ArticlePDF Available

Theories of the Stage, Social Projects, and Drama's Pedagogies

Authors:

Abstract

Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical writings on the theatre and Bertold Brecht's theatre for instruction inform this investigation of drama's pedagogies. The paper questions what the matrix of theatre and pedagogy might mean for education and, most especially, education for inner-city youth. Entwining modern and postmodern conceptions of theatre and education, the author makes a case for a pedagogy of situation and action, presenting a set of pedagogical ambitions concerned with creating more complex and humane social interactions in urban drama classrooms. Les écrits philosophiques de Jean-Paul Sartre sur le théâtre et le théâtre pédagogique de Bertold Brecht influencent cette recherche sur les pédagogies du théâtre. Cet essai questionne le rôle de la matrice du théâtre et de la pédagogie sur l’éducation, et tout particulièrement sur l’éducation des jeunes des cités. En mélangeant les conceptions modernes et post-modernes sur le théâtre et l’éducation, l’auteur propose une pédagogie de situation et d’action, et présente une série d’ambitions pédagogiques qui ont pour but de créer des interactions sociales plus complexes et humaines dans les salles de classe urbaines. Los libretos filosóficos para teatro de Jean-Paul Sartre y el teatro instructivo de Bertold Brecht son parte de esta investigación de las pedagogÃas del drama. Este ensayo cuestiona que pueden significar para la educación, y especialmente para la educación de la juventud de los barrios céntricos de la ciudad, la esencia del teatro y la pedagogÃa. Entrelazar conceptos modernistas y post modernistas de teatro y educación, el autor diseña un caso para una pedagogÃa de situación y acción, presentando una serie de metas pedagógicas con el objetivo de crear interacciones sociales más complejas y humanas en las clases de drama urbanas.
Print this page
Article No.4
Theories of the Stage, Social Projects, and Drama's Pedagogies
by Kathleen Gallagher (Canada)
Abstract
Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical writings on the theatre and Bertold Brecht's theatre for instruction inform
this investigation of drama's pedagogies. The paper questions what the matrix of theatre and pedagogy
might mean for education and, most especially, education for inner-city youth. Entwining modern and
postmodern conceptions of theatre and education, the author makes a case for a pedagogy of situation
and action, presenting a set of pedagogical ambitions concerned with creating more complex and
humane social interactions in urban drama classrooms.
Les écrits philosophiques de Jean-Paul Sartre sur le théâtre et le théâtre pédagogique de
Bertold Brecht influencent cette recherche sur les pédagogies du théâtre. Cet essai questionne le
rôle de la matrice du théâtre et de la pédagogie sur l’éducation, et tout particulièrement sur
l’éducation des jeunes des cités. En mélangeant les conceptions modernes et post-modernes
sur le théâtre et l’éducation, l’auteur propose une pédagogie de situation et d’action,
et présente une série d’ambitions pédagogiques qui ont pour but de créer des interactions
sociales plus complexes et humaines dans les salles de classe urbaines.
Los libretos filosóficos para teatro de Jean-Paul Sartre y el teatro instructivo de Bertold Brecht son parte
de esta investigación de las pedagogÃas del drama. Este ensayo cuestiona que pueden significar para
la educación, y especialmente para la educación de la juventud de los barrios céntricos de la ciudad,
la esencia del teatro y la pedagogÃa. Entrelazar conceptos modernistas y post modernistas de teatro y
educación, el autor diseña un caso para una pedagogÃa de situación y acción, presentando una
serie de metas pedagógicas con el objetivo de crear interacciones sociales más complejas y humanas
en las clases de drama urbanas.
Author’s biography
Kathleen Gallagher is assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where she teaches drama in the
initial teacher education and graduate programs. Her dissertation research received the American
Alliance of Theatre and Education award in 1999 and the Barbara McIntyre Distinguished Dissertation
award in 2000. Her first book is entitled Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities
(University of Toronto Press, 2000) and was recently honoured by the American Education Research
Association. Her most recent book is an edited collection with David Booth entitled How Theatre
Educates: Convergences and Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars, and Advocates (University of Toronto
Press, 2003). Kathleen's research and practice continue to focus on questions of inclusion in arts
education and the pedagogical possibilities of learning through drama. She is currently working on a 3-
year SSHRC-funded ethnographic study titled: Drama Education, Youth, and Social Cohesion: (re)
constructing identities in urban contexts.
kgallagher@oise.utoronto.ca
Â
It is interesting because both these worlds - theatre and
education - are very, very forgiving at one level, but they are
most rigorous at another. Yet there is also something humane
about both pursuite. The fact that they can tolerate a multitude
of ineptitude doesn't take away from the fact that they are
driven by excellence, like anything else.
