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E(Lab)orating performance: transnationalism and blended learning in the theatre classroom
Abstract
E(Lab)orating Performance is a transnational collaborative teaching and learning project involving Massey University (New Zealand), University of Cape Town (South Africa), UWC Mahindra College (India), and University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). The project was devised to facilitate creative engagements between students and educators in theatre and performance classrooms at the participating institutions. By using online platforms to create transnational teaching and learning spaces, the project explored the affordances and the limitations of blended learning approaches to ‘live’ disciplines like Theatre and Performance Studies. In addition to exploring aspects of blended learning, the project was guided by an assumption that it might facilitate transnational cultural citizenship, through which participating students and educators might develop cosmopolitan engagements and openness to cultural differences. This paper critically examines the E(Lab)orating Performance project by providing an overview, a reflection on its various productive mistranslations, and a consideration of its effectiveness as a teaching and learning initiative.
... They defined cosmopolitanism as a personal perspective that entails ethical and philosophical orientations to include worldviews, dispositions, or identity (Bakkabulindi & Ssempebwa, 2011;Bilecen, 2013;Coryell, Spencer, & Sehin, 2014;Guardado, 2010;McNiff, 2013;Williams, 2013). Characteristics of cosmopolitanism include an individual's openness (Froese, Jommersbach, & Klautzsch, 2013;Schein, 2008), commitment to multicultural sensitivity (Anderson, 2011;Cloete, Dinesh, Hazou, & Matchett, 2015;Guardado, 2010;Starkey, 2007;Szelényi & Rhoads, 2013), awareness of difference (Bamber, 2015;Sidhu & Dalla'Alba, 2012), development of cultural competence (Nilep, 2009;Ye & Kelly, 2011), adaptability (Coryell et al., 2014;Guardado, 2010), utilization of intellectual devices (Cloete et al., 2015;Sobré, 2009), and employment of appropriate discourse tools (Amadasi & Holliday, 2017) These attributes were suggested as helping individuals interact sensitively and effectively across different cultures, linguistic settings, and political economies. Others posited that cosmopolitanism articulates a sense of belonging in multiple communities (Gu & Schweisfurth, 2015;Khandekar, 2010), while Saito (2017) described cosmopolitanism as imagining a situation where world citizens belong to one community (through the common language of English). ...
... They defined cosmopolitanism as a personal perspective that entails ethical and philosophical orientations to include worldviews, dispositions, or identity (Bakkabulindi & Ssempebwa, 2011;Bilecen, 2013;Coryell, Spencer, & Sehin, 2014;Guardado, 2010;McNiff, 2013;Williams, 2013). Characteristics of cosmopolitanism include an individual's openness (Froese, Jommersbach, & Klautzsch, 2013;Schein, 2008), commitment to multicultural sensitivity (Anderson, 2011;Cloete, Dinesh, Hazou, & Matchett, 2015;Guardado, 2010;Starkey, 2007;Szelényi & Rhoads, 2013), awareness of difference (Bamber, 2015;Sidhu & Dalla'Alba, 2012), development of cultural competence (Nilep, 2009;Ye & Kelly, 2011), adaptability (Coryell et al., 2014;Guardado, 2010), utilization of intellectual devices (Cloete et al., 2015;Sobré, 2009), and employment of appropriate discourse tools (Amadasi & Holliday, 2017) These attributes were suggested as helping individuals interact sensitively and effectively across different cultures, linguistic settings, and political economies. Others posited that cosmopolitanism articulates a sense of belonging in multiple communities (Gu & Schweisfurth, 2015;Khandekar, 2010), while Saito (2017) described cosmopolitanism as imagining a situation where world citizens belong to one community (through the common language of English). ...
... Others further argued for critical tenets of moral cosmopolitanism. These researchers asserted that cosmopolitanism requires a critical stance and personal cultural reflexology (Amadasi & Holliday, 2017;Bamber, 2015;Cloete et al., 2015;Schein, 2008). While Bamber's (2015) understanding of cosmopolitanism calls for recognition of all people's equal moral worth and agency, Schein (2008) clarified that cosmopolitanism in the United States necessitates "an openness to the world that is itself an affirmation of a rooted, immutable, and deeply raced, gendered, and classed national character" (p. ...
This review of the literature offers an analysis of ways in which the theory and pedagogical concepts of cosmopolitanism have been employed across research in adult education contexts. Twenty-nine research articles and dissertations on cosmopolitanism and adult education, conducted in various geographical locations and adult education contexts, were selected for the analysis. The article presents how researchers define and theorize cosmopolitanism, the purposes for using cosmopolitanism tenets in the studies, and conclusions that the findings proffer about cosmopolitanism for adult learning, teaching, and continuing and professional development. The review concludes with implications for practice and future research.
