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Why Bring Students to the Theatre? An Exploration of the Value of Professional Theatre for Children
Etymologically, distance comes from the Latin distāntia: ‘standing apart’, hence meanings of separation, distance, remoteness, difference, diversity. In daily life people or objects can be ‘placed at a distance’, ‘made to appear distant’, ‘kept distant from’, or ‘outrun’. In figurative speech distance expresses degrees of remoteness, as in ‘ideal disjunction, mental separation’. In interpersonal relations distance signifies detachment in interaction, ‘keeping and knowing one’s distance’, or simply an aloof or deferential attitude. In psychology it designates reactions for escaping engaging, in therapy and special education it is technique used to help with building identity and communication through symbols and referential language. In combat sports distancing is a technical terminus for the appropriate selection of distance between oneself and a combatant throughout an encounter. In dramatic art distancing may designate an aesthetic principle, delineating the boundaries of fiction and reality through the mental faculty referred to as psychic distance (Bullough), or it can be a description of a poetics, including uses of stylistic devices, such as rhetoric figures or distancing effects (Shklovsky, Brecht, Heathcote).
The aesthetic is at the heart of all our work in theatre and drama, yet it remains a term that eludes definition, and perhaps rightly so. The art of drama and theatre is complex, culturally situated, and forever renegotiating the expectations and boundaries of previous work. That which excites or moves us in the art is also complex, culturally situated, and escaping definition through words. But because it eludes firm definition does not mean it is not important to consider, describe, and attempt to understand, particularly so because as teachers and community workers we often talk about ‘aesthetic learning’ as something that is not only particular to the arts in education but also of significant value.
One of the results of globalisation is that increasing numbers of students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds come together to learn in one space. This article theorises an ethical approach to this challenge for drama educators, drawing principally on theories of transnational fiction (Stephen Clingman) (1) , cosmopolitan ethics (Kwame Anthony Appiah) (2) and cultural understandings of space (Doreen Massey) (3) . The central metaphor of drama as a means for 'navigating boundaries', it argues, is more politically apt if less 'sexy' than Giroux's more commonly cited metaphor of 'border crossing'. The relationship between this theory and an ethical drama praxis is illustrated by examples drawn from work carried out by two Asian postgraduate students currently studying at the University of Warwick.
This paper seeks out the gaps between localised accounts of drama's efficacy in terms of producing transformations in students’ behaviours and sense of identities and the theoretical accounts of such transformations offered in the textual discourses of the field of Drama in Education. Drawing on a range of post-colonial and emancipatory discourses the paper tentatively suggests certain pre-conditions in the pedagogic and artistic intentions of drama practitioners that might indicate that personal and social transformations in drama could be the rule rather than exceptional ‘miracles’. These pre-conditions include a rejection of ‘domesticated’ and intra-aesthetic pedagogies of drama in favour of a socially committed pedagogy that regards students and the realities in which they dwell as ‘unfinished’ and ‘waiting to be created’.
In this article, Wendy Luttrell reflects on key decisions she made in her own research in order to illuminate reflexivity for other ethnographic researchers. Luttrell addresses the crisis of representation in ethnography, advocating that researchers name the tensions, contradictions, and power imbalances that they encounter in their work, rather than attempting to eliminate them. The author reexamines her own study of working-class American women's life stories to make the case for what she terms "good enough" research methods. Through her own self-reflective lens, Luttrell describes several key realizations she made throughout the research process, and traces seven decisions she made as a result.
The idea of postmodernity is now well past its sell-by date. By the time it entered into popular consciousness in the early 1990s, it had already become something of a tired academic cliché. The most avant-garde cultural theorists have long since moved on to post-postmodernity; while others have joined the swelling backlash in favour of distinctly 'retro' theoretical positions such as political economy and the so-called 'new historicism'. Perhaps the greatest irony of all this is that postmodernism has been so easily accommodated within the academy. Indeed, some would argue that, in its esoteric and tortuous language and its apparent retreat from mundane empirical realities, postmodernist theory was always a quintessentially academic movement. Yet what seems to have been forgotten here is that postmodernity represents a fundamental challenge to established forms of education - to traditional conceptions of knowledge and learning, and to the institutional forms in which they are embedded. In this paper, I want to return to confront this postmodern challenge to education. My aim is not to provide yet another recycled account of postmodernist theories. Nor do I seek to offer yet another abstract critique of teachers' everyday practices, from my privileged vantage point in the academy. Such analyses generally seem to amount to little more than rhetorical exhortation; and when it comes to spelling out the implications for classroom practice, they are often astonishingly evasive (see Buckingham, 1996). In this paper, I want to engage with the implications of postmodernity specifically in relation to media education. I want to consider whether media education is in fact necessarily a 'modernist' enterprise; and indeed, to what extent it needs to remain so. And I want to address these issues by drawing on research into specific aspects of classroom practice in schools.
