William Robert: Confronting Tragedy, Confronting Ourselves

Elizabeth Rovere:
Hello and welcome to Season Two of Wonderstruck. I am your host, Elizabeth Rovere. I’m a clinical psychologist, a yoga teacher, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. I’m really curious about our experiences of wonder and awe, and how they transform us. My guest this time is William Robert. William is a professor of religion at Syracuse University, where he serves as the department chair. His latest book, Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance is the most recent winner of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion and the Arts Book Award. The awards jury aptly writes that William’s book “startles, inspires, challenges and cajoles readers to do things differently, particularly when it comes to studying religion.” A few months ago, I had the unique opportunity to participate in one of William’s workshops, where a group gathered at Harvard to study embodied wisdom in a way none of us had done before. From that profound experience, I can personally confirm that William’s pedagogical approach goes far beyond doing things differently. It moves the entire idea and practice of academia forward. With intimacy, curiosity, empathy and bravery, William invites his students to connect more deeply with religion and the arts. Ultimately, his methods show us how to be more complete and complex human beings. William’s gifts as an instructor, writer and communicator are iconoclastic, powerful, compassionate, and much needed in this moment. He is truly unlike anyone I’ve ever met, and it is an honor to share more about his work, the risks he’s taken to develop it, and how it can uplift us all.

Elizabeth Rovere:
So welcome, William, and thank you so much for being with us here today. It’s really a pleasure to have you. So, William, for our audience, is a professor, the chair of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, and an actor. William teaches on tragedy and embodied wisdom and religion through studying plays. And he’s also been doing workshops on embodied wisdom that we’re hearing might be, you might be venturing into teaching such workshops with businesses and startups and even corporations, which could do with learning about wisdom. So, William and I met at our symposium on wisdom and pedagogy this past summer in France, and then most recently at a workshop on embodied wisdom at Harvard University, just in January. So, before we start, and I ask you a bunch of questions, I, you know, you look at wisdom and styles of teaching and pedagogy, just for people to know that pedagogy means methods of teaching, and wisdom, I will leave that up for a question. So, one of the things that I wanted to start with is that you have a really, you’ve really introduced a new and unique style of teaching and engaging material. And people come from your classes or talks and workshops, and they say things like, wow, I can’t believe that I actually did that. You know, you walk into a class, and you think you’re going to be sitting there learning something, but you don’t really realize that you’re going to be kind of woken up into creating and doing things that you didn’t know that you could possibly do. I had that experience in your class, where I felt really engaged and alive and having lots of energy and like the time passed so fast. I mean, we had the workshop, it was like for four days for two and a half hours. And every day, I would be like, is it really over? It felt like it was a half an hour or even just a few minutes because it’s just constantly in the present moment. I was like, what is the style of teaching? Like, what is your style of teaching? And it’s like, oh, it’s like, it’s empowering. It’s in the moment, like present moment pedagogy and empowerment pedagogy. And you know, like, lots of different things to describe it. So, the first question I have for you is, how do you do it? How do you do this, this style and asking these questions to people in the way that you teach? How did it come to be?

William Robert:
I don’t think that it happened all of a sudden, I’m sure that there was an accretion over time of my becoming a better teacher, my willingness to take risks in the classroom. But I think maybe at the heart of it, is that I am a teacher because I love learning. And I show up to learn. I like to play too. And so, the questions I ask are always real questions. They’re not tricks. They’re not questions I know the answer to, if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t ask the question. And so, my appeal to students or participants is genuine. I really want to know what you think. And I’m committed to knowledge-making, not knowledge dissemination. And that interaction, the responsiveness to a question that generates a conversation, is an event of making knowledge right there, live, in the room, together. And that, I think, is the dynamic of empowerment that you’re talking about. Because the students aren’t receptacles. They’re agents, they’re makers. And at the end of a conversation, or a game or an event, we can turn around and say, we made something together. We generated this set of ideas, and they came from us. And that is incredibly empowering.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Absolutely. It’s very empowering. It’s one of the things that I’ve experienced in your workshop, and I see it with the other students too, is that people really feel like, you know, you want to hear what they have to say, like you care about their ideas. It’s not so much of like, okay, let me teach you something and then can you tell me what I told you, so that I can give you a good grade, it’s nothing like that. It’s really this collaborative process that, you put people in a situation like they’re in the material, they’re learning about it, but they’re in it. And then somehow the knowledge is coming up through, you know, intuition, or this embodied learning that we will talk about more, and then it becomes shared. And I think, then other people are like, I didn’t know that I knew that, right. I didn’t know that I knew that. Ideas start coalescing from their experience in the moment, and from yours too, and that’s a really exciting, I think, I mean, I sometimes think it’s like an old contemplative way, but that it’s very new in teaching today. But that, it’s exciting. People want to learn. You’re wanting to learn is infectious. You know, people want to get into it and want to do it as well. Actually, it’s kind of a little bit of a tangent, but I have to ask you about it. I’ve read your wonderful book, Unbridled, that just won an award from the American Academy of Religion’s Arts and Religion division. And in the acknowledgments, you say that you had dinner with someone called Katie, and that the conversation that you had, really transformed what you were writing about. So just as an example, it’s just like, for people to understand how that happened. Is there something you could share with us about that? I’m just curious.

