Critical Themes in Drama

Social, Cultural and Political Analysis

Kelly Freebody, Michael Finneran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367723552
• eBook ISBN: 9781000381795
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Critical Themes in Drama is concerned with the relationship between drama and the current socio-political context. It builds on and contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the use, benefit, challenges and opportunities for drama and theatre as a social, cultural, educational and political act. The intention of this book is to canvas current theory and practice in drama, to provide an extended examination of how drama as a pro-social practice intersects with socio-cultural institutions, to link critical discourse and examine ways drama may contribute to a broader social justice agenda. Authors draw on a variety of theoretical tools from the fields of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. This combines with an exploration of work from drama practitioners across a variety of countries and practices to provide a map of how the field is shaped and how we might understand drama praxis as a social, cultural and political force for change.

This book offers drama scholars, practitioners, researchers and teachers a critical exploration which is both hopeful and critical; acknowledging the complexities and potential pitfalls, while celebrating the opportunities for drama as a practice for social action and positive change.

PART I

Framing the drama of these times

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE DRAMA OF THESE TIMES

“Theatre is a messy business, irremediably muddled up in the world.”

(Rae, 2009, p. 38)

This book has grown out of equal parts discomfort and fascination with these times. With the rise of a new global order of politics, there is a profound sense that the world is in the midst of a period of significant rapid change: Brexit; the rise of Trump; ISIS; global conflict; Putin's Russia; the democratic crisis in Turkey; ongoing environmental change and decline. During the final 6 months of writing this book, we wrote against the backdrop of catastrophic bushfires in Australia, a global pandemic resulting in large-scale lockdown of populations, a resurgence of the black lives matter resistance after the killing of George Floyd and deep civil unrest at the impending Presidential election in the US. The times are challenging. The way we communicate, represent, create and connect in these times are multifaceted, instant, immersive, exciting, concerning and pervasive. With that diversity and immediacy of communicative and representational modes comes challenges to better understand art, knowledge and truth. In the edited volume from which this book emerged, Drama and Social Justice (Freebody & Finneran, 2016), Gallagher examines ‘our times’ with particular attention to rising inequality and the role of neocapital interest in ‘foreclosing the possibility of social justice’. She makes us uncomfortable by questioning whether, “in the face of mounting evidence of growing global inequality…a theory of drama and justice is possible” (Gallagher, 2016a, p. 55). This book begins with this question. Is it possible to contribute to a justice-informed theoretical understanding of drama in these times? Rather than providing a clear answer to this question, we aim to critically locate the social, political, cultural and aesthetic role of drama in institutions and communities in a way that speak to the purpose and implications of such work.

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to initiate discussions, queries, musings and concerns that we hope to draw on throughout the volume in more targeted ways in order to establish the ‘long game’ of the book. Although each chapter looks to a specific theme, there are key discussions that we position throughout the text so the reader can cumulatively establish their own theoretical depth and breadth from engaging with our consideration of key concepts.

Musings on ‘these times’

We suspect how one understands ‘these times’ is as much about personal preference as it is about theoretical considerations. Some, such as Robertson (1995), develop relatively neat explanations of how these times operate. He suggests the contemporary world has crystallised around the changing relationships, conflicting interpretations and different emphases on four elements that make up the current global-human condition: ‘societies, individuals, the international system of societies and humankind’ (p. 35). Geertz (1985) is more poetic in his explanation, suggesting that the un-defined, interlinked, scrambled way social spaces are merging as we see unprecedented mixing of cultures and it is like living in a collage. He notes that ‘confronting landscapes and still lifes is one thing; panoramas and collages quite another’ (p. 272). Far from a passive observation, Geertz goes on to suggest that our response to these panoramas and collages is, ‘one of the major moral challenges we these days face’ (p. 273).

Despite a different approach to thinking about ‘these times’, Geertz shares Robertson's focus on recognising the elements of how these times have crystallised and how they can be understood:

To live in a collage one must in the first place render oneself capable of sorting out its elements, determining what they are … and how, practically, they relate to each other, without at the same time blurring one's own sense of one's own location and one's own identity within it.