... Dialogic communication in collaborative learning environments helps learners from different cultural contexts negotiate meanings through ongoing dialogue so that their consensual vision of the world can be built (Alt, 2017;Lam, 2006;Laxman & Holt, 2017;Megele, 2015;Sorensen, 2007;Verbaan, 2008). Online platforms especially help students to more freely contextualize the original meaning of issues to constantly negotiate, redefine, and transform their nomadic and transient identities (Ahamer et al., 2011;Cloete, Dinesh, Hazou, & Matchett, 2015;Kim, 2011). As shaping a global mind is a way of becoming beyond ethnicity, religion, age, and other physical boundaries, a fluid type of meaning-making is necessary (Damico & Baildon, 2011;Pinar, 2009). ...
... conversations evolve to redefine reality through their negotiations (Cloete et al., 2015). The original meaning is never produced as a replica but transformed so that every iteration transforms and enriches the meaning. ...
Since culturally diverse people need to collaborate in the 21 st century, Higher Education adopted global citizenship education (GCE) to promote a cosmopolitan mindset. Learners in the digital era can use various modes of communication, exerting individual agency so that learners can construct global minds through their communication experiences. Blended learning based on learner-centered knowledge construction may provide extended spaces where learners can shape a personally trusted and collectively consensual vision of the global mind. A qualitative evaluation case study explored learners' perception shifts regarding autonomous identity formations and confidence-trust-building in a blended course under GCE. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, semi-structured in-depth online interviews and document analyses on the archive data were adopted to triangulate learners' perceptions and instructors' observations. Findings showed that individuals could shape their global citizen identities through a performative loop of reflection and interaction provided via a blended format. The participants' comfort zone levels influenced different identity formation paths. However, their goals, in the end, were aligned under the idea of engaging in local community activities through lifelong commitment. Intrapersonal and interactional forms of communication solidified self-confidence and collective trust through synergically linked blended learning activities. Overall, global citizen identities have gradually evolved while self-confidence and trust in others have gradually increased through different communication steps. The significance of the study lies in reinforcing the results of prior research about performativity-oriented GCE through a community of people practicing in blended learning environments. Members' hands-on activities while building self-confidence and collective trust through communication helped them shape their collective identity. In these processes, individuals' intrapersonal communication seemed to play an insightful role in effectively connecting reflective and interactive activities. Enhanced credibility by replicating this GCE model in future studies will ensure various organizations and institutions adopt it to shape their members' global visions and build group cohesion.
This article discusses a case-study revolving around an experiment in transferring online a teaching component on physical theatre. It documents a response to the COVID-19 pandemic when actors, teachers, and students had to find ever more creative ways of working in the digital space. The article argues that working online does not need to refute those values and learning objectives that are typically embedded in performance training, such as interaction, collaboration, and experimentation and adaptation. The article also offers concrete suggestions aimed at facilitating the transition to online teaching.
We have had approximately two decades to experiment with digital pedagogies in the performing arts; yet, no comparative survey exists. This paper provides an overview of digital pedagogies in the performing arts, with an emphasis on theatre and performance but with reference to dance and music. It identifies three paradigms of teaching with technology: the minimalist model, the blended model, and the online-only model. Within the blended model, it identifies three further variations, wherein technology functions as a supplement, as structure, or as infrastructure. The article concludes with a discussion of current issues, including resistance, cost, equity, and diversity.
On 15 September 2000, Australians from all walks of life joined with the performing arts community to stage what is undoubtedly the most spectacular theatrical event in the nation’s history: the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. This ‘world show stopper’,1 as one newspaper termed it, was an emphatically global and local performance, designed not only to capture the imagination of a vast media audience but also to present the nation to itself through popular and allusive iconographies. In line with the generic template for suchevents, the performance explicitly modelled the social values behind Olympism: global democracy founded on harmony and community among individuals, cultures and nations. The local script of such democracy was written as an allegory of postcolonial reconciliation in which a young white schoolgirl, Nikki Webster, travelled through a potted version of Australia’s history guided by Aboriginal songman, Djakapurra Munyarryun. Notable segments of the performance included ‘Awakenings’, an indigenous welcome featuring over 1000 dancers from clans across the country (see Figure 1); ‘Arrivals’, a float parade celebrating immigration from all corners of the world; and ‘Eternity’, a tribute to contemporary society in which some 12,000 performers participating in the ceremony merged in a triumphant finale.