This paper explores spatial theory, and particularly a Foucauldian analysis of space, power, and the subject, as a frame within which to examine moves toward security in North American urban schools. We bring into play empirical data from an ethnographic study of New York City and Toronto schools where policies and technologies of record-keeping, identification-verifying, and spatial arrangements are producing altered experiences of subjectivity and the ways in which youth, workers, and researchers experience public (school) space. What is possible to know in ethnographic studies of these new high-security school sites? We argue that notions of ‘risk’ and ‘otherness’ in the nation state, and the exploitation of real fears in the wake of real school violence, have permitted a culture of acute surveillance that significantly alters the enterprise of school-based, ethnographic research.
This article examines the particular strength of theatre to raise questions about relations of gender and race. The authors consider the ‘rights’ of youth and teachers in schools to use drama to critique their cultural contexts and connect these educational struggles to those of broader political, cultural, and social democratic life. The empirical work examined addresses the implications of challenging normative constructions of racial and gendered subjectivity in urban schools within the context of youth performances of both the social and artistic kind. The theatre experiences and ‘controversial theatre productions’ discussed in this article challenge notions of ‘official multiculturalism’ and ask questions about how—and to what effects—drama ‘rocks the boat’ in contemporary struggles of social cohesion and social justice.
This article reports on an impact assessment study, conducted between 2007 and 2009, of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario's (ETFO) Poverty and Education Project, an intervention which encouraged educators to challenge their assumptions about poverty and explore collaborative opportunities to mitigate the effects of poverty in their schools. A touring theatre production (Danny, King of the Basement), professional development in drama, supporting curriculum documents, and other financial and material resources were provided by the Federation to a selection of schools serving students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds across the province. Our purpose was to understand the impact and sustainability of an applied theatre intervention on a school's ability to address the issue of local poverty effectively. Our findings report on the role that the applied theatre intervention played in effecting change in relationships, initiating dialogue, and deepening understanding of social issues. Our analysis demonstrates that the applied theatre intervention had a positive effect on pedagogical relationships and acted as a catalyst in opening up dialogue between teachers and students, helping both to explore new conceptions of teaching and learning in communities facing economic challenges.
In this paper, the authors consider early results from their ethnographic research in urban drama classrooms by parsing the aesthetic and social imperatives at play in the classroom. Moved by the observation that teachers and students alike seem to be pursuing elusive aesthetic and social ideals, the authors draw on Judith Butler's notion of ‘melancholia’ to explain the feeling of disappointment that sometimes follows difficult drama work – the sense, as a teacher in one of the research sites put it, that ‘it could have been so much better’. Reflecting on a larger international research project, ‘Urban School Performances: The interplay, through live and digital drama, of local–global knowledge about student engagement’ (USP) project, the authors illustrate and theorise this concept of disappointment using qualitative data from two urban Toronto drama classrooms. On the surface, one of these sites was focused on aesthetics and the other on social development, but the authors dig deeper to consider the subtler values and outcomes that are made available by ethnographic research. This partly leads to a consideration of how students, teachers and researchers alike are each burdened with a responsibility to ‘perform’ and ‘advocate’.
How are children―and their parents―affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children.
Key Concepts in Theatre Drama Education provides the first comprehensive survey of contemporary research trends in theatre/drama education. It is an intriguing rainbow of thought, celebrating a journey across three fields of scholarship: theatre, education and modes of knowing. Hitherto no other collection of key concepts has been published in theatre /drama education. Fifty seven entries, written by sixty scholars from across the world aim to convey the zeitgeist of the field. The book’s key innovation lies in its method of writing, through collaborative networking, an open peer-review process, and meaning-making involving all contributors. Within the framework of key-concept entries, readers will find valuable judgments and the viewpoints of researchers from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. The volume clearly shows that drama/theatre educators and researchers have created a language, with its own grammar and lucid syntax. The concepts outlined convey the current knowledge of scholars, highlighting what they consider significant. Entries cover interdependent topics on teaching and learning, aesthetics and ethics, curricula and history, culture and community, various populations and their needs, theatre for young people, digital technology, narrative and pedagogy, research methods, Shakespeare and Brecht, other various modes of theatre and the education of theatre teachers. It aims to serve as the standard reference book for theatre/drama education researchers, policymakers, practitioners and students around the world. A basic companion for researchers, students, and teachers, this sourcebook outlines the key concepts that make the field prominent in the sphere of Arts Education.