William Robert:
Sure. Well, Katie is Katie Lofton who’s Dean of Humanities at Yale, and a former chair of Religious Studies at Yale and a major scholar in her own right. Her book Consuming Religion is worth a read, I highly recommend it. She and I had been in conversation about what I might write. And she is co-editor of the series that the book appeared in, and had said, send me whatever you come up with, and let’s talk about it. And eventually, we had dinner in New Haven. It was quite a long dinner. And I told her what I had been working on. And I told her the shape of the book. At that point, it was going to be a six chapter, fairly traditional book that had lots of footnotes, and long chapters, and all the rest of it. And Katie said, you have a chance to do something that very few of us actually get to do, which is to write as close to a primary source as possible.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Oh, wow.

William Robert:
And so, it’s not just a scholarly commentary. It’s your voice and your ideas, and you should just go for it. And so, I took that very seriously. And I went away and thought about it for about six months. And in that time, the book went from six long, fairly boring chapters to 32 very short, very dramatic chapters. And it turns out that Equus, the play about rich, Unbridled is his thinking is the only text I cite. And so, it creates a certain kind of intimacy. In as much as – and I say this in the introduction – it’s Equus, and you and me. And we’re going on this wild ride together. And so that one dinner, really gave me the encouragement to go for broke to take a chance and see what would happen.

Elizabeth Rovere:
And it worked so well. And you’re getting an award for it.

William Robert:
That’s very kind of you to say, thank you. It was a lot of fun to write, it was hard work. But it was really enjoyable. I really loved the process of writing, the putting together, the words and making all of the little sentences, because I’m a big fan of little sentences. Six words in a sentence is a lot for me. But I love that process. And so, it was really a joy, to be able to give myself free rein. And to just see where I would go. And, to my surprise, someone published it, just like I wrote it, and didn’t ask for any changes. Because the book doesn’t really play by a lot of the rules that traditional academic books play by.

Elizabeth Rovere:
What do you mean by that exactly? Can you help us understand, like how it’s not playing by the rules?

William Robert:
Most academic books have pretty heavy cover charges. And that is, you have to know a whole bunch of other discourses in order to really get the heart of the argument. If you’re going to read this book, you have to know something about this, and something about that. And something about this, because all those things are going to be cited in a fairly elliptical way. And so, you have some reading to do before you do this reading. And I was really committed to the idea of writing a book that required one, and only one reading. So, that if you have read this play, you have everything you need to read the book. And that, and I was also committed to writing a book that my undergraduate students could read and understand and engage with if they chose to. Because I don’t want to just write for six people. And I think that given the challenges of higher education and given the assaults that higher education is under at this moment, I don’t think we do ourselves a lot of favors by writing obtuse prose about arcane subjects. I think that accessibility is a way to demonstrate that the humanities matter. And making that as accessible to as many people as might want to read, I think is a good way forward for showing our cultural and social value.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Absolutely, absolutely. And kind of pushing the boundaries on undoing that, and how to do that, and reaching a very wide audience, I think matters a lot, and is so important. Because I think the humanities has so much to offer. And, you know, the study of religion and the study of tragedy, which is, you know, what you study and talk about is so relatable in the world today, right now. I mean, people ask these kinds of questions all the time. And to have sources to go to, things to think about and talk about in a way that’s relatable, is so meaningful and important. And I mean, it’s part of what Wonderstruck is about, you know, wanting to bring academia out of the towers, and talk about it. Because people that are not in academia are talking about it, they should have access, it’d be great to have access, like picking up this book, like all of us, there’s like three or four of us that read your book. And, you know, no one is a professor or knows like, oh, yeah, Jacques Derrida, like, you know, like, sort of like, who was that again, you know, remembering some of these things from that I would have think, that I don’t that I don’t have to know about to read this. It’s written in the way that you engage your workshops that feels collaborative, you talk about like a collaborative adventure. And we’re doing this together. Like, I feel like I’m hanging out with you, and we’re talking about important, interesting things. And you’re asking questions in this book that make all of us, you know, think in regard to our lives. I was talking to Travis, who is on our Wonderstruck team. And, you know, both of us were very captivated by, there’s a question in your book that I’m just going to go to right now, where, and you can help correct me on this. But one of the worst things a person can do is take away someone’s worship or take away someone’s devotion. And that’s something interesting to think about. First, you know, what am I devoted to, what do I worship? It doesn’t have to be religion, right? And to have someone take that away, within what context? To make it fit rules, to make it normal, to make oneself normal? I mean, these are kinds of questions that are upsetting, you know, and that are happening. And that’s just an example from a chapter in your book. So, I don’t know if you want to talk about some of these things that you’ve brought up in the book like that, or what that means to you. You talk about that a little bit, worship, and devotion.

William Robert:
The question that you’re referring to is a question that’s in Equus, and is really, on my reading, at the heart of that play. When the psychiatrist who’s treating this young, troubled boy says, can you imagine anything worse you can do than take away someone’s worship? And his answer is no, I can’t. Because whatever that thing is, and whatever that worship looks like, that is the center of moral and personal gravity for that person. That is their true north. And to take that away is to leave them rudderless, without a map or a compass. And so, they have to start all over. And so, I, then in the book, and you alluded to this, say what if we change worship to devotion, because devotion doesn’t have the same religious connotation. I could be devoted to a partner, to a cause, to my family, to all kinds of things, and that could have the same function in my life. So, it’s doing the work that worship might do. But it has different inflections that might be political, or philosophical, or erotic, or familial. And that I think, is the power of devotion. Devotion is giving yourself over to someone or something. It’s an act of self-donation. And so, it’s the most intense kind of relationship that guides everything. And to take that away is to dehumanize someone. And that I think is the point of resonance. In the world that we live in, we see acts of dehumanization all the time. We could ask that question. Can you imagine anything worse to do to someone than to dehumanize them, than to take away their humanity? That is a question that resonates. That’s a question worth asking. And that’s a question that we’re really called to answer. All the time. Every day, individually and socially.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a way in which that, taking that away is taking away life. Dehumanizing, it’s taking away a person’s life. And it’s grave, right? It’s tragedy.