( Intellectual passions, feminist commitments and divine
comedies - a dialogue with Anne-Marie MacDonald).Â
In this chapter, I would like to hold up the stage theories of Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertold Brecht against
Flip to Text Version
Pa
g
e 1 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
the impulses of drama pedagogy, as I understand them. My aim in doing so is to examine some of the
different but related political and educational desires of these earlier theatre and political projects in order
to raise some new ideas about how drama pedagogy might intersect with and conceptually broaden
these positions. As the winds of the ‘global education’ movement gain considerable velocity,
drama pedagogy, importantly, speaks to many of the questions related to ideas of community and
difference. Moving outward, first, from a particular study on youth, drama education, and social cohesion,
I would like to examine some of the philosophical and theoretical positions undergirding my conception
of drama pedagogy, wherein the vexed question of theorizing and praxis remains at the centre.
Ultimately, I present these ‘theories of the stage’ as related to a set of pedagogical concerns
aimed toward more complex and humane social interactions in classrooms.
What does the matrix of theatre and education mean for pedagogy? To contemplate this question, I am
currently examining the experiences of adolescents in urban drama classrooms in order to develop a
theoretical and empirically grounded account of the dynamic social forces of inclusion and exclusion
experienced by adolescents within their unique contexts of urban North American schooling. Many
notable educational theorists such as Paolo Freire (1972, 1998), bell hooks (1994), Arnot, David &
Weiner (1999) and Maxine Greene (1995) as well as drama educators such as Christopher Odhiambo
(2001), Shutzman & Cohen-Cruz (1994) and Dorothy Heathcote ( in Johnson & O'Neill, 1984) suggest
that human conditions are not determined but can be deconstructed and de-conditioned, and especially
identities that are grounded in ‘outcast’ status. To more fully appreciate the potential and the limits
of drama pedagogy, then, I am investigating particularly the extent to which drama education in
classrooms illuminates the intersections of youths’ personal lives with their school lives in the
formation of their social identity, their peer/community affiliations, and their artistic projects. My
understanding of drama pedagogy in these contexts comes down - philosophically and ideologically - on
the side of those who desire, and are inclined toward, the possibilities of change. In this way, the
following discussion puts forward a conception of drama education that is theoretically grounded - like
critical and feminist pedagogies - in social theories of schooling, of identity construction and systems of
social relations. In these theories the very construction and deconstruction of identities and relations
through dramatic role-play act as a testing ground for actual relations that support young people's views
of themselves as dominant agents of their own social lives. In short, drama’s capacity to explore
relations in diverse communities, to experiment with shifting identities, lies both in its dialectical and
embodied features. Its pedagogy is not merely an interpersonal process; it is a social art.
Rather than an article on the research ‘findings’, this paper proposes a discussion of the
questions provoked by beginning such a research project, as one stands at the classroom door. We live
in an age where terms such as ‘hard-to-teach’, ‘at-risk’, and ‘behavioural students’
(as though other students are without behaviours entirely) beset our pedagogical discourses, where
students have grown up in systems all over the globe plagued by anti-immigrant, anti-welfare, ‘back-
to-basics’ rhetoric. Therefore how we frame and understand the dynamics of classrooms have
serious ethical implications and powerful consequences for praxis. Patti Lather has described this as
‘…doing praxis-oriented intellectual work in a post-foundational context’ (1992:125).
In the rationale for my research project, titled Drama Education, Youth, and Social Cohesion: (re)
constructing identities in urban contexts, I suggest that notions of global education continue to identify
‘diversity’ (still, more often than not, implicitly suggesting low-achievement or declining standards)
and other ‘inner-city challenges’ as the greatest obstructions to healthy, safe, and high-achieving
(or ‘competitive’) classroom communities. Schools persist in identifying the many and diverse
needs of urban populations in this way. As one response, many schools have widely adopted arts
programs, generally thought to be ‘good’ for disaffected youth. Drama education research,
however, has largely operated within psychological conceptions of learning and development. Drama
education’s meta-cognitive theoretical frameworks attempt to explain poor self-esteem and school
failure as residing within individuals and individual behaviour. Thus far, it is this body of work, rather than
studies of pedagogy and classroom relations, that has most significantly influenced current school
practices and policies. In imagining the project of my current research and preparing for the intellectual
work of understanding these complex classroom communities, I sought, conversely, to address the
significant omission of studies that examine the socio-cultural dimensions of drama practices in schools.
In this paradigm, the problems to be addressed are articulated in social and critical theories of youth and
schooling. In fact, there exist very few qualitative studies that adequately document the socio-
cultural/political dimensions of aesthetic practices in schools, and their impact on the formation of youth
identities and classroom relations.