Historiography, or the writing of history, has gained significant ground in theatre scholarship over the past few decades, but its impact on children’s theatre, or Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) as it is now commonly referred to, has been generally ignored. Nonetheless, the way in which historians constructed a narrative, derived from the critical examination of their selection and interpretation of facts that is colored by their own ideological positions and identity locations, has greatly impacted TYA. The field is fraught with myths and axioms perpetuated through history in various cultural and sociological contexts.1 From Mark Twain in the United States to Alexandra Gozenpud in Soviet Russia, writers have claimed “firsts,” “most significants,” and “influentials,” constructing an image of the field that was at the very least incomplete, periodizing and situating it in a liminal and limiting frame of what Roger Bedard coined as “theatre-but-not-theatre” (“Negotiating” 98).
Because of its powerful socializing effects, the school has always been a site of cultural, political, and academic conflict. In an age where terms such as ’hard-to-teach,’ and ’at-risk’ beset our pedagogical discourses, where students have grown up in systems plagued by anti-immigrant, anti-welfare, ’zero-tolerance’ rhetoric, how we frame and understand the dynamics of classrooms has serious ethical implications and powerful consequences. Using theatre and drama education as a special window into school life in four urban secondary schools in Toronto and New York City, The Theatre of Urban examines the ways in which these schools reflect the cultural and political shifts in big city North American schooling policies, politics, and practices of the early twenty-first century. The Theatre of Urban not only explores the very notion of performance in a novel and interesting way, it also provides new insights into the conflicts that often erupt in these highly charged school spaces.
Canada boasts a remarkable number of talented theatre artists, scholars, and educators. How Theatre Educates brings together essays and other contributions from members of these diverse communities to advocate for a broader and more inclusive understanding of theatre as an educative force. Organized to reflect the variety of contexts in which professionals are making, researching, and teaching drama, this anthology presents a wide range of articles, essays, reminiscences, songs, poems, plays, and interviews to elucidate the relationship between theatre practice and pedagogy, and to highlight the overriding theme: namely, that keeping ‘education’ – with its curriculum components of dramatic literature and theatre studies in formal school settings – separate from ‘theatre’ outside of the classroom, greatly diminishes both enterprises.In this volume, award-winning playwrights, directors, actors, and scholars reflect on the many ways in which those working in theatre studios, school classrooms, and on stages throughout the country are engaged in teaching and learning processes that are particular to the arts and especially genres of theatre. Situating theatre practitioners as actors in a larger socio-cultural enterprise, How Theatre Educates is a fascinating and lively inquiry into pedagogy and practice that will be relevant to teachers and students of drama, educators, artists working in theatre, and the theatre-going public.
The varied terminology used when specialist teachers discuss drama/theatre education gives an indication that teaching the elements of formal expression in drama/theatre education is by no means a consistent or even an uncontested practice. While some specialists in the field refer to their work as ‘theatre’ education, others use variations on the term ‘drama’ to identify their work – creative drama, process drama, developmental drama, drama as a learning medium, or simply drama. When the term ‘theatre’ is used, it may be implied that formal expression will be an element in the curriculum because the production of a play before an audience involves a wide range of decisions about expressive elements in acting style, set and costume design, etc. Some of the approaches identified by the term ‘drama’, particularly the American tradition derived from Winifred Ward’s creative dramatics, also recommend that teachers lead their students toward a stage production, implicitly including consideration of the elements of formal expression. However, other drama educators have clearly rejected the option of a public performance of student work and, to some extent, the implied attention to theatre form. Some of these practitioners address aspects of formal expression within the context of classroom drama while refraining, in whole or in part, from teaching the aesthetics or techniques of theatrical production. Before it is possible to consider ways in which the formal elements of theatre may be included in a drama/theatre education program, it is necessary to acknowledge the dichotomy that has emerged between those educators espousing the art form widely known as theatre and those who either reject it outright or limit its application.