William Robert:
Yeah, tragedy to me isn’t someone dies, or something like that. Tragedy to me is the consequence of someone stepping across a line they weren’t supposed to cross, that they cannot uncross. It’s a kind of transgression that you can’t take back. And the tragedy then is the calamity that ensues, from that transgression.

Elizabeth Rovere:
And as you said, we see it in various places in the world daily. And you see it, you know, thinking about the characters and the tragedies that you study as examples or archetypes of these different things that we see in the world, which is why they are alive today. Why it’s relevant to today. You know, it’s maybe from 405 BC, but it’s happening now. I want to stay in the tragic, and I don’t want to jump out of it yet, but crossing these lines that we can’t uncross, what is the wisdom should be learned or gleaned from that? And is there always a casualty? And like you said, I’m not necessarily talking about death, it could be kind of horrific, or torturous pain.

William Robert:
I certainly agree with you that these plays ask questions that don’t have answers. And that’s why they remain, that’s why they’re still being performed, because they need answering over and over and over by different people at different times in different cultures facing different circumstances. Some of the work, the cultural work that tragedy does, is it re-raises these questions. And in confronting tragedy, we confront ourselves. Because the questions that tragedy asks us are deeply personal questions. The question that the play Antigone asks, really at the heart is, what are you willing to die for? Or alternately, what are you willing to do for family members? To what lengths will you go to do what you think is right and necessary for your family?

Elizabeth Rovere:
Right, in the context of someone else telling you it’s not right.

William Robert:
Exactly, in the context of someone else telling you, if you do this, you will be punished. That’s a question that we’re all asking all the time. And to have to confront one response, and ask ourselves, would I go that far? Would I do that? What would I do in that situation? Is really a personal reckoning. And that I think, is what tragedy presents us with. It holds up a mirror. And it doesn’t ask us for a kind of ethical abstraction. It asks us for an urgent response. What will you do? You have you don’t have time to think, debate, you have to act. What are you going to do? That’s the pressing dimension of tragedy’s questions. And so really, what we’re facing is not only ourselves, but the space between desire and value that we live in. Do we really value what we say we value? Do we want to do things that are contrary to those values? How much overlap and how much distance are there between what we want, and what we say is important?

Elizabeth Rovere:
Right, right. Are we doing what we say is important? Are we living authentically? Are we lying to ourselves? What would we do in that moment? As you’re speaking, my mind just starts associating to different things in different contexts, and images and things I’ve read or experienced. One of the things that comes to my mind is that, from you know, I think we can see it, but also, mental health experts are telling us that there’s a, you know, falling apart of community and that everybody’s really lonely, or more so than they used to be. And separate. And, you know, we could argue why that is. But the point is, that people long for a sense of community and there’s kind of a breakdown. And then in that context of community, we want it so much and yet we’re sort of quite divided and at odds with each other in various ways. And it makes me think about things that have broken down as tragedies in the context of war, in the context of family and friends, in the context of being, you know, a Serb or a Croat, and being married, and then, oh, there’s a war and then suddenly the family turns against a family member, or, you know, someone shows up at your door that’s Jewish and says, Please hide me. And do you hide them? Do you shut the door? I think these are the kinds of things you’re talking about, you know, you say you want community or that we’re all connected. And yet, you’re not going to open the door. It kind of goes back to that question that you also ask, or you’ve brought up before in your work: Who am I? You know, what do I value? You know, who am I? Like, is that a human thing to do? Dehumanizing you by not opening the door to let you in, I’m dehumanizing myself too, right? I mean, I don’t have answers to those questions. Do you?

William Robert:
No. There aren’t answers like that. There are only responses in contexts. And if they had answers, we wouldn’t need to ask the questions anymore. Yeah, they don’t have answers. So, the question then becomes, how will you respond when you’re called to act? And what is the distance that is maybe similar, the distance between desire and value is also in some ways, the distance between the I and the we. And so how much overlap is there between the community that I say I’m a part of, and whose values I share, and whose life I want to participate in? And the values that I perform, based on acting out my individual desires?

Elizabeth Rovere:
That’s very well said. That’s very well said. And where do you see that in one of these plays?

William Robert:
Well, you are a mental health professional, and you mentioned mental health, and as a kind of public crisis, public health crisis. So maybe the easiest place to go to is Equus, which is about a psychiatrist, treating

Elizabeth Rovere:
[laughs] I don’t like him

William Robert:
No. A troubled, a very troubled teenager. And the question he has to ask himself is, am I going to normalize this individual? Am I going to kill the thing that animates him, that makes him who he is? Just because he did one thing that was contrary to our communal values. And so, the psychiatrist throughout the play is trying to figure out why he did what he did. Why did this boy commit this act of violence. And he does eventually figure it out. But then he has to answer for himself. Now, what am I going to do? Am I going to take away his worship? Am I going to take away his devotion, the most meaningful relationship that he has? Am I going to normalize him? With a capital N?

