10.2: Mimicking Movement

Overview

This section explores the integral role of physical expression in oral interpretation, emphasizing how facial expressions, posture, attire, hand gestures, and fully body movement communicate character, emotion, and meaning. Performers can enhance audience engagement by making deliberate choices with micro-expressions and body positioning that align with the text and person they are performing. Through practice, exaggeration, and conscious experimentation, students develop greater control over these tools, creating dynamic, immersive performances that convey emotion and narrative effectively.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Your posture and body language shape your performance. (CC-BY-NC; CC-BY-NC-SA; Martinez - Oral Interpretation)

Learning Objectives

1. Identify and intentionally use facial expressions and micro-expressions to convey character emotions and enhance audience understanding of the performance.
2. Demonstrate purposeful use of body posture to highlight character traits, emotional states, and narrative context in oral interpretation.
3. Apply coordinated attire choices to create dynamic, immersive, and emotionally engaging performances.

Facial Expressions 

Many of us don't realize that we have almost 20 muscles in our faces that allow us to show a range of feelings and emotions. Even the subtlest of movements (often called micro expressions) can convey meaningful messages to those who perceive them. Think about what it might mean to someone if you frown at them when you are saying hello (as opposed to smiling at them). Consider how many times you've suspected someone was lying to you when their mouth kept twitching as they gave reasons for being late in meeting you for lunch.

It will add so much more meaning to your performance when you make conscious choices in facial expressions. For example, if a character is envious of another during a bit of dialogue you are performing, consider narrowing your eyes, furrowing your brows, and tightening your lips as you speak the character's lines to demonstrate this emotion to your audience. Or, as a third person narrator describes a disgusting stench coming from a nearby dumpster in a story, consider wrinkling up your nose and narrowing your eyes to communicate a feeling of disgust. Even if the material you are performing is somewhat expository/informative in nature rather than emotional, when your facial expressions "match" the vibe of the information you are sharing with your audience, it will make it easier and more pleasing for your audience to attend to your presentation.

Posture 

The way we position our shoulders and torso in relation to our head and limbs sends messages to others. For example, if your professor walks into class with their shoulders hunched forward more so than usual, you might assume they injured their back or that they are tired. We can take advantage of this movement in our performances to create character and convey feelings.

If your literature includes a soldier, you might say that character's lines while erecting a stick-straight posture every time they have a line. If the narrator of a piece you are performing has a secret they'd like to share with the audience, they might lean forward a bit, maybe shifting one shoulder forward to create a barrier preventing another imaginary persona in the story from hearing the secret.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Activity 1: Expressive Faces & Posture Practice

Objective: Develop awareness and control of facial expressions and body posture to enhance character and emotional clarity in performance.

Materials: Short dialogue or narrative excerpts, mirror (optional), small group or pairs.

Instructions:

1. Warm-Up Facial Muscles: Spend 2–3 minutes exaggerating different facial movements—raise eyebrows, furrow brows, smile, frown, scrunch nose, purse lips—to become aware of micro expressions.

2. Assign Excerpts & Characters: Each student selects a short passage with a clear emotion or persona.

3. Identify Emotional Cues: Read the lines silently and decide which emotions or reactions the character is experiencing.

4. Facial Expression Rehearsal: Perform the excerpt in front of a mirror or peers, exaggerating facial expressions that match the character’s emotion (e.g., narrowed eyes for envy, wrinkled nose for disgust).

5. Posture Integration: Add body positioning that reinforces the character:

   • Straight posture for confidence or authority

   • Leaning forward for secrecy or intimacy

   • Hunched or slouched for sadness or exhaustion

6. Peer Feedback: Partners or small groups provide feedback on how well facial expressions and posture conveyed emotion and character.

7. Reflection: Students discuss which expressions or postures felt natural versus exaggerated, and how subtle changes can impact audience perception.

Attire

What we wear and how we adorn our bodies communicates messages. As stated before, costumes are not used in oral interpretation, but it is often a nice touch to dress honoring the mood/theme of a performance. When I was in high school, I performed excerpts of an anti-racism play entitled God's Country, by Stephen Dietz. I played multiple characters of various genders, races, and attitudes, and the message of the performance had dark and scary undertones. For every performance, I wore black shoes, black pants, a black turtleneck sweater, and pulled my hair back in a tight, low ponytail. I wanted to appear androgynous and wearing any sort of color felt like dishonor to the piece. It wasn't by any means a costume, but it allowed me to help set the mood of the piece for my audience before I had even said a word.