Mapping memory onto the landscape of drama and theatre education can help illuminate the diverse ways in which practices of memory are made manifest in a multiplicity of aesthetic forms across the discipline(s). Drama education has the capacity to situate participants between history and memory, offering a process for constructing and rehearsing our own identities among the narratives of others, present and past.
Audience participation of some kind has been at the heart of much theatre for young people, just as it has been for other theatrical forms that claim an educational or ‘interventionist’ role. Arguably, all theatre is participatory to a degree. Even the audience sitting in formal rows in a traditional auditorium are not passive: their engagement in the drama is an active process of de-coding, responding, and constructing meaning from the variety of stimuli presented. The focus here, however, is with theatrical activity that transgresses the traditional boundary-lines between stage and auditorium and aims to generate an engagement from the audience that is ‘overt and direct, and will often be physical, active and sometimes verbal in form’ (Jackson 2007, p. 136). While audience participation has a rich history throughout the twentieth century (from 1930s agit-prop to Brecht’s lehrstücke to children’s theatre), it is the search for theatrical ways of communicating information, and for generating active learning, that has produced some of the most innovative and challenging forms.
The activity of theatre performed by adults for young audiences (TYA), has, over the last forty years in particular, coalesced as a loosely unified field – a recognizable and coherent economic, artistic and social structure. While there is much diversity in TYA, the field coheres around at least one (obvious) trait: the production of theatre for children. The relative coherence or incoherence of the field varies in terms of the questions posed (Smelser, 1992, pp. 22–25), but all theatre for young audiences occupies a unique discursive and practical “space,” born of the union of the complex and often seemingly disparate, culturally-inscribed worlds of “children” and “theatre.” The complexities of this relationship become clearer in considering the degree to which TYA, as a field, both promulgates and is marked and contained by multiple ideological dimensions. While I am aware of the problems arising from considering TYA as a seemingly essentialized field, it is useful to explicate some of what Eisenstadt explains, as both the “order maintaining and order transforming dimensions” of the social structure (1992, p. 83).
Over thirty years ago – practically in the dawn of arts education in the United States – Coming to our Senses: the Significance of the Arts for American Education was published. This report, funded by the Rockefeller Arts, Education, and Americans Panel (1977), makes many assertions about the value of the arts in accomplishing the overall mission of the educational system. It was one of the first documents to spell out a three–pronged approach to arts education, and it advocated making all three components essential and interdependent if the results are to be demonstrable and effective. The three ingredients in their recommendations for an effective arts program are arts instruction, arts processes incorporated into the classroom, and arts experiences. In Chapter Three of my recent volume, TYA: Essays on the Theatre for Young Audiences (2006), I have described these three areas as a three-legged stool, providing a solid foundation in the arts, maximizing the positive influences on the child’s total education, and significantly improving the chances of that individual child reaching his or her fullest potential as a human being and contributor to society
Criticism refers to the public act of discerning, analyzing, interpreting, and judging theatre performances and dramatic literature. Its artistic purpose is to convey one person’s aesthetic experience of a theatrical event and its observable “effects” on other spectators by justifying one’s opinions with artistic criteria and evidence interpreted from performances. In contrast, Elliot Eisner refers to appreciation as the private act of appraising a performance’s artistic qualities, but with no obligation to justify one’s opinions about its emotional effects other than to articulate one’s culturespecific criteria (1991, p. 85). As Wolfgang Schneider reminds us, Goethe (1819) noted “three types of [spectators]: one who appreciates without criticizing, another who criticizes without appreciation, and the intermediate one who appreciatively criticizes and critically appreciates; this latter one essentially reproduces a work of art again” (1995, p. 71).
This book is a journey into the dual territory of educational and theatrical settings. It advances the knowledge in these settings by touching upon provocative questions, by dealing with the limitations and challenging the new possibilities of theatre for young people. It is an attempt to bring intellectual rigour and some theoretical perspectives drawn from recent theatre and aesthetic theory to the field of theatre for young people. It fills the gap in the literature on theatre for young audiences. The author poses questions of the work that are penetrating and thought provoking and clearly stem from her own observations of and reflections upon various kinds of children's theatre (CT) and of 'watching children watching' CT over many years. This book is an analysis of images and arguments in theatre for young people. It aims at triggering the reader's interest in this subject as an artistic, educational and cultural phenomenon.
This paper offers a brief reading of the history of theatre education and applied theatre as a way to reflect on the principles and values that have informed their development. It argues that a critical genealogy of this history suggests that theatrical experiments in educational and community settings have always responded creatively and critically to their times. It argues that twenty-first century theatre practitioners are following in this tradition by experimenting with innovative forms of theatre-making that challenge artistic boundaries.