Elizabeth Rovere:
Right, normal god.

William Robert:
Exactly. And that, I think, is one of the places in these texts where the question that you are asking, comes up and becomes pressing. Because to do that, is to in some ways kill this boy. It is to sacrifice him in the play to the god called the normal. And it turns out that we all worship a god called the normal. And so, the play asks us about that. What are we willing to do to other people to maintain that devotion to normality? What lengths are we willing to go to, to maintain normalcy?

Elizabeth Rovere:
And who decides what normal is, is such a huge, important question because status quo is not really working out as well as we had hoped.

William Robert:
No.

Elizabeth Rovere:
And the psychiatrist in Equus, too, there’s such a beautifully profound line in there where he basically says, I’m conflating it actually, because there’s a part where the boy is like, kind of looks at the psychiatrist askew, and is like, when have you galloped? Like get real, you’re just sitting there. You know, what do you do? What gives you life? Right? Like, who are you? And then the psychiatrist is, basically I think he says, it, doesn’t need to tell him? He’s like, I envy you. I’ve never felt like that.

William Robert:
Yeah, he tells his confidant, he says, I envy that boy. He’s known a passion greater than I will ever know. And now, you’re you, this magistrate, are asking me to extinguish that.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Extinguish is a strong word.

William Robert:
It is, and the psychiatrist also sees as the agent of normalcy in the play, also recognizes that the boy sees through him. And sees who he really is. And sees him for the functionary.

Elizabeth Rovere:
A cog in a wheel.

William Robert:
A cog in a wheel, the priest of normality that he is, and so like any good priest, he will sacrifice this person on the altar of normality.

Elizabeth Rovere:
So, but it’s like that question also of like, Is religion good or bad? You asked the question. Is religion good or bad? There’s not really an answer. And then the same thing is psychiatry, good or bad? Is psychology good or bad? And it brings me back to where we started about empowerment pedagogy. Because psychotherapy, my job, our job is to empower the person, the client, to help that person experience the full repertoire of human experience, of what it means to be human. And that doesn’t mean running around as in The Bacchae and killing people, but it means having the experience of your emotions and knowing what they are so that you don’t act to them out and kill people. But it’s about that idea of empowerment and being able to share that with other people. Your experience being alive, being alive, right? It’s about wanting to be alive. That’s the human experience.

William Robert:
And in a therapeutic context, at least in my experience, I’m not a professional like you. Also, the radical acceptance of all the dimensions of me, the good and the bad. The desires that are okay to say out loud, and the desires that aren’t okay, to say out loud, it’s the radical acceptance of all of the complexities and the contradictions of me and allowing them all to coexist. And that radical acceptance of self is what makes possible the acceptance of others, Not the tolerance of others, the acceptance of others.

Elizabeth Rovere:
The embrace.

William Robert:
And that kind of acceptance is the first thing we get to in class, is creating a space in which we trust each other enough. We accept whatever it is that we’re bringing into the room. And we are going to support each other in ways that make it okay to be vulnerable, and to take risks and maybe fail. Because failing is a great way to learn.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yes. I had a question for you about how you create that space. And having experienced it, the creation of that space with you in the workshop, there’s super fun things that you also do. Let’s see, I brought some of the things from class. I think this is one of the first cards that you hand out? It says vulnerability, and you hand it out, right? You just put it down. And it’s almost as though putting the word, it’s the word of vulnerability. It’s like, okay, it’s there. It’s in the room. I can join, I can join in on that. There’s that kind of acceptance to it, your openness, and there’s a compassion, and as you have said, you’re passionate about you want to learn, you’re in class to learn too, not just to tell us what’s going on and what knowledge is, you’re like, I want to learn all this, too. And you create this space where you really care about what people say, when you ask questions and people respond, you’re just very present. It’s that present moment aspect. So, you also, you gave us a box and different little things in the class, gifts. And you gave us these two cards that were thank you notes. And you said you know, when someone does something cool or interesting in the class, you know, write them a note, don’t show it so that everyone else sees it, but just give that note to them. And I did that once in our class, there was one person in our class that performed Prince, that said “Dearly beloved,” I was like, oh my god, that was so cool. So, I wrote him a note. And so, this is what was striking to me. So, there’s a person in the class that was very good as a performer, as an actor. And it was super exciting to watch him perform. Now, in a traditional classroom dynamic, maybe I would have been like, oh, look at how good he is, and I suck, and, like, I’m really jealous. You know, I don’t know if I can show up at class tomorrow. But instead, the invitation is to connect, write a thank you note. I feel joyful and good about giving him something that I know that he’s going to feel good about, and it creates a connection. And then I can share in how great it was, what he did. And it creates, or lays the groundwork for celebrating other people’s accomplishments, rather than feeling envy. And so, it creates that space. And maybe you can share more about it?

