From January 16-19, 2024, the Multifaith Space of Swartz Hall at Harvard Divinity School turned around the dynamic corporeal axes, guided by William Robert, Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, through his “Embodied Wisdom Workshop”. Robert invited participants to explore uniquely relational entanglements with Euripides’ Bakkhai. 18 bodies, gathering in the round, formed a living tableau prefiguring their collective journey around the ancient Greek tragedy’s narrative.
Each session of the workshop built upon the previous, creating an imbricated and immersive inquiry into not only the cerebral, but the corporeal and creative qualities of dramatic analysis. Robert’s approach employed an array of props – costume pearls and beads, tennis balls, colored markers, worry boxes, and many, many cards for cataloguing the fragmented and associative networks of members’ interconnected lines of thought. These elements were not mere accessories; they were integral to the workshop's methodology, enhancing the tactile relationality of the experience; bodies spatially inscribing and consecrating the shape of the space through movement, tracing deeper connections among themselves.
In an interview prior to the workshop, Robert shared that his vision “comes out of a long-standing commitment to bringing performance into the classroom, not just as an activity, but as a pedagogy." He emphasized the role of performance in generating embodied kinds of learning, a departure from traditional, stationary, mind-over-matter teaching methods.
Many of the workshop’s discussions emerged from words individually surfaced by members. These words written on small cards carefully choreographed, gathered, and arranged by William in the circle’s center, were the seeds of collective discourse. As though around a sacred altar, bodies huddled, probing the intersections, complements, and contradictions of terms in vibrant, real-time analysis. Dialogue was a spontaneous and intimate dance with the text, a testament to the workshop's dynamic nature, and long moments of silent pause were equally welcomed as moments for synchronous communal contemplation.
Karina Yum, a first year MDiv candidate, reflected on a challenging exercise, in which pairs of participants threw single lines of dialogue back and forth, rapid-fire. She remarked that practice’s purpose seemed to be to, “stop overthinking what you're doing and let yourself have an organic reaction”, which ultimately encouraged her to grow outside of her comfort zone and engage more deeply in self-reflection. Sarah Capers, a second year MDiv candidate, appreciated the workshop's tactile nature, including exercises which evoked the dynamics of power and relationality, emphasizing the crucial role the somatic dialectic between conflict and cooperation played in the workshop’s pedagogy.
Evolving organically as the sessions progressed, the rapport among members deepened. By the workshop’s crescendo, the collective energy peaked in scene created by a small group of members which eerily hearkened to the Bakkhai’s own contagious rhizomatic morphology and affect, a chorus of voices rabidly releasing in cries which might best be described as devotional prayers to Dionysos himself and abruptly halted by a lone voice asking, “Who are you?”
Leah Gawel, a first-year MDiv candidate, remarked that, "William was able to guide us through a theatrical analysis rooted in embodied and varied interpretations in a way that traditional analysis could not." Robert himself underscored the importance of creating a space of trust and vulnerability, essential for exploring new dimensions of learning. "Any engagement with performance requires initially developing a baseline of trust and a space in which it's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to fail," he explained. This approach set the stage for a transformative experience, allowing participants to engage with the material in a deeply personal and physical way. Paula Ortiz, also a first-year MDiv candidate, highlighted the impact of exercises in which she felt welcomed "to dive into the multidimensional space of song, voice, and interpretation." Ortiz valued the communal aspect of the workshop, commending the "shared space where we privileged other forms of learning, thinking, expressing, and connecting."
The workshop transcended traditional academic boundaries, creating a space where religion was not just studied but experienced. It was a journey into the heart of what it means to engage with religion as both a concept to be studied and a living, breathing reality to be experienced with a body amongst other bodies. Through movement, voice, and creative expression, a community of members wrestled with Bakkhai, revealing not just the play’s meaning but the transformative power of engaging with religious narratives in a deeply personal, embodied, and relational way. William Robert offered members a taste of the unique and emergent pedagogy he has created in the study of religion. Far from a distant, intellectual pursuit, his immersive and embodied workshop evolved into much more than an academic exercise; it was a journey into the roots of spiritual engagement, where each gesture, each word, drew the community more tightly around the shared and the sacred.
Story by Tristan Angieri, MDiv '26