Conceptions of multicultural classroom communities desperately need to push beyond the narrow
Pa
g
e 2 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
confines of identity politics. Most ‘democratic’ classroom spaces hide behind an illusion of
neutrality and fairness. They are crying out for what Sawicki (1991) calls a ‘radical pluralism’. And
this is where my notion of drama pedagogy enters the scene. Rather than regular classroom instruction
or exploration being enhanced by drama methods, I am referring to a pedagogy and artistry that self-
consciously places embodied and imagined relations between collaborators at the centre of the action. In
addition, I am suggesting that any self-reflection a participant undertakes in/through the drama activities
consciously entertain both the ‘fictional’ and the ‘actual’ performances of self within the
context of the classroom. When I draw out the term drama pedagogy, therefore, I am orienting my
analysis around two different but related questions: How do the dialectics of self and other, of local and
global, of democracy and domination play out in drama’s pedagogy; and how do the players (and
teacher) come to understand the dialectical relationship between what we deem performative (role-
playing) and what we often assume is non-performative (students in a classroom) - that is to say, the
intertextual relationship between the fictional roles enacted in the dramas and the so-called ‘real’
ones of classroom life?
Sartre: a theatre (and pedagogy) of choice
Britzman (in The Arts of Inquiry) asks some important questions that allude to the impasse between
conceptual and material terrain in liberatory projects in education. She is asking what we make of ‘wild
thoughts’ in classrooms and further, what ‘doubt’ as a mode of thinking might provoke. Here
Britzman is using the arts to think about pedagogical actions. What is significant about these modes of
thinking she is calling for - the kind of thinking that often requires courage and imagination - is whether
the act of ‘imagining’ the experiences of others can help us better know ourselves in any way.
She is asking whether, in aesthetic education, we can somehow come to know ourselves better through
knowing the complexities of others: ‘Is it ever the case that it takes one to know one? Are we
unequipped to encounter anyone different from the imagined self? What does the writer draw upon to do
such work as imagine different countries, different genders, different sexual orientations, and different
histories?’ (2001:22).
These are pertinent questions to bear in mind while considering, first, Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings on
the theatre. In his well-known play Huis Clos (No Exit, 1965), Sartre explores the philosophical idea that
‘hell is other people', by putting three characters in hell and making each of them the other’s
torturer. But he did not simply believe that our relations with others are necessarily poisoned. This is,
according to Sartre (1973), a misunderstanding of his work. He believed, instead, that other people are
the most important means we have for knowing ourselves; we judge ourselves with the means other
people have given us to do it. These ideas begin to offer pedagogical opportunities if we consider the
performances and the self-spectatorship at play within the communal spaces of classrooms. Sartre’s
writings on the theatre are provocative and offer a philosophical basis for the kind of drama pedagogy I
am examining. In other words, the idea of knowing ourselves through ‘the other’ is precisely what
Britzman is calling for in any pedagogical interaction. Drama pedagogy's ‘what ifs’ set in constant
motion the changing relationships that give form to the imagined worlds.
In his lecture at the Sorbonne in the Spring of 1960, Sartre claimed that sculpture represents ‘the form
of the body’ and the theatre ‘the act of the body’. The problem with the bourgeois theatre of
his time, he asserted, was that it gave no intellectual trouble and was aesthetically anaemic. Unlike
Britzman’s unruly knowledge and wild thoughts, the bourgeoisie made theatre that was tame and
self-satisfied. I am suggesting that what was inadequate in the theatre of Sartre’s day is also
inadequate in today’s classrooms. Sartre is arguing for a theatre of situations, not of characters, so
that in our story-telling and our character construction we are responding to the situations at hand. It is,
therefore, our actions in a given situation that create our character(s). Following this line of argument,
one might also begin to ponder the kinds of situations of choice one might imagine in classrooms: Under
what conditions might I make my idea public? In which dialogues will I participate? How might I extend
the artistic input of another? What positions of compromise allow me to collaborate? How does this
situation or these people shape my performance? In other words, Sartre's theatre of situation helps to
better elucidate the private and public choices both students and teacher make in the pedagogical
contract.
Sartre bemoans the state of contemporary theatre in a particular way: it is not that there is too much
greatness in psychology, but there is too little; that is why psychology and its stories of characters and
motivations is often ‘embarrassing’ to witness on stage, and he regrets that modern authors have
discovered and chose to use that ‘bastard knowledge’ (1973:19). If, as Sartre believed,
‘man’ could choose his freedom or not, then theatre ought to show ‘man’ choosing what he
will be, in a given situation. When we delve, instead, into the psychological conundrums of characters on
Pa
g
e 3 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
stage, we lose the ‘act of the body’. In much the same way, psychology is inadequate in the
classroom, for it does not allow the full range of choice, the full engagement of imagination that might be
possible in a given set of circumstances. At times, what is needed in a classroom is a brief moment of
imagination to break the predictability. And if drama’s pedagogy can create an intentionally
interrogative space that exposes the choices of those historically privileged from those historically
silenced (and the conditions that shaped those choices), it is producing an imagined situation that
challenges the answers that may have been sufficient (to some) in the past. We may begin, as a result,
to produce a pedagogy of choice inclined toward greater freedom. What particular form, then, might this
pedagogy take? It is to Brecht that I will turn as I consider the features and form of a pedagogy of
choosing that understands the self as co-constructed within communities of difference and capable of
change.