William Robert:
Okay, well, there’s, there’s a lot in what you’ve said. So, I’ll do my best. I don’t have a lot of rules for myself as a teacher, but I do have a few. And one of the rules that I have for myself, one of my pedagogical rules is: know why you’re doing what you’re doing. And that gives me a sense of conviction. We’re not just filling up time and space, we’re not doing anything just because. And I try and create a community in which it’s okay for anyone to ask at any moment, why are we doing this? Not in a kind of, you know, like, uh, why are we doing this? But in a genuine inquiry. And that is a fair question, and I ought to have an answer. And if I don’t have an answer, then we shouldn’t be doing whatever it is we’re doing. The other rule that I have for myself is I never ask students to do anything that I’m not willing to do first. And the way in which I try and begin the creation of community, and a space of trust, is by being vulnerable first. And by letting everyone know that I’m not going to ask you to embarrass yourself in any way I wouldn’t be willing to do myself. And so that flattens out the power dynamic. And it means that I’m not a judge so much as a co-participant who might have some more knowledge and is definitely running things to a certain degree. But is also open to whatever happens. Whenever people come into a learning space, I am dying to know what they think. And that’s genuine. You can’t fake it. Because students can smell inauthenticity a mile away. And I’m just, I guess, constitutionally lucky that that’s how I’m wired. That I genuinely want to know what other people think. And I am always amazed when people have ideas that I never would have thought of. And that’s the moment of knowledge creation, in which I’m a participant. I ask the question, and then I step back, and I listen to the responses. And so does everybody else. Now the box that you’re talking about that we used in the workshop that, by the way, I had never done before. That was an innovation that I tried. In lots of ways, I am a frustrated kindergarten teacher. And because, and I mean that seriously, because in kindergarten, learning is fun. And in kindergarten, learning takes all kinds of shapes. There’s no boundaries on learning. You’re always learning, you’re learning relationally, you’re learning substantively, you’re constantly learning. And you do activities that are enjoyable. And so, I try to take those lessons into my classroom. And so, we use markers, and glue sticks and those kinds of things. And we play with beads and scarves and balls. And because those are fun things to do, and we get all of the same learning objectives, we just do it in a slightly different way. That helps us to understand why I gave you the box, because people like to get things. It feels nice to get a gift. And what was in the box were some tools that we were going to use in the workshop, as well as those cards. Because that sense of being seen and recognized and appreciated, is so fundamental. To all of us, all the time. We never outgrow that. And so just receiving the message from someone else, I see what you did, and it was really cool. You don’t have to make fanfare about it. But that is a way of validation, for having taken a risk that can just flip a switch for someone. And suddenly, now they feel valued. They know, with certainty, they have something worthwhile to contribute. And so, the chance that they’re going to keep contributing goes way up. And when they do that, then other people think, well, they did it, and it seemed to go okay. Maybe I’ll try. And then it’s like a snowball rolling down the hill. It gathers momentum. And pretty soon you have a community.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah. Like taking risks and feeling validated for their creative, creative expressions that are, you know, which is just so exciting. It’s really, really fun. You know, you feel free.

William Robert:
It is fun, that’s my point. It’s fun, to do, to play games. It’s fun to do silly things sometimes. Because there’s a point to it.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, that’s cool that there’s a point to it. You know why you’re doing it. And, you know, it’s just sort of cool and fun, because it’s juxtaposed with ancient Greek tragedy, right. Like, that’s hardcore. That’s not like, I mean, it is kind of fun reading in various ways. But it’s like, it’s heavy reading, too. I mean, there’s hard stuff that goes down, that’s like, Oh, my God. Right? And then it’s, you’re there, you’re playing with it. Right? You’re in it, and then you’re out of it, and then you’re in it, It’s cool.

William Robert:
Well, just stewing in it isn’t healthy. And you can only really confront the horror of some of these plays for so long. And confronting that is necessary. But just, you know, planting yourself in front of it and staring at it, and staring at it, and staring at it, is not a good idea. So, there’s a dynamic that we try to create in pedagogical situations where we can encounter this, and then think about it in other ways. Think about it from other perspectives. And we can try and put ourselves in those character’s situations or understand their situations and their motivations and their actions by playing a game, or doing an activity that would do exactly the same cognitively, as asking people to write an essay. It’s the same skill set.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Mmm, interesting.

William Robert:
It just doesn’t look like that. One of the activities that we did is we traced the dynamics of relationality, the set of relationships among characters in the play by using our bodies, and a bunch of scarves. And so, we created these tableaux vivants that were remarkably creative. And so, we had bodies back-to-back, we had people using scarves as blindfolds or as handcuffs. Some people had scarves tied around their legs, some people were tied to each other. I could have asked everyone to go home and write an essay about the relational dynamics in the play, and the ways in which that contributes to the tragic outcome. You learn the same amount, you just learn it using your body and in an activating way. And looking at other groups’ tableaux vivants and interpreting what they’re doing is actually doing exactly the kind of interpretive work that you would do in any class.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Oh, my gosh, it’s so much more fun.

