High Altitude Makes for High Energy

Abstract

On January 19, 2018 about 80 people sat in an unassuming conference room on the campus of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, chatting and signing away cheerfully with their seat neighbors in anticipation of the keynote address by Susanne Even from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. The lively crowd of students and faculty members from across the country was clearly already in a chatty mood before the official introduction by Erin Noelliste, the lead organizer of the 5th Scenario Symposium on Performative Pedagogy, kicked off an engaging and interactive evening and day ahead. The idea behind this particular symposium was to focus on the use of drama to enhance learning in education and foreign languages, as the program stated. It was the second of its kind held in the US and thus aimed at broadening readership and scope of the Scenario Journal, with the goal of inspiring creativity and improvisation in foreign language classrooms. The keynote speaker Susanne Even took the podium and I dare say she could not have hoped for a more involved group of lifelong learners. Her keynote talk, made accessible to all participants by sign language interpreters, was the first presentation in the 2018 ...