If you are performing a children's bedtime book, perhaps wear a comfortable pastel shirt with kittens on it. If you are performing a Christmas poem, you could wear red pants. Disneyland prohibits adult visitors from wearing costumes, so many people engage in something called "Disney bounding" where they dress in usual street clothes that have a similar color scheme and style that suggests their favorite Disney character. You can use this technique as inspiration to make purposeful choices in attire for your performances.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Oral interpretation performers do not wear specific costumes, but they can wear attire that abstractly matches the performance. (CC-BY-NC; CC-BY-NC-SA; Martinez - Oral Interpretation)

Hand Gestures 

Using hand movement to convey meaning and feeling is a powerful tool for performers. Gestures can be used as symbols that signify or even substitute for particular words (e.g. an OK sign made with the hands), or they can be supplementary to words, adding feeling and meaning without actually standing for the words on their own (e.g. a palms up, hands out gesture while explaining something important).

Hand gestures can also be particularly helpful when you need to establish physical differences between personae in a performance. For example, if a teacher is speaking to an uninterested student in a bit of dialogue, you might have the teacher often repeat a pointed-finger gesture as she speaks to the student. For the student, you might have her mime a phone in her hand by constantly doing a texting movement with your thumb.

Sometimes, beginner interpretation performers make the mistake of trying to use gestures to paint pictures of almost everything they say in a performance. This is not necessary and often results in a stilted appearance. If a specific gesture will help an audience understand a concept or feeling, you should probably use it. Otherwise, think of your hand movements more as accompaniments to your lines, similarly to what we do with our hands in normal conversation.

Full Body Movement 

While hand gestures are the movements of your hands (and perhaps arms), movement refers to repositioning of the entire body. Typically, full-stage movement is minimal in solo interpretation performances. There is sometimes a bit more in group performance, but it still isn't quite as much as the way actors in a play might use an entire stage. Once again, full-stage movement is considered by oral interpretation enthusiasts to be a definitive factor separating stage plays from oral interpretation performance. That being said, you can use some movement to communicate meaning and feeling to your audience, and you can also use it to create transitions between literature pieces within one performance.

If a character dances in a piece of literature, you can feel free to use your space a bit to demonstrate this. If a character is dodging a bullet, it would be appropriate for you to jump to the side to show this. Be mindful, however, of trying to do too much movement in a performance. Since oral interpretation does not involve scenery, costumes, props, etc., literature that involves a lot of physical movement can be incredibly challenging to perform and often quite confusing for audiences to watch.

When performing bits from multiple pieces within one performance, a bit of movement can help show your audience when you are shifting out of one piece and into another. For example, you might set the script on the lectern and present your poem from there, but you might take your script and step in front of the lectern, closer to the audience to perform the prose piece that follows.

Employing Vocals and Body Language

Many beginning performers have a hard time using these vocal and body language delivery resources more dynamically than they are accustomed to. Give yourself permission to be “bigger” in your vocal characteristics and body language when you work in this course and practice at home.

As you learn which of the vocal and body language characteristics you might need to work on in your performances, consider using an old trick I used to employ during my high school competitive oral interpretation days. When you practice for an upcoming performance, go overboard with that particular characteristic. For example, if your peers and instructor have remarked that you could use more hand gestures in your presentations, move your hand(s) with every word you utter as you practice your performance. Don’t worry about whether the movement makes sense at first, just move for movement’s sake to get used to how it feels. You’ll find that after doing this a time or two, using more natural gestures will begin to come more naturally. Similarly, if you have heard that you are monotone when you speak, try practicing the words while exploring every note in your musical range of inflection. Again, don’t worry about the inflection making sense, just try almost “singing” the words. Of course, you would not employ these extreme techniques during an actual performance. However, going “bigger” in practice will help you break the ice and learn what it feels like to fully employ those elements, making it easier to pull back as needed in a performance.

As you learn to incorporate gestures into your performances, you may even want to write little side notes in your script/text to remind you when to do certain movements. As you gain in experience, using natural gestures will start to feel more natural to you.