Brecht: a theatre (and pedagogy) of social action
An examination of Brecht’s ‘theatre for instruction’ is relevant because theatre/drama in
schools has taken on the ‘social issues’ of the day. This is in part, I feel, due to its tenuous place
in the curriculum: drama is forever needing to justify its existence. If drama can address some of the
social problems schools are meant to eradicate, then it is eminently justifiable in a time of budget-cuts
and ‘back-to-basics’ regimes. There is also a widely held and well-intentioned beliefthat drama is
best equipped and most effective in engaging young people’s affective responses, and within
schools, the affect is requisite in much of the current moral and citizenship education. Whatever the
reasons, drama seems to be the place in schools where ‘difficult’ issues will be raised, whether
this happens in lively classrooms or in school auditoria with visiting artists. Jameson in probing
Brecht’s ‘method’ asks:
Indeed, the tension now seems to run between the ‘showing’and the
‘judging’: does the ‘moral’ shown by a given parable-like or exemplary
situation ask us to make our own judgement, to sit back and consider, reflectively, as
Brecht so often liked to describe his workers’ theater, or does it simply offer us
the judgment already made, and at best ask us to judge the judgment, whether it was
not the wisest or the most appropriate? (2000).
Brecht’s own answer is clear in his essay titled Can the Present Day World be Reproduced by
Means of Theatre?: ‘However, one thing has become quite plain: the present-day world can only be
described to present-day people if it is described as capable of transformation’ (1957:274). In other
words, his particular theory of the stage posits the spectator as no longer in any way permitted to submit
to an experience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of simply empathizing with
the characters in a play, by means of the old, familiar ‘stepping into the others’ shoes’.
Instead, Brecht took the subject matter and the incidents shown and put them through a process of
alienation: the alienation he believed necessary to all understanding.
Brecht was the architect of the ‘epic’ theatre form, as it was known. His early writings on this
theatre of alienation - meant to elicit a new kind of engagement - are brilliantly illustrated in the following
excerpt. One sees, immediately however, the problems this kind of approach to theatre (and pedagogy)
would present for schools wedded strongly to a code of liberal humanism. Predating them by 30 years,
Brecht’s ‘modern’ innovation here champions many of the principles of feminist and critical
pedagogy:
When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’, it means that
any attempt to understand the world has been given up.
What is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling. This is the only way
to expose the laws of cause and effect. People’s activity must simultaneously be
so and be capable of being different.
It was all a great change.
The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too - Just like me
- It’s only natural - It’ll never change - The sufferings of this man appall me
because they are inescapable - That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious
thing in the world - I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.
The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it - That’s not
the way - That’s extraordinary, hardly believable - It’s got to stop - The
sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary - That’s great
Pa
g
e 4 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
art: nothing obvious in it - I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh. (71).
I would suggest that drama education holds firmly onto the pedagogical idea(l) that collective art can be
imagined by differently situated individuals within a group when they are involved in a collaborative
process. In other words, Brecht's plea for a socially conscious interruption rather than a seamless
identification is central. Drama education tenaciously insists that, as Adrienne Rich says, an ‘I’
can become a ‘we’ without extinguishing others (1993). It certainly does not always succeed. But
in drama classrooms, pedagogy becomes a device that serves the art and this art form is a social one
that benefits from divergent perspectives; its fragmented, non-linear, reflexive pedagogy can exert a
dialectical pull on the terms of a dramatic collaboration. It can take difference (and sometimes conflict) as
its starting point rather than its challenge. As above: ‘that's great [pedagogy], nothing obvious in
it’.
Thus far, we have considered Sartre’s concept of choosing and Brecht’s epic form in theatre as
philosophical, ideological, and artistic processes for questioning drama’s pedagogy. As I see it, one
of drama’s principal educative forces - like Brecht’s theatre of alienation - is in its move away
from the fourth wall. The narrator of the story on Brecht’s stage was no longer missing and the entire
room - the set, the projections of other places and times onto the set, and the spectators themselves
became a part of the scene. The actors refrained from identifying entirely with the roles they were
portraying and remained detached, so as to invite criticism. Correspondingly, the conventions of drama
education interrupt time and space and challenge the invisible (or fourth) wall between ‘actor’ and
‘spectator’. Characters are interchangeable, time is non-linear, and as in Sartre’s analysis,
characters ‘act’ by responding to situations. The situations themselves drive the character
development. This ‘development’ is often a collective enterprise and one that can foreground the
different ways of seeing and being seen within a diverse community.