The concept of ‘liveness’ has become a key theme in performance studies, linking important ideas of presence to contrasting perceptions of audiences as passive consumers or active participants. Forming the second part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded investigation into ‘Young Audiences and Live Theatre’, this paper seeks to contribute to this debate by presenting a detailed picture of what the experience of live performance means for one segment of the live theatre audience—teenage school pupils—in one specific context—a school visit to a production of Othello. The paper follows an interconnected chain of responses to the live experience, directed by the process of self-analysis and reflection begun by the research participants themselves. The result is an experiential understanding of how for these young audience members watching live theatre was about far more than simply sitting down and watching a play.
Phenomenological and feminist themes in reconceptualist curriculum theory are used to address the political and social status of teachers and their intellectual preparation for teaching. Arguments are offered for autobiographical studies in education, collaborative modes of learn ing and teaching, and interdisciplinary approaches to liberal arts education.
The site of the performance is largely a cultural expression defining the physical surroundings and conditions in which the audience and performers interact. Similarly, the character of the theatrical occasion is often shaped by the place designated for the event. In contemporary practice and discourse, the concept of theatre has widened, giving rise to flexible spaces and fluctuating perceptions of performance venue. In response to the exigencies of the times, theatre moves away from its traditional sites and places in search of ‘audience’ with the people.
This article reviews the developing literature on anti-oppressive education (i.e., education that works against various forms of oppression) by summarizing and critiquing the four primary approaches that educational researchers have taken in conceptualizing (1) the nature of oppression and (2) the curricula, pedagogies, and policies needed to bring about change. These four approaches to anti-oppressive education are Education for the Other, Education About the Other, Education that Is Critical of Privileging and Othering, and Education that Changes Students and Society. Engaging in anti-oppressive education requires not only. using an amalgam of these four approaches. In order to address the multiplicity and situatedness of oppression and the complexities of teaching and learning educators also constantly need to "look beyond" the field of educational research to explore the possibilities of theories that remain marginalized, including post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives. This article concludes with implications for future research.
What could it mean for educators within the “core disciplines” to teach in ways that challenge multiple forms of oppression? This article explores the implications of various “posts” perspectives on anti-oppressive education—especially poststructuralist perspectives—for social studies, English, mathematics, and science classrooms. The author focuses on two main theoretical constructs: unknowability, multiplicity, and looking beyond the known; and resistance, crisis, and resignifying the self. Implications for teacher education conclude the article.
A major focus for research in preparation programs should be on the practice of administration. For some time, the preparation of educational administrators has been rooted in the traditional liberal arts approach--the approach of a discipline--as a model for preparing the practitioner. Emphasis has shifted to the concept of the accurate identification/diagnosis of the problem and correct assessment of the results and application of research-based knowledge. The research emphasis leans toward decision-making and improvement of practice, although it may relate practice to theory. Examples of dissertation research are provided to demonstrate the problem of translating practice into the theories that seem best suited to explain or describe the problem phenomenon. The problem is not singularly the focus of research, but extends to current faculty untrained in research on practice, to preparation programs, and to faculty who are not active researchers. Appended are preliminary considerations of research issues in educational administrator preparation, a figure of research elements, and a figure of the "5 Strands" preparation program. (19 references) (SI)
In the context of debates on place, space, and identity in a period of globalisation, this article asks whether collaborative arts projects are a means to identity formation for participants. This is of interest, not least, because such projects are outside consumption, the latter more often discussed in work on identity in sociology. Situated perhaps between the arts and the development work of NGOs, such projects also imply a viable, democratic public sphere distinct from a public realm constituted conventionally by urban public spaces or marked by public art. From two contrasting projects within the programme Capital do Nada in Marvila, a social housing district of Lisbon, in 2001, the article argues that as well as contributing to identity formation they have a capacity to evoke the imagination of new social formations. It contextualises the projects, describes them, and argues that they challenge received notions of identity formation based in consumption. Then, referencing Habermas and Fraser's critique of Habermas, and the performative in Arendt and Sennett, the article ends with broader speculation on the relevance of such art work for social theory.
Fieldnotes are central to ethnographic practice, yet there is surprisingly little written about how fieldnotes are constructed. This article reports the results of some interviews with four well-known ethnographers of education who were questioned about their practice. It is designed to be a resource for those new (and, maybe not so new) to ethnography.