Postcards on the Aesthetic of Hope in Applied Theatre

Baxter, Veronica

doi:10.1163/9789401210546_018

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Like love, joy and beauty, it is seen as an ephemeral quality with little empirical substance or purpose. Research in drama education and applied theatre, however, has recently turned its focus on critical hope as a teachable, important, knowable concept that influences our understanding of what we do (Baxter, 2013;Gallagher & Rodricks, 2017). This concept, according to participatory drama scholars is not just personal, but political -a way of defeating the fatalism that pushes us to compromise rather than resist or transform (Freire, 2014) 2019), O'Connor considers the humanising potential of the arts as resistance to institutions that systematically dehumanise their inhabitants.…”

Section: Hopementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the problem of inequality, and can we solve it?

Freebody

2023

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The purpose of this essay is to consider how, if at all, participatory theatre serves the Sustainable Development Goal number 10: Reducing Inequality (SDG10). The paper draws on policy analysis methodology What’s the Problem Represented to be? (Bacchi 2009) to critically consider how inequity as a solvable social and/or economic problem is represented by SDG10. I then draw on two previous research projects, one conducted by myself and colleagues (2018) and one conducted by Masso-Guijarro and colleagues (2021) that explicitly explore how scholarship in participatory theatre orient to social change agenda to understand how participatory theatre represents the problem of inequality and how, if at all, this relates to SDG10. Finally, I recruit key participatory theatre projects from Denmark, Canada, Chile and New Zealand to consider practical ways of understanding how participatory theatre may contribute to combating inequality through its attention to the lived experiences of inequality, the potential for making changes to individual lives, and its orientation to hope. In doing this, I hope to contribute new perspectives on drama and equity that present a nuanced and critical consideration the relationship between public discourses, policy and practice.

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Section: Hopementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the problem of inequality, and can we solve it?

Freebody

2023

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“…As I have suggested elsewhere, aesthetics in applied theatre, Encompasses the embodied aesthetic engagement and meaning making that occurs within the process of ensemble building and creating works; the resulting works as they are experienced in a community-based event; and the radical potential of such affective encounters to embody ethical participation and social justice. (Woodland 2019a, p. 43) Contemporary applied theatre continues to engage with its transformative and liberatory origins, focusing on the aesthetics and pedagogies of hope (Baxter 2013), care (Thompson 2015), love (Woodland 2018) and utopia (Busby 2015)-all ideals contained within Freire's critical pedagogy (Keans 1999, p. 23). Yet, despite this turn, there has been little examination of aesthetics or aesthetic engagement in prison theatre scholarship, which, as mentioned above, has most often focused on what the works contribute either to critical cultural theories, or their role in rehabilitating and reforming individuals.…”

Section: Pragmatist Aesthetics In Prison Theatrementioning

confidence: 99%

Prison Theatre and an Embodied Aesthetics of Liberation: Exploring the Potentials and Limits

Woodland

2021

Humanities

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Prison theatre practitioners and scholars often describe the sense of imaginative freedom or “escape” that theatre and drama can facilitate for incarcerated actors, in contrast to the strict regimes of the institution. Despite this, the concept of freedom or liberation is rarely interrogated, being presented instead as a given—a natural by-product of creative practice. Drawing from John Dewey’s (1934) pragmatist aesthetics and the liberatory pedagogies of Bell Hooks (2000) and Paulo Freire (1996), I propose an embodied aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre that adds depth and complexity to claims for freedom through creativity. Reflecting on over twenty years of prison theatre practice and research, I propose that the initial “acts of escape” performed through engaging the imagination are merely the first threshold toward more meaningful forms of freedom. I frame these as the following three intersecting domains: “Acts of unbinding”, which represents the personal liberation afforded by experiences with theatre in prison; “acts of love”, which expresses how the theatre ensemble might represent a “beloved community” (hooks); and “acts of liberation”, which articulates how these experiences of self-and-world creation may ripple out to impact audiences and communities. An aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre can, therefore, be conceived as an embodied movement towards personal and social renewal; an approach that deepens our understanding of its oft-cited humanising potential, and its limits.

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Postcards on the Aesthetic of Hope in Applied Theatre

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

What is the problem of inequality, and can we solve it?

What is the problem of inequality, and can we solve it?

Prison Theatre and an Embodied Aesthetics of Liberation: Exploring the Potentials and Limits

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