Title: Drama/theatre education for democracy : the role of aesthetic communities
Abstract: This research project focuses on the body and examines drama/theatre
education as a site where politics and aesthetics can be brought together to
promote democracy. Specifically, I explore the possibility of forming a way of
doing within drama/theatre educational contexts that might influence a way of
coming to understand - and potentially in its turn - a way of being. I am
especially concerned with democracy as a living practice and I investigate
whether students, through an aesthetic communicative nexus that they are
encouraged to form within the drama class, and through their artistic actions
within that nexus, can explore the possibilities of being ‘political bodies’,
meaning the extent to which this allows democratic possibilities to flourish.
I see democracy as conditioned by aesthetics and I focus on the power of the
aesthetic to distance us from our ordinariness and everydayness and qualify
us with a sensibility with which to reflect and think on our ideas and actions. I
seek to promote the idea of a democratic culture and the formation of the
democratic self that can create and sustain a culture of democracy.
In terms of methodology, this project follows action research and an artsinfused
methodology. Four groups participated in this research project. The
analysis of the data collected from the fieldwork provides information to
illustrate the beginnings of a pedagogy that aims to put these ideas into
practice.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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