William Robert:
It’s so much more fun, and so much, so much more live. And invested, because someone made that, someone made decisions about their interpretations of how things are, and then translated that into an embodied representation. And then asked other people to make sense of it.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah. You know, I can imagine it right now, as if we were there, because it was really powerful. So, one of the experiences people will have in your workshop that they feel the sense of vibrancy, and just sort of the charged atmosphere, like, you know, when it’s lightning and thunder outside, and you feel that sort of charge. And I have felt that like, even when you spoke at the symposium was like, I just feel there’s energy in my hands, and I feel tingling. And, you know, John had said, I feel mesmerized. And so, going back into that moment, for example, this play that we had read called Bacchae by Euripides from 405 BCE. So, the god is Bacchus or Dionysus, right. And you said, okay, create this dynamic with the people in your little group and the scarves and everything. And so, we had, you know, Bacchus, someone was Bacchus, the god, and then someone else was the followers, or the maenads or the Bacchae, right. And so, we had the gods standing on a chair, Bacchus and the scarf tied around the ankle of the god held by the followers. We did it because it was just, we were just doing it, we didn’t know why we were doing it, it was like, okay, but they have to be connected. He’s on a chair, tied to the ankle holding on. And then you come over and you’re like, look what you’ve done. You’ve created this dynamic where, you know, the god could be pulled down by the followers. But the followers are also tied to the god. And we didn’t even know we had done it. That was also like that kind of body-based knowing or kinesthetic knowledge that’s happening. Intuitive. And there it is. It’s not writing an essay. It’s happening in the moment. And I think that’s what’s really cool about different styles of learning. I wanted to just give that example.

William Robert:
Yeah, that’s a great example. Thanks for sharing it. It’s easy for me to picture exactly what it looked like. That’s an example of making knowledge, of generating an interpretation that is a piece of knowledge that exists because people work together. And they thought creatively. And they did something. And my job as a teacher is largely to come behind you and say, look what you did. Look how cool that is. And to unravel all of the decisions and the complexities in what you did, that you might not have even been aware of.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

William Robert:
You were aware of them, maybe not consciously. You had an intuition. But to me, intuition is just thought that goes too fast. And you can back up and unpack it and explain to yourself later: that’s why I did this. That’s why I had this intuition, I can unravel it. But in the moment, your thought just goes faster than you can track. And you lean into it, and you trust your intuition. Then I come along and say, look what you did, and look how cool that is. And there are all these dimensions, and then it creates the same kind of dynamic as the cards or in class. It’s a way of saying, without saying it, you’re really smart. You have very good ideas. And I value them.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah. And then it just builds on itself.

William Robert:
And then the next group says, well, then, look, now look at ours. See what we did. And because we’re talking about a play, and because the kind of space that we’re working to create is one that doesn’t have right and wrong answers, we can celebrate the diversity of responses. And everyone can be right, in that sense. And you can look at another group’s response and say, oh, we didn’t think about that. But oh, that’s totally right. Oh, my goodness. And then that makes you maybe rethink what you did, not as wrong. But just, oh, here’s what we did that isn’t what they did. And oh, they did that? Oh, so they must have thought this, and then you’re doing the work that I do. You’re unpacking their sets of decisions, and giving and creating a feedback loop with them, and then it goes on and on and on. So that eventually, I can just stand in the corner, and let you all do the work that you are empowered to do. And we’re capable of doing all along. You just needed the opportunity.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, what you’re describing as I’m listening to, it’s like, that’s great parenting, you know, it’s just like looking at your child, and or kindergarten teaching, right? Or being a teacher period, or just being a great friend, or a partner. Really seeing the other person, empowering them saying, like, wow, I see what you did in an authentic way. Like, it’s really good. You know, I see that it’s this, this, and this. And the person feels seen, validated, you know, the creativity starts to become more, it’s the opposite of neglect, right? It’s flourishing versus just shriveling up. And providing that environment. I mean, it makes all the difference in the world. It really does, that is life changing. You know, people talk about it, maybe you had a great dad, or a great mom, or maybe you had that teacher that changed your life, because they could see what you could do. And you became whatever you became later, you know? That’s beautiful. And so, there’s two questions. I’m curious, in The Bacchae, right, one of the big deals is that God shows up not being seen, like saying, why aren’t you seeing I’m a god, you know, you say like, why can’t you see what I can do? Like you’re causing me this, I can do all these things. And you can’t see me unless I put on my fake clothes as a human. It’s the same idea. Right? Like, I want to kind of circle back like, that is why it is relevant today. Because we’re talking about how we engage each other, and see each other, and empower each other. And it goes back probably earlier than 405 BC. So, there’s that piece that I think it’s interesting, right? And then where did this happen? How has this happened for you? Did you have a great teacher? Or was there someone in your life that kind of like, well, and maybe one of them was Katie. You know, it’s like I see what you could do, go do it. And did that kind of circle back to have you bring it into the classroom in this way?

William Robert:
I’ll respond in the order in which you asked the questions and hope I remember them. The question that The Bacchae confronts us with is, what does this god Dionysus want? And my sense is, he doesn’t want what a lot of gods want, which is reverence and obedience. Because he could get that if he really wanted to. What he wants is recognition for who he is. And he makes every attempt to try and get that in the play. And at some point, he realizes he’s not going to get it and then he exacts retribution. And it’s horrific retribution. The Bacchae is as tragic as tragedy gets. but it’s based on this fundamental desire for recognition, to be seen to have someone say, you are who you say you are. And I validate that, and I accept that. Which also means I accept you. And your need for recognition. And your need to be who you are. And to have a community because part of what Dionysus is recognition means, is recognition as part of a family. Recognition as having the parents he says he has, of being connected to this group of people who he desperately wants to accept him.

Elizabeth Rovere:
And having a home.

