Peacebuilding performances in the aftermath of war: lessons from Bougainville

Object Companionship

“…People's life situations and social circumstances are too complex and multidimensional to be influenced by fixed-term and non-recurring projects. Instrumental paradigm is often accompanied by a "know-it-all" -attitude of practitioners (Dwyer, 2016). When operating with brief interventions, practitioners in the field of participatory theatre cannot possibly know what living in certain conditions means, how someone feels, and what the other person's viewpoint on an issue is.…”

“…The activities were typically based on situational, improvised events. The practices of participatory theatre were typically process-like in its first decades, but since around 1990 they could be characterised as project-like (Dwyer, 2016). "Project" became an umbrella term shared by the various forms of participatory art at the beginning of the 1990s (Bishop, 2012).…”

“…In the framework of neo-liberal cultural policy, art and culture are usually viewed as methods and instruments used to accomplish something external to art: arts projects with a clear social agenda (Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2011;Nicholson, 2016). The neo-liberalisation of the arts and the financial system it has brought, can be found behind the emergence of the instrumental paradigm (Dwyer, 2016;Mullen, 2012). This has brought challenges for participatory theatre practitioners to defend their position in the competition for resources.…”

Troubling aesthetics: mapping vulnerability as a generative force in community theatre

“…One response to these concerns in applied drama and theatre is how to create safe spaces where the participants, more or less at risk, collectively share and explore difficult themes from their everyday by embodying fictional roles and situations. However, as Paul Dwyer points out, notions of safe space are rarely contextualised with the location in which the drama work takes place (Dwyer 2016). Considering the range of research that problematises the concept of safe space (e.g.…”