Contesting and advancing
In the last section of the paper, I will present in greater detail the premises of drama pedagogy as I see
them and their implications for learning. I will also address what is often read as an internal contradiction
about art that teaches. This does not mean that art is not an end in itself, but that ‘goals’ for
learning through theatre, drama’s pedagogical aims for social justice or anti-oppressive education for
instance, cannot be attained without theatre’s art. In other words, theatre for instruction as Brecht
called it, or drama’s pedagogical ambitions, as I am framing them, do not - must not - lose their
poetry.
As suggested above, the global ‘standards movement’, in its current incarnation, has done great
harm. There is nothing wrong, of course, with desiring standards, but the ‘standards movement’ in
Western education too often forecloses possibilities. In opposition, the engaged pedagogy of writers like
hooks and Freire has valued the contributions of those situated on the margins, those most often
constructed as not meeting the standards. Engaged pedagogy, according to Armstrong and McMahon
(2002) has offered a simple but important insight: students do not desire failure. It also welcomes
dissent, accepts conflict, and encourages resistance (hooks, 1994), not unlike the kind of critical
engagement Brecht was seeking with epic theatre form. Gabel (2002) suggests helpfully that the
pedagogical subject is discursive, at least in a metaphoric sense, and that it is a subject in the process of
writing itself and of being interpreted by others. And Freire (1994), in Pedagogy of Hope, is convinced,
too, that language is a route to the invention of citizenship. To these narrative accounts of the subject, of
course, I add the embodied actor, the performer. Butler (1995) has often referred to the ‘strategic
essentialism’ that unfolds in groups, when bodies are part of communal activities. But drama also
holds within its form the capacity to examine and compare so-called ‘natural’ and ‘acted’
behaviour. There is often a blurring of the semantics of ‘performed role’ and ‘real identity’.
When, for instance, theatre directors speak of getting a text ‘up on its feet’ in a rehearsal, they are
speaking of drama's desire to make physical the poetry of playscripts. When audience members typically
ask 'but how did you learn all those lines?', the actor knows that a large part of the answer lies in the
body. The body has a memory and words get into our bodies and react with the memories - sensory and
real - that already dwell there. The performances of adolescents in the drama classrooms that I am
currently observing in the research project briefly described at the opening of this paper make explicit the
dialogical relationship between the material subject and the imagined one. In the inner-city schools in
Toronto and New York, where we are immersed in observing (and sometimes participating in) the drama
produced by diversely-positioned young people, we are often left asking whether or how it is possible to
move beyond limiting conceptions of ourselves and others, if Sartre is to be believed when he posits that
we are forever in the ‘look of the other’? If students are raced, classed, gendered, in particular
ways, entangled in certain configurations of power or powerlessness, how might their performances in
Pa
g
e 5 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
dramas productively converse with their performances of school identities?
Many have argued that the most radical thing critical pedagogy can do is make explicit the exclusions,
the limiting discursive and embodied representations of others. Giroux (1992:3) was arguing very early
on that critical pedagogy would not only transform knowledge but social relations, as it searched to
uncover the processes through which people come to know themselves, and the ways in which they
engage with others and their environment. Feminists such as Luke & Gore (1992) and Ellsworth (1992)
have repeatedly asked the central question of ‘who is empowering whom’ in these contexts.
However, many have become worn down by the endless stories of individual, personal transformation
that these ideals have often produced, or the inertia produced by fragmented and stratified groups
jockeying for space. There remain, as well, a great number of critiques of critical and feminist
pedagogies that meet their limits because of institutional and ideological constraints.
Some questions remain. Can those working with concepts of drama pedagogy, for instance, not evade
the issue of their own power? Can this kind of artistic and critical pedagogy avoid obfuscating its
particular powers? Can drama pedagogy resist certain kinds of dogmatism (a charge often levelled
against many of Brecht’s theatre projects or certain feminist ‘agendas’)? Does drama make
space for the unutterable? Can it extend the body's knowing beyond its own situatedness? What do
notions of ambiguity and unpredictability look like in theatre practice?
The collaborative grounds of drama/theatre education
Following from Sartre’s premise, then, of a theatre of situation, drama pedagogy shifts emphasis to
the ‘context’ in which meaning is produced. It is, I would suggest in summary, a precondition of
emancipatory projects of drama pedagogy that change through art is possible. Paradoxically, however,
the possibility of ever fully knowing in our bodies the material strategies of others remain beyond its
grasp - the limits of being, relating and creating, in a social milieu such as a classroom. That is why the
emphasis on context and action become central.
In Brecht’s essay entitled Interview with an Exile he underlines again the pedagogical purposes of
his theatre:
Thus when a family is ruined I don’t seek the reason in an inexorable fate, in
hereditary weaknesses, or special characteristics – it isn’t only the
exceptional families that get ruined - but try rather to establish how it could have
been avoided by human action, how the external conditions could be altered; and
that lands me back in politics again (1933-1947:68).