William Robert:.
And having a home. That, I think, is one of the questions that isn’t as present on the surface of Bacchae. But I agree with that insight. That’s a great insight. And one of the questions that it presents us with is, where is your home? What does home mean to you? And what do you do if you don’t have it anymore? Not a house, but that sense of acceptance and community and connection, and unconditional whatever. The unconditional, that comes with home. Home is the place you can be absolutely yourself, and not have to fake it, or worry about being judged. And that is the question, one of the questions that Bacchae presents us with. That’s also in a certain sense, one of the questions that religion is asking us, because one of the things that religion wants to be, and is for a lot of people, is a home. That kind of home. That place where they are accepted and valued, and they can be exactly who they are, exactly who they want to be. Where their sense of themselves and everyone else’s sense of themselves are perfectly synchronous. That, I think, is one of the most powerful questions that that play asks us. I’m just wowed by that insight that you had, that that’s one of the questions that this play is presenting us with. That’s the kind of–the interaction that you and I just had is the kind of interaction that as a teacher I live for. When someone says something that’s just so stunningly smart, that I just kind of am like: that. That’s better than what I have to offer today.

Elizabeth Rovere:
And yet, it’s coming from what you offered.

William Robert:
It’s in relationship.

Elizabeth Rovere:
It’s in relationship.

William Robert:
But it was your thought.

Elizabeth Rovere:
I appreciate you saying that. It’s like, yes, we’re having that experience that we, that you bring to the class. But I feel like it’s, I want to take the compliment I want to take it in. But it’s also like it really does come from the context that is provided. And I think that is what is so profoundly powerful. This whole point of the experience of being seen, you know, and in psychology we talk about the gaze, how important the gaze is so powerful, and I know the gaze can go awry, right, like in Equus, the negative direction. But, like, being seen allows for things to open and unexpected things to happen that you talk about in your work. It’s very fascinating to me as well because the question of home and, you know, being seen and religion and you know, if it goes the opposite direction, not being seen can feel so destabilizing and humiliating. Like, instead of what you’ve done is so cool and awesome. What you’ve done is like, I can’t even acknowledge it. Let’s make it not exist. It kind of goes back to that place that we started with.

William Robert:
Yeah. Humiliation is the opposite of empowerment. And that’s a way to ensure that that person does not participate again.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yep, you’re out.

William Robert:
They’re shut down. I don’t ever want that to happen. I’ll give you a kind of a metaphor for the way that I think about my job as a teacher that maybe will help to illuminate this. I feel like my job as a teacher is to build a sandbox. And to make sure that that sandbox is incredibly well crafted, really stable with the best possible wood, all the edges sanded, so no one’s going to get hurt. And then to stock the highest quality sand in that sandbox. So that it’s the best possible environment for play. And then to put a couple of tools and a couple of toys in there, and I’ve created a safe structure that I know isn’t gonna fall apart. And I put the highest quality things I have to offer in there. And then what happens is bound to be okay. Whether you decide to build sandcastles or have, you know, or dig trenches, or throw sand at each other, it’s, you’re gonna have a good time, and you’re gonna do something cool and creative. And I can stand back and just wonder at what’s happening. I don’t have to direct people and say, Now, everyone, let’s build sandcastles. And let’s see whose sandcastle is the best. I can just trust that the environment is set up well. And I’ve done my job. And then whatever happens, is good. Is going to be valuable is going to be fun. And so, then let’s just play.

Elizabeth Rovere:
It’s perfect, it’s wonderful. What brought you to the place of studying religion and tragedy? What was your journey to get here? And then, I just think this is such a cool and fun journey part that I know about, like you, you went and got a PhD in religious studies. And then you went and trained as a formal actor, and then you brought it back to the class. And it’s just so interesting. Did you know that you wanted to be an actor before you got your PhD? Or was there something about getting a PhD that you were like, I’m inspired to be an actor, or I gotta get out of here, I’m going to be an actor?

William Robert:
Well, I’ll give you the honest answer, not the good one. The honest answer is I got a PhD, I got an academic job, which is amazing,

Elizabeth Rovere:
It’s a big deal.

William Robert:
Because those are few and far between. And I wrote a couple of books about Greek tragedy. And then, two things happened almost simultaneously. One, I realized that I had fundamentally missed out on the performative dimension of these plays, I had collapsed them into texts. And I hadn’t thought about what it would mean, to have bodies act these out in front of other bodies, and how all of those interpretive choices would then have to be reinterpreted in the context of performance. And so, I realized, if I’m going to write books about plays, I better learn something about performance and acting. The second thing that happened, right about that time, is that I went up for tenure. And for whatever reason, at that moment, I felt like, I needed to do something that I was going to be really bad at. And I needed to be a beginner at something. I needed to feel what that felt like, and feel that challenge, which is the challenge my students feel all the time in class. And I thought, I know! I can combine these things. And I can study to be an actor because I’m going to be very bad at that. And sure enough, I was very bad at that.

Elizabeth Rovere:
No way.

William Robert:
Yes.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Come on. I’ve seen you, you’re so good.

William Robert:
Well, I worked very hard, and I learned. But at the beginning. I think the first time I had to perform I think my teacher thought, what is this? What am I going to do with this? She and I have since become very good friends and co-taught a class together. And so that relationship really evolved. Her name is Kathleen Baum. She teaches drama at Syracuse. And she is one of the teachers that really did inspire me, watching her teach and being her student, but also having the lens of a teacher and seeing what she did. I thought that’s amazing. And I want some of that. There were lots of teachers along the way, and I won’t name them all. But they know who they are. So, if you’re listening to this podcast, insert your name here. If you’re one of those teachers, I’m not going to name them because I would inevitably leave someone out. But yes, I was incredibly gifted to have amazing teachers along the way who believed in me, who saw something that I didn’t see, and then managed to do the thing of, look what you did, did you know you could do that? Because I did. And that is incredibly empowering. So, I know exactly what that feels like. And I want to generate that experience for my students as often as possible, because that is the moment when all the pieces fall into place. And all of a sudden, I think, I have something to contribute. My ideas are worthwhile. I’m valuable. I have things to give.

