Applied theatre research. Radical departures
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468527 , vital:77087 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2015.1085255
- Description: This book is part of the Applied Theatre series, which presents scholarship on different foci around applied theatre practices. The seven case studies of how applied theatre practices can be framed as research methodologies are practically and theoretically useful for students, practitioners and scholars engaged in community-driven, socially engaged theatre work. The book argues a particular approach to arts based research which offers alternatives to traditional research tools such as ‘the interview’ (which often result in participants giving a researcher what they think they want to know or hear) and provides a range of aesthetic research methodologies that aim to harness the language of theatre and performance as an empowering and resistant research tool.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468527 , vital:77087 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2015.1085255
- Description: This book is part of the Applied Theatre series, which presents scholarship on different foci around applied theatre practices. The seven case studies of how applied theatre practices can be framed as research methodologies are practically and theoretically useful for students, practitioners and scholars engaged in community-driven, socially engaged theatre work. The book argues a particular approach to arts based research which offers alternatives to traditional research tools such as ‘the interview’ (which often result in participants giving a researcher what they think they want to know or hear) and provides a range of aesthetic research methodologies that aim to harness the language of theatre and performance as an empowering and resistant research tool.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Disturbing masculinity: gender, performance and ‘violent’ men
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468537 , vital:77088 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2015.1011859
- Description: This article examines a theatrical and social performance by focusing on an open-air festival where a prison theatre group performed. It explores the interplay between the sanctioned violence of the state, in which I became implicated, and the use by the actors of gender performances to disturb identity construction. I explore the ways in which an artistic project that I thought of as resistant to hierarchies and the status quo can suddenly become part of the hegemony and related violence it seeks to resist. The article frames the analysis of the performances by connecting theories around the politics of recognition with applied theatre processes. I argue that the theatre group used performance to negotiate an alternative politics of recognition. I also draw on Judith Butler's use of Hannah Arendt's scholarship on the political importance of appearance to locate the personal and political significance of bodily presence and visibility in public spaces. I suggest that the processes involved in creating theatre and performances, rather than the issue or content of the theatre, are personally and politically significant, particularly in negotiating an alternative identity and recognition for black men labelled violent.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468537 , vital:77088 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2015.1011859
- Description: This article examines a theatrical and social performance by focusing on an open-air festival where a prison theatre group performed. It explores the interplay between the sanctioned violence of the state, in which I became implicated, and the use by the actors of gender performances to disturb identity construction. I explore the ways in which an artistic project that I thought of as resistant to hierarchies and the status quo can suddenly become part of the hegemony and related violence it seeks to resist. The article frames the analysis of the performances by connecting theories around the politics of recognition with applied theatre processes. I argue that the theatre group used performance to negotiate an alternative politics of recognition. I also draw on Judith Butler's use of Hannah Arendt's scholarship on the political importance of appearance to locate the personal and political significance of bodily presence and visibility in public spaces. I suggest that the processes involved in creating theatre and performances, rather than the issue or content of the theatre, are personally and politically significant, particularly in negotiating an alternative identity and recognition for black men labelled violent.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Writing and performing change: the use of writing journals to promote reflexivity in a Drama Studies curriculum
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468549 , vital:77089 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2007.9687857
- Description: What is the role of Drama Studies within the university? What is ‘the university’ and what purpose does it serve? Curzon-Hobson (2002: 181) maintains that ‘if one is to claim anything about the essential nature of the roles or values underpinning higher education, it can only be that it has become a site of increasing flux, ambiguity and inconsistency’. The very concept of ‘university’ and ‘academic knowledge’ has radically shifted with the development of postmodern thinking. ‘The notion of authoritative knowledge has been permanently undermined, for a postmoderist perspective suggests that all knowledge claims are local, partial and contextually specific’ (Luckett 2001: 54). Globally, universities are increasingly required to justify their existence, and we are witnessing a move towards ‘performativity’ (Lemmer 1998), as ‘disciplines are called upon to demonstrate their use-value in the global market’ (Barnett 2000b: 257). The South African context is no different. If, as many scholars have argued, the function of higher education has shifted so that the valued product of a university degree is not so much the quality of learning but the qualification gained (Race 1999), what is the place of the transient abstract texts of the discipline of Drama?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468549 , vital:77089 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2007.9687857
