Improvisational Theatre as a Tool for Enhancing Musicians' Expressiveness

This paper emphasizes the importance of rethinking the concept of expressiveness and how we approach itin higher music education (HME). It highlights that current teaching practices often focus on acoustic elements of performance, while overlooking the visual ones, despite evidence that ancillary gestures, body movement, and facial expressions can significantly impact the perception of expressiveness in music. Drawing on embodied cognition and theatre approaches—particularly improvisational theatre—the paper explores how these practices can support musicians in developing expressive skills. Improvisational theatre provides a flexible and safe environment for musicians to explore new ways of playing their instruments, allowing them to engage with and embody diverse emotions, as well as to abstract expressive concepts that they link to their repertoire. This may enable students to effectively connect sound, movement, and expressive intention, and communicate with audiences more convincingly. The paper also acknowledges challenges such as the need for specialized educators, interdisciplinary curricula, and openness to explorative teaching approaches, advocating thoughtful implementation to enrich and broaden teaching approaches to expressiveness in HME.