Like Brecht, it is the purpose of drama’s pedagogy to ask that the ‘natural’(often stereotypical)
images of ‘self’ and ‘other’ be made conspicuous. This is, I am suggesting, the kind of
alienation needed in classrooms. What shape should drama’s pedagogy take to promote the
‘actorship’ needed for people to become the co-authors of their cultural narratives, as Miedema &
Wardekker express it (cited in Bayliss & Dodwell 2002)? We aim to do this, keeping in view the different
means, points of access, and choices that people have - while like Brecht, we do not remain satisfied
with inaction, that is, with difference that fractures to the point of inertia. One of the ways that drama can
accomplish this is by our working toward an artistic commitment that is larger than self, where there is
affective as well as intellectual investment, and where solipsistic tendencies are squarely confronted.
And yet, it is a dramatic imperative that we begin from ourselves while asking how to find the distance
necessary (the alienation) to provoke new understanding. Our success rests upon a few important
questions: Can drama pedagogy do more than help the principles of inclusion along? Can the
negotiations among collaborators be fundamentally reconstituted through our drama pedagogy so as to
create new modes of attending to and creating with others? Can our drama pedagogy make the critical,
feminist tradition more ‘practical’, ‘lived’, and effective at the level of the everyday? Just
what does dramatic space open up? Do we ask: from where do we draw ‘inspiration’?; can the
influences of interpretation be uncovered?; what analyses move alongside our ‘improvised’
creations? These are the material questions that should ground our drama practices. By bringing the
embodied subjects into sharp relief, we not only ask where we are located but where we are imagining
ourselves moving, in the fictional and the actual. I use the construct of trajectories - and not just identities
- but trajectories of difference, where our actions, our choices ask us to imagine ourselves ahead
differently. Too much ‘emancipatory’ pedagogy implicitly claims to know the direction to liberation.
Pa
g
e 6 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
And this, as we have observed in our study sites, has not worked well for many.
A Pedagogy of Situation and Action
In her address to the Southern Tier Institute for the Arts in Education at the Lincoln Center in New York
City, Deborah Britzman (2001) asked: what do the arts want and what do we want from the arts? To
conjecture, I would say, like Sartre, that the arts do not want to be reduced, to be contained, constrained,
and consumed. And from the arts, we want more than our own edification. We want to be provoked; we
want to ask again what makes life meaningful; we want community. Gilbert suggests that theatre,
especially, should make us unsettled and uneasy in the positive sense of the word. He writes:
In our education system, theatre and drama must preserve their urgency, and
become a place where self-creation, imagination, and dialogue are still possible;
where the engagement of people in productive conflict and thought can be
generated. The theatre must be guarded against the insatiable appetite of the ego,
the pressures to be ‘hip,’ the demands of self-promotion (either through
‘image’ or the exigencies of the camera), and the pressures to be seen and
not see. Theatre should, in education, afford a place of freedom, thought and
creation, subverting the ever-increasing demands of product and commerce, and
be a place of action and not submission. It must be an area where the dialectic of
factitious and authentic can be played out, where the institutional pressures to
conform are, however briefly, suspended (2003:160).
What, then, should we want from drama pedagogy ? For this I must, in the final analysis, return to Sartre
who brings us back again to the constraints of a system (or institution) that does not demand more of
itself, that sits powerfully self-satisfied:
But, to act, which is precisely the object of the theatre, is to change the world and in
changing it, of necessity to change oneself. Fine. The bourgeoisie has changed the
world profoundly, and now it no longer has any desire to change itself, above all
from without. If it changes, it is in order to adapt itself, to keep what it has, and in
this position, what it asks of the theatre is not to be disturbed by the idea of
action… (1960:52).
We might ask of our Drama pedagogy, too, whether we desire change, whether we are prepared to
destabilize it as we direct it outward from the complex real and fictional (acted) classroom performances
of teachers and students; whether we are prepared to take improvisation and imagination seriously. To
take imagination seriously in classrooms, to invite Britzman's ‘wild thoughts’ in, is to provoke
choice, invite alienation, and count on the unpredictable and the productive conflict within communities of
difference.
References
Armstrong, D. & McMahon, B. (2002). ‘Engaged Pedagogy: Valuing the Strengths of Students on the
Margins.’ Journal of Thought, 37 (1).
Arnot, M., David, M. & Weiner, D. (1999). Closing the Gender Gap: Postwar education and social
change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bayliss, P. & Dodwell, C. (2002). ‘Building Relationships Through Drama: the Action Track Project [1]
’. Research in Drama Education. 7 (1).
Brecht, B. (1957) (trans. Willett, 1964). ‘Can the Present-Day World Be Reproduced by Means of
Theatre?’ Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill &Wang.
Britzman, D. (2001). ‘The Arts of Inquiry’. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 17 (2).
Butler, J. (1995). ‘Contingent Foundations’. In S. Benhabib, J. Butler, D. Cornell, and N. Fraser
(Eds) Feminist contentions: A philosophical exchange. New York: Routledge.
