience reaction (laughter).
- J explains context before task. What would you want to ask your character? J acknowledges contributions. Which question enjoyed (e.g. secret)? Links back to acting.
- J answers Qs on topic (e.g. shoes custom made)
- Circle works and helps with the conversation.
- Context is useful so are shoes functional or just used to build character.
Reflection
Reflecting on this session and the feedback from it has given me some invaluable insights into my practice.
My intention to create a playful space that inspires sharing, using learning gained from the rehearsal room, seems to have worked. I am excited to explore this relationship between spatial relationships and communication in a learning environment as it maps so clearly to my practice as a theatre designer. I will relate this to Case Study Two and explore practice-based learning in one of my reflective blogs. Mapping these to industry practice helps maintain a sense that this is still going to be valuable and productive, not “just “a game.
This experience has also demonstrated to me that having an object, and a shoe specifically, to relate to in a character analysis session allows students to think more easily in physical terms. Shoes as a relic of a body, it’s gait and weight, have a unique potential to evoke those things. As they are free standing you can place them and see the body in them clearly, and as one participant suggested, you can wear them yourself, embodying your character and thinking from the inside out about their physicality. I resolved to look for more opportunities to physically activate students in sessions, but also to introduce more a nuanced sense of contexts to unpack our assumptions. As Schultz remarks it “may at first appear to be once again privileging student voices over those of creator communities, as the former apply their own logics to make sense of something belonging to the latter ……pushing students to articulate what they do know as well as what they do not pushes them to consider their own processes of learning, how they are moving from evidence to interpretation” (Shultz 2018)
I learnt a lot from participating in my peers’ sessions too. For instance, observing from Maja Mehle’s session I noticed how wearing a garment aided one’s storytelling of it, and how different levels of knowing and not knowing the object in the session prompted different levels of response from the participants. I also felt from Emilia and Rebekah’s sessions how satisfying it was to create and keep an object, making the activity more memorable and easier to repeat for oneself later.
I used this micro session again with my students which prompted a useful discussion on actor comfort and fittings, enabling them to think about the character and the person embodying it.
Bibliography
Lainie Schultz (2018) Object-based learning, or learning from objects in the anthropology museum, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies,
Victoria and Albert Museum (2025) Shoes Available at: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?page=1&page_size=15&q=Shoes ( Acessed 30.01.25)