The paper reviews representative research into blended learning in universities, taking into account the methodology used, the focus of the research and the relationship between the two. In terms of methodology, most research was classifiable as case-studies, survey-based studies or comparative studies. A small number of studies take a comparatively more holistic approach and one of the outcomes from this review is a recommendation for more holistic studies to be undertaken. In the studies reviewed, the focus of the research is often related to the degree of methodological complexity. That is, less methodologically elaborated studies tend to have a more specific focus, while the studies employing a more complex methodology tend to report more varied aspects of the students' learning experience. It is argued that educationally useful research on blended learning needs to focus on the relationships between different modes of learning (for example, face-to-face and on-line) and especially on the nature of their integration. In particular, such research needs to generate usable evidence about the quality of the students' learning experiences and learning outcomes. In turn, this demands appropriately powerful methodologies, rooted in a firm theoretical foundation.
Outlining some of the background thinking to the conference that preceded this volume, the editors identified what they called two strands within cosmopolitanism. They said, ‘for some theorists, envisioning a politics of cosmopolitanism refers to possibilities surrounding global democracy and world citizenship. For some it means fostering new frameworks of alliance-making among social movements, locally and globally. Others who have invoked cosmopolitanism advocate a non-communitarian, post-identity politics of overlapping interest and heterogeneous or hybrid publics, and still others draw upon the term to challenge the conventional notions of belonging, identity and citizenship’.
As at the time of the Great Depression, the Americans were caught up in events over which they appeared to have no control. Life was changed quickly by this war, and higher education in Kentucky soon adjusted to the exigencies of wartime. Kentucky college students were already leaving for the military, government posts, or civilian jobs long before Pearl Harbor and the formal declaration of war. World War II had a profound and lasting impact on higher education in Kentucky. The GI Bill in Kentucky suddenly changed higher education in the state forever. At the end of World War II, three studies were conducted that suggested change in the public higher education system of the commonwealth. All the public universities now had their individual charges from the Council on Higher Education. Everyone understood that the heyday of the post-World War II years was over. Enrollments continued to stagnate or at best grow slowly at public universities.
Acknowledgments Introduction Claims to Global Culture: America Abroad Du Bois's Color and Democracy and the "Red" Color Line The Public face of the "Third-World" Writer States of Theory and the Absence of States The Contradictions of Binary Thinking: Cosmopolitanism and Method Nizan Fights the Watchdogs: The Obvious Must Be Explained Cultural Studies and Colonial Progress Anna Deveare Smith, or Authenticity without Apologoes The Culture of the Transnational Corporation If the Nation Is Dead, Why Doesn't Henry Kissinger Know It? George Orwell as Julia Kristeva: The 1950s in the 1990s Mangerial Training Manuals: What Is National in the Transnational Gatt Poetics and the Traveling Critic: Cosmopolitanism and the Explorer's Eye The Sublimation of Poverty: New York's Lower East Side "Marcos" and Cortazar: Two Alternatives to Contemporary Travel Narrative The Literary in the Light of the Nobel Prize: Morrison and Walcott A Few Thoughts on What the Postcolonial Leaves Out Cosmopolitanism's American Base: C. L. R. James in New York, 1950 Socialist Desire: Ernst Bloch in America Cosmopolitanism, America, and the Cold War The Struggle for Happiness-Winning in Desperate Times by Loving What Is James's Art Exceptional Americanism and the U.S. Mass Culture Debate The World Cuban: Alejo Carpentier and Cuban Popular Music From Paris to Havana Ethnographic Surrealism: The Red and the Black Salsa and the Cuban Image Reading Mass Culture through Youth The Indigenous and the In-Between Conclusion Notes Index
The social integration of students within a campus community is vital in enhancing their college experiences. Researchers have sought to determine how best to promote successful social integration for university students. Traditionally, on-campus orientations and residence hall activities have been used to foster student social integration. However, Facebook and other social networking sites (SNSs) can be used for social integration among students in ways that were never before possible. It is important that student-affairs professionals explore the supportive roles for this that SNSs like Facebook might play, since successful student adjustment within a campus is positively correlated with student retention rates.
College students are already using Facebook to bolster their social networks within the university, but it is worth considering the advantages and disadvantages of promoting the use of SNSs for social integration. Facebook is favored because it offers low levels of self-disclosure in social interactions, it increases the social capital of the university, and it offers students with a unique means of acquiring academic support from both their professors and their peers. Unfortunately, extensive Facebook use can also create a social skills deficit in students, lead students to experience information overload, and cause them to shirk their academic responsibilities.
Facebook is neither a panacea for student engagement nor a signal of the end of meaningful interpersonal connections on campus. Student-affairs professionals should become aware of the ways that students engage with SNSs to leverage opportunities for furthering student integration while remaining aware of the limitations for community building that SNSs present.