Elizabeth Rovere:
I’m meant to be here.

William Robert:
So let me give them. And so, what if they’re not perfect? And so, what if not everybody accepts them? That’s okay, too. I feel valuable. I feel valued. And that’s enough.

Elizabeth Rovere:
That’s like when I feel valued or valuable, I’m okay if you don’t accept it. You don’t have to like it. It’s okay. I still like you. You’re all right.

William Robert:
So, the acting came later, and not as part of a master plan, as just something that happened along the way that I really leaned into. And because it wasn’t easy for someone who was used to being in front of a classroom and controlling the scene, to then stand in front of a group of undergraduates, because I took classes with undergraduates, and be vulnerable. One of the ways that I think about acting, is acting as being vulnerable in public. Being radically vulnerable in public, going to these places in front of other people. And taking that chance. And pushing yourself or allowing yourself is a better way of saying it to do it, knowing that you might not get there. But taking that kind of risk and being willing to fail. Those are exactly the same things that I bring into my classroom. And so, the acting work really charged the classroom, and activated it in the way in which we play theater games, sometimes in religion classes as ways of learning, or we act out scenes, or we play silly games I make up or whatever it is. It’s the kind of dynamism that you would feel in an acting class, or that I felt in acting classes. And that I thought, this is really fun, and I’m learning a lot. That’s the magic combination.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Where does the idea or experience of Wonder fit into your work, your life, teaching?

William Robert:
My sense of wonder is leaning into a profound question, and then taking a step back and giving space for responses. In a lot of ways, that’s an encapsulation of what I’m doing all the time. Asking real questions that are relevant to whatever we’re studying and relevant to whoever we are, operating on both of those levels at the same time. So, there’s this existential resonance. We’re talking about the play we’re talking about and we’re talking about other things, too, at the same time. Leaning into one of those questions with real curiosity, and a real desire to hear perspectives, responses, ones that I know will be mine. And then leaning back and allowing things to happen. Wonder precludes control. You can’t have wonder if you’re trying to control everything. It requires a letting happen, a letting be, and receptivity to whatever the happening is. And then a capacity to celebrate that. And then ask the next question. That to me is the cycle of wonder.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, that’s beautifully said. And, you know, my mind goes to the experience of wonder and how people describe interactions with you in teaching. And the science of the experience of wonder, or awe, is a sense of tingling, a sensation in the body, you know, going down the spine and such. And I know people often say that about your workshops, it’s like, I just felt this vibrancy, this tingling. And it makes me think of, that’s part of the piece that you’re describing, as well.

William Robert:
I would like to think that. That’s kind of you to say. I think they also feel that because they’re using their bodies, they’re feeling it probably because they’re standing and moving. Not just sitting there.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yes, absolutely.

William Robert:
And they haven’t been reduced to brains.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Right.

William Robert:
Because the body is a pedagogical instrument. And they’re using that, their whole body is activated, because that’s the instrument that they’re using to learn. The whole thing.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, thank you for saying that. We miss that. So much. We need that. The body is a pedagogical instrument, that’s such a cool thing to say. And put out there, so important.

William Robert:
Well, we are embodied.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yes, aren’t we?

William Robert:
And we ought to embrace that as much as possible. Because embracing bodies also means embracing bodily differences. And recognizing, and including all of those differences as valuable, as necessary to learning as much as possible. If we want to learn as much as possible, if we want to access as much wonder as possible, we need as many different kinds of bodies and different kinds of people with different kinds of perspectives as possible. So, I think that’s part of why I think the body is so key to learning. Also, because there are things we can learn better with our bodies, then other ways. And when we’re using our bodies, we are inevitably thinking and feeling together. And so, the intellectual and the affective and the corporeal dimensions are all mixed together. And that’s much more powerful than just the intellect.

Elizabeth Rovere:
Yeah, I mean, it makes me think of like, the full repertoire of learning and learning through movement and learning through dance, and how these different aspects of ourselves inform the other. Then we inform each other, and it’s just a wonderful experience. You know, it’s not boring.

William Robert:
No, it’s not boring. I tried to be not that as much as possible.
Elizabeth Rovere:
Indeed, indeed.

Elizabeth Rovere:
That was William Robert:. Thank you so much, William. William’s book, Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance is available now. Please come back next time on Wonderstruck, when I’ll be joined by Emma Mumford, a best-selling author and host of Spiritual Queen’s Badass Podcast. For more information about Wonderstruck, our guests and our events, check out wonderstruck.org and please follow the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and subscribe on YouTube. We truly want to hear from you with your feedback, your reviews, and ratings. You can also follow us on Instagram, X, Tik Tok, and Facebook @wonderstruckpod. Wonderstruck is produced by Wonderstruck Productions along with the teams at Baillie Newman and FreeTime Media. Special thanks to Brian O’Kelley, Eliana Eleftheriou, Travis Reece, Nikki Dindo and Walter Nordquist. Thank you for listening. And remember, be open to the wonder in your own life.