Pa
g
e 7 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Ellsworth, E. (1992). ‘Why Doesn’t this feel Empowering: Working Through the Repressive Myths
of Critical Pedagogy’. In C. Luke and J. Gore Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. New York:
Routledge.
Freire, P. (1998).(trans. P. Clarke). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. .
Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield.
Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Continuum.
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. England: Penguin Books.
Gabel, S. (2002). ‘Some Conceptual Problems with Critical Pedagogy’. Curriculum Inquiry, 32 (2).
Gilbert, J. (2003). ‘Inside Out: Notes on Theatre in a tenderized, tranquilized, “mediatizedâ€
society’. In K. Gallagher and D. Booth (Eds). How Theatre Educates: Convergences and
Counterpoints. Toronto :University of Toronto Press.
Giroux, (1992). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge,
Chapman & Hall.
Gore, J. (1992). " ‘What We Can Do for You! What Can ‘We’ Do For ‘You’?: Struggling
over Empowerment in Critical and Feminist Pedagogy". In C. Luke and J. Gore op.cit.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Jameson, F. (2000). Brecht and Method. London: Verso.
Johnson, L. & O'Neill, C. (Eds). 1984. Dorothy Heathcote: Collected Writings on Education and Drama.
Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Lather, P. (1992). ‘Post-Critical Pedagogies: A Feminist Reading’. In C. Luke and J. Gore op.cit.
Luke, C. & J. Gore. (1992). Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. New York: Routledge
MacDonald, A-M. (2003). Intellectual Passions, Feminist Commitments, and Divine Comedies: A
dialogue with Ann-Marie MacDonald and Kathleen Gallagher. In How Theatre Educates: Convergences
and Counterpoints. K. Gallagher and D. Booth (Eds). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Miedema, S. & Wardekker, W (1999). Emergent identity vs. consistent identity: Possibilities for a
postmodern repoliticization of critical pedagogy. In T. Popkewitz and L. Fendler, (Eds.) Critical theories in
education: Changing terrains of knowledge and politics. New York: Routledge.
Odhiambo, C. (2001). 'What has TfD got to do with it?' Drama Research. Vol. 2.
Rich, A. (1993). What is found there: Notebooks on poetry and politics. New York: Norton.
Sartre, J-P. (1973). Un théâtre de situations. (Textes rassembées, établis, présentés et
annotés par Michel Contat et Michel Rybalka). Paris: Gallimard.
Sartre, J-P. (1965). The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. R. Cumming (Ed). New York: Random House.
Sartre, J-P. (1960). (trans. Reck 2000). 'Beyond Bourgeois Theatre'. In C. Martin and H. Bial. (Eds)
Brecht Sourcebook. London: Routledge.
Sawicki, J. (1991). Disciplining Foucault. New York: Routledge.
Schutzman, M. & Cohen-Cruz, J. (Eds.) (1994). Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism. London:
Routledge
Pa
g
e 8 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 9 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 10 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 11 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 12 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 13 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Pa
g
e 14 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
Back to Top
webhumans | text version | privacy | copyright matters | disclaimer
webhumans | text version | privacy | copyright matters | disclaime
r
Pa
g
e 15 of 15A
pp
lied Theatre Researcher No 3 2002 Article No.6/3
3/01/2008htt
p
://www.
g
riffith.edu.au/centre/c
p
ci/atr/
j
ournal/number4
_
article4.htm
... Their fundamental importance lies in allowing the work to question varying understandings of drama, theatre, performance and process as understood in the discourse of the PoET. Specifically, emergent critical research in the areas of drama education and applied theatre will be looked to in that they have begun to describe varying readings in drama as education: Taylor (1998Taylor ( , 2003, Gallagher (2002Gallagher ( , 2007, Thompson (2003), Neelands (2004Neelands ( , 2007, Nicholson (2005), Ackroyd (2006), O'Toole (2006). ...
... It is worth noting, however, that some studies within the community of drama as education have begun to engage with this matter. Garcia (2001), Nelson (2005), Rivière (2005) and particularly Gallagher (2001Gallagher ( , 2002Gallagher ( , 2004Gallagher ( , 2007 Drama, by definition, is a social art, not a solitary experience. People make theatre for others to see, or in the case of classroom drama, it is often the self-spectatorship that makes for the important 'audience' experience. ...