Created in an American rehearsal room, exported to an English workshop, and developed in Australia, among other places, ‘headphone verbatim theatre’ – also called ‘recorded delivery’ – is a truly global genre. In this article Caroline Wake focuses on the work of two pioneering practitioners, Briton Alecky Blythe and Australian Roslyn Oades, in order to trace the form's history as well as its methods, genres, and theories. In doing so, she considers how audio technology has evolved over the past decade and how the display or disguise of headphones has affected both the production and reception of the form. She identifies three dominant genres of headphone verbatim theatre (the social crisis play, the social justice play, and the social portrait play, as well as three main performance modes – the epic, the naturalistic, and the mixed. The epic has been the most successful thus far, but the naturalistic and mixed modes are, in turn, begetting new ones. Finally, she suggests that in the same way that headphones have rejuvenated verbatim theatre, they might also reinvigorate the discourse on it by offering the opportunity to go beyond the politics of voice and visibility and to turn, instead, to listening. Caroline Wake is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia at the University of New South Wales. Her research examines cultural responses to and representations of refugees and asylum-seekers as well as the role of testimony in law, performance, and visual culture. Her work has previously appeared in journals such as Text & Performance Quarterly, Modern Drama, and History & Memory. She is the co-editor, with Bryoni Trezise, of Visions and Revisions: Performance, Memory, Trauma (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013).
Web-based learning has made learning content much more freely and instantaneously available to students who can download course notes and readings with a single mouse click. Facebook is one of many Web 2.0 tools – wikis, delicious, YouTube, podcasts – that are listed as having potential applications for teaching and learning. Moreover, it has been argued that the current generation of youth, often described as Net Geners or Digital Natives, may be resistant to traditional methods of teaching and learning. This article explores student use of Facebook at the University of Cape Town, as well as lecturer engagement with students via the new social media. Drawing on a virtual ethnography and qualitative interviews, this article shows that while there are potential positive benefits to using Facebook in teaching and learning, particularly for the development of educational micro-communities, certain challenges, including ICT literacy and uneven access, remain pertinent.
At a drama studies program review meeting, the chair wielded a fact sheet crafted by the program’s founders in the late 1960s emphasizing the importance of producing scholars and artists. As the question of form is integral to the production of knowledge or content in theater’s disciplinary structure, such an objective appears rather agreeable and necessary. But the bifurcation of form and content started to rear its ugly head when it became evident that reconfiguring the program would require diversifying the curriculum beyond its Eurocentric and practice-heavy focus. “But what about Ibsen and Chekhov?” one senior faculty member cried, even though those playwrights were already duplicated in several classes. “The students need to know their own culture.” That included Shakespeare, whose standing was so unshakeable it was simply a core requirement. With cursory acknowledgment of global frameworks, the small department voted in a class titled Non-Western Theater History and Practice as a kind of antidote for its Western bias, and reinforced offerings in playwriting, acting, and production based on the European and U.S.-American repertory. This performative encounter is the sine qua non of U.S. theater departments that profess to be “globalizing” but have a vested interest in what that means. In a rather striking way, it is also a version of the colonial scenario that designates knowledge and technique to the West. In such a scenario, the rest of the world and its theatrical forms are tokenized as illegible or irrelevant entities, while the logic of U.S. and European (artistic) exceptionalism is internalized as an unquestioned epistemology. The “need to know” argument is actually a mandate for all students to learn the theater history and vocabulary of Europe as their “own” culture. Excursions to the exotic non-West are often couched as exciting but nonessential supplements
Langeberg Youth Arts for Change Project: Interim Report.” Cape Town
- Mothertongue Project
Scholarly Reflections on the Selfie's Academic Insights for the Thinking World
- Mark R Leary
Scholarly Reflections on the Selfie
- Karen Nelson-Field
Nelson-Field, Karen. 2013. Scholarly Reflections on the Selfie. Oxford University Press Blog.
Accessed May 19, 2015. http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/scholarly-reflections-on-the-selfiewoty-2013/.
It's not about You! - Dramatic Service Learning.” Paper presented at the University of Cape Town's Teaching and Learning Conference
- Veronica Baxter
- Sara Matchett
s Academic Insights for the Thinking World
- Mark R Leary
Leary, Mark R. 2013. Scholarly Reflections on the Selfie. Oxford University Press Blog: Oxford
University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World. Accessed May 19, 2015. http://
blog.oup.com/2013/11/scholarly-reflections-on-the-selfie-woty-2013/.
Paper presented at the University of Cape Town's Teaching and Learning Conference
- References Baxter
- Sara Matchett
References
Baxter, Veronica, and Sara Matchett. 2013. "It's not about You! -Dramatic Service Learning."
Paper presented at the University of Cape Town's Teaching and Learning Conference,
October 21.