- Description: What is the role of Drama Studies within the university? What is ‘the university’ and what purpose does it serve? Curzon-Hobson (2002: 181) maintains that ‘if one is to claim anything about the essential nature of the roles or values underpinning higher education, it can only be that it has become a site of increasing flux, ambiguity and inconsistency’. The very concept of ‘university’ and ‘academic knowledge’ has radically shifted with the development of postmodern thinking. ‘The notion of authoritative knowledge has been permanently undermined, for a postmoderist perspective suggests that all knowledge claims are local, partial and contextually specific’ (Luckett 2001: 54). Globally, universities are increasingly required to justify their existence, and we are witnessing a move towards ‘performativity’ (Lemmer 1998), as ‘disciplines are called upon to demonstrate their use-value in the global market’ (Barnett 2000b: 257). The South African context is no different. If, as many scholars have argued, the function of higher education has shifted so that the valued product of a university degree is not so much the quality of learning but the qualification gained (Race 1999), what is the place of the transient abstract texts of the discipline of Drama?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Writing, identity, and change : a narrative case study of the use of journals to promote reflexivity within a Drama Studies curriculum
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Drama -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa Drama in education Scholarly publishing Academic writing Reflection (Philosophy) Playwriting
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1845 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004384
- Description: The study adopts a case study examination of three student reflective joumals written about class and field based applied Drama experiences over one year. The journals were written as part of a curriculum outcome to develop reflective practice, for one Drama Honours paper (Educational Drama and Theatre) at Rhodes University Drama Department, South Africa. Based on a narrative inquiry approach, the study documents the changes in identity, discourse, and representation of self and other, which emerge through the journal writing process. The research analyses how identities are constructed through reflective writing practices, and how these identities might relate to the arguments for the development of reflexivity. The development of reflexivity is seen as integral to contemporary educational policies associated with lifelong learning, and the skills required of graduates in South Africa's emerging democracy. These policies centre on means of preparing students for a world characterised by change and instability, or what Barnett (2000) has termed a "supercomplex world". The research findings suggest that journal writing within a Drama Studies curriculum, allows students to construct subjectivities which support Barnett's claim that "the main pedagogical task in a university is not that of the transmission of knowledge but of promoting forms of human being appropriate to the conditions of supercomplexity" (Barnett, 2000b: 164). In addition, the development of different writing genres within a Drama Studies curriculum allows students to develop disciplinarily relevant ways of discussing and researching artistic processes and products. A reflective journal is a potential site for students to interrogate and construct emerging identities which enable them to negotiate diversity, thus preparing them for their lives beyond the university.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Sutherland, Alexandra
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Drama -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa Drama in education Scholarly publishing Academic writing Reflection (Philosophy) Playwriting
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1845 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004384
- Description: The study adopts a case study examination of three student reflective joumals written about class and field based applied Drama experiences over one year. The journals were written as part of a curriculum outcome to develop reflective practice, for one Drama Honours paper (Educational Drama and Theatre) at Rhodes University Drama Department, South Africa. Based on a narrative inquiry approach, the study documents the changes in identity, discourse, and representation of self and other, which emerge through the journal writing process. The research analyses how identities are constructed through reflective writing practices, and how these identities might relate to the arguments for the development of reflexivity. The development of reflexivity is seen as integral to contemporary educational policies associated with lifelong learning, and the skills required of graduates in South Africa's emerging democracy. These policies centre on means of preparing students for a world characterised by change and instability, or what Barnett (2000) has termed a "supercomplex world". The research findings suggest that journal writing within a Drama Studies curriculum, allows students to construct subjectivities which support Barnett's claim that "the main pedagogical task in a university is not that of the transmission of knowledge but of promoting forms of human being appropriate to the conditions of supercomplexity" (Barnett, 2000b: 164). In addition, the development of different writing genres within a Drama Studies curriculum allows students to develop disciplinarily relevant ways of discussing and researching artistic processes and products. A reflective journal is a potential site for students to interrogate and construct emerging identities which enable them to negotiate diversity, thus preparing them for their lives beyond the university.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
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