Drama in Aesthetic Education: An Invitation to Imagine the World as if It Could Be Otherwise

by Florence Samson

Maxine Greene, philosopher-in-residence for the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI), suggests that through aesthetic education "new connections are made in experience: new patterns are formed, new vistas are opened. Persons see differently, resonate differently." As Rilke wrote in one of his poems, and as quoted by Greene, "they are enabled to pay heed when a work of art tells them, 'You must change your life.'" Greene interprets Rilke's words to mean that "a work [of art], when fully perceived and carefully attended to, makes a demand upon beholders‹a demand that they change, look with new eyes, hear with new ears, become something they have not been before." Greene believes that "the perceiving, the noticing [about which Rilke spoke] are enhanced," for in the process of "[o]pening ourselves as perceivers to the work, entering into it kinaesthetically, we free ourselves to grasp it in its vital fullness and complexity."