Thesis
Full-text available
Drama as education is a relatively young concern, which has been primarily occupied with developing a strong tradition of practice. As a result it has suffered from a dearth of theoretical and critical engagement. This situation has led to the existence of a range of unquestioned beliefs and practices that underpin much of the governance, traditions, knowledge and operation of drama in educational settings. The thesis examines the existence and location of the community of drama as education, reviews the discourse of the community, and seeks to understand previous attempts at demythologising. This thesis proposes a critical understanding of the idea of myth in order that it can be used in a positive and beneficial manner. Utilising a post-modern critical research methodology, it constructs a bricolage of theoretical perspectives that collectively are used to locate, identify and interrogate areas of myth. A new typography of myth reveals four dominant areas of operation, and examines the manner in which myths impact upon the educational and cultural institutions in which they occur. The forces that conceive of, operate and perpetuate myth are understood to be language, power and ideology. These elements operate in conjunction with each other, with human agency at the helm. The thesis is in nine chapters. Chapter 1 sets the scene and introduces the range of the research. It is followed by Chapter 2 which seeks to put in place a range of theoretical perspectives upon which the methodology is constructed. Chapter 3 provides further theoretical insight into the location of the research, and Chapter 4 constructs a critical mythic bricolage, defines its usage, and proposes a contemporary typology of myth. Chapter 5 identifies the ‘Point of Entry Text’ – the primary school drama curriculum in the Republic of Ireland, and deals with the category of governing myths. Chapter 6 is concerned with traditional myths, Chapter 7 examines epistemological myths, and Chapter 8 teases out operational myths. Finally, Chapter 9 looks to the future of myth after demythologising, and seeks to begin engaging with the inevitable process of remythologising.
... While embodied learning through drama might be a threat in some contexts, in others it is embraced as an opportunity or an imperative. Gallagher (2002a) explains that drama's capacities to explore relations in diverse communities lies in its dialectical and embodied features. She takes up Britzman's (2001) challenge when she asks what we make of "wild thoughts" in the classroom, the kind of thinking that requires courage and imagination. ...
Article
My first exposure to Brecht and his theories was as a high school drama student. One of our year twelve assessment tasks was to write and perform our own Brechtian drama using three or more alienation techniques. I wrote a piece about Religion and Fundamentalism, an issue that I felt strongly about at the time. By carefully following my teacher’s instructions and adhering to the assessment criteria I received a VHA. I concluded from this experience that political theatre could be made by following a simple recipe and combining key ingredients. As my knowledge of theatre and my own creative practice developed I came to understand the great complexity of Brechtian theory and the extreme difficulty of creating effective political theatre, that is, theatre that changes the world. Brecht’s theories have been so thoroughly absorbed into contemporary theatre practice that we no longer identify the techniques of Epic Theatre as necessarily political, nor do we acknowledge its radical origins. I have not yet seen a professional production of a Brechtian play but I’ve absorbed on countless occasions the brilliant reinterpretations of Brecht’s theories within the work of contemporary dramatists. My approach to creating political drama is eclectic and irreverent and I’m prepared to beg borrow and steal from the cannon of political theatre and popular media to create a drama that works, a drama that is both entertaining and provocative. Hoods is an adaptation for young audiences of my original play Kingswood Kids (2001). The process of re-purposing Kingwood Kids to Hoods has been a long and complex one. The process has triggered an analysis of my own creative practice and theory, and demanded an in-depth engagement with the theories and practice of key political theatre makers, most notably Brecht and Boal and more contemporary theatre makers such as Churchill, Kane, and Zeal Theatre. The focus of my exegesis is an inquiry into how the dramatist can create a theatre of currency that challenges the dominant culture and provokes critical thinking and political engagement in young audiences. It will particularly examine Brecht’s theory of alienation and argue its continued relevance, exploring how Brechtian techniques can be applied and re-interpreted through an in-depth analysis of my two works for young people, Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt. For the purposes of this short exegesis I have narrowed the inquiry by focusing on four key areas: Transformation, Structure, Pretext, Metatext.
Article
Preface. Abbreviations and Acronyms. Part I: Refashioning Gender Relations. 1. Revisiting Gender in the 1990s. 2. Changing Gender Patterns in Education. 3. Challenging Victorian Values. Part II: Social Policy and Education Reform. 4. Motherhood and Women's Work in the Welfare State. 5. Schooling, Teachers and Feminism. 6. Markets, Competition and Performance. Part III: New Generations of Girls and Boys. 7. Schoolgirls and Social Change. 8. Schoolboys and Social Change. 9. Closing the Gender Gap in Education?. Authors' Note on Further Reading. References and Bibliography. Index.
Article
The concept of border and border crossing has important implications for how we theorize cultural politics, power, ideology, pedagogy and critical intellectual work. This completely revised and updated edition takes these areas and draws new connections between postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies and critical pedagogy. Highly relevant to the times which we currently live, Giroux reflects on the limits and possibilities of border crossings in the twenty-first century and argues that in the post-9/11 world, borders have not been collapsing but vigorously rebuilt. The author identifies the most pressing issues facing critical educators at the turn of the century and discusses topics such as the struggle over the academic canon; the role of popular culture in the curriculum; and the cultural war the New Right has waged on schools. New sections deal with militarization in public spaces, empire building, and the cultural politics of neoliberalism. Those interested in cultural studies, critical race theory, education, sociology and speech communication will find this a valuable source of information.