(Geertz, 1985, p. 274)

In this book, we are obviously interested in theorising these times, but perhaps more so in understanding their pieces, and how they fit together. Our intention is to unpack, unpick, piece together and connect the theories, practices, myths, intentions, representations and empirical understandings of drama in these times, to build a picture of drama. Throughout the text, you will encounter ideas of these times ranging from the descriptive [post-normal (Sardar, 2010)], to the causal [social acceleration (Rosa, 2003, 2013)], to the critical [culture of cruelty (Giroux, 2012)] to the hopeful [aesthetic education (Spivak, 2012)], to the revolutionary [pedagogy of insurrection – (McLaren, 2015)]. In response to the collage, we offer a bricolage (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004) of complementary insight that allows you to find your own perspective on these times.

Returning from the collage/bricolage back to the landscape, in order to conceptualise the whole, throughout the volume, we draw upon the work of anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai, as a way in which to map these times. Appadurai describes a series of ‘global flows’ which create (dis)junctures between economy culture and politics. These are:

• Ethnoscapes – the movement of people.
• Mediascapes – the production and dissemination of information (serving public and private interests globally). They tend to be image centred, narrative-based accounts, ‘out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well as others living in other places’. (Appadurai, 1996, p. 35).
• Technoscapes – fast moving, fluid technologies and their distribution.
• Financescapes – the disposition of global capital.
• Ideoscapes – ideologies of states and counter ideologies of movements.

According to Appadurai, the suffix ‘scape’ refers to the fluid and irregular shapes that make up landscapes – they are ‘deeply perspectival constructs’ and ‘the building blocks of what I would like to call imagined worlds’ (Appadurai, 1996, p. 33). Appadurai's flows allow us to at once understand the broad phenomenon and engage with its constituent parts. This allows us to connect with that which we are ultimately most interested in; how these times impact upon drama and how drama can be a force with which to respond to it. We want to provide new perspectives on how drama functions within the fast-paced, overlapping, (dis)junctures of global flows and their influence on the politics of global culture (Appadurai, 1996).

In considering the diversity of perspectives on the landscapes we discuss, we issue a gentle provocation to the reader embarking upon this text. We have an obvious ‘pro-social’ theme running throughout this volume. We are not apologetic about this; it is something that is important to us as scholars and practitioners, indeed as people. One of the reasons we find drama important is because of its ability to bring people together, to build community, to develop empathy and share a common humanity (Hughes, 2016; Neelands, 2009a, 2016). We acknowledge, however, that Gallagher suggests that a theory of drama and social justice, if possible, ‘must, before all else understand that the very notions of “the common good”, “the collective”, “cooperation” and self-other relations, only come into meaning through the ways in which we use them’ (Gallagher, 2016a, p. 63). Geertz (1985, p. 274) too cautions us against “vacant murmurs of common humanity” suggesting it can lead to a ‘to-each-his-own indifferentism’. He suggests that learning how to embrace diverse lives and perspectives without attention to their role in ‘a common humanity’, ‘is a skill we have to arduously to learn, and having learnt it, always very imperfectly, to work continuously to keep it alive’ (p. 274).

Our caution and potential contradiction for the readers of this book is to bring with them both as they need distance and nearness; critique but also belief; and empathy and immersion. How can we make our role as members of ‘the collective’ useful without allowing ourselves to be too comfortable and self-congratulatory? How do we ensure that the collective do not unwittingly constrain our thinking? How do we honour pro-social perspectives without requiring social conformity or ‘correctness’?

At this point, we should also take a moment to position both of ourselves within the collective, the landscape and the collage/bricolage. Our identities need some explanation given that socially just perspectives drive this book, and identity and ideology are at the heart of both concepts are understood. We are both white academics, working in our native countries (Ireland and Australia). We identify as he/his (Michael) and she/her (Kelly) and we are amongst the most privileged of our people having received the full benefits of a university education, and the stability and mobility afforded by having permanent full-time faculty positions in the university sector. Naturally, our identities are much more complex than that, but we acknowledge that we fit relatively archetypal understandings of Irish and Australian identities, respectively. We both have some trouble with that, given that our countries are constituted of indigenous populations, diverse ethnic groups as well as multiple religions and peoples of varying national backgrounds. This diversity of national representation is important to both of us, and we are biased in that regard around identity. Ideologically, we are both progressive educators and critical thinkers in the long 20th century tradition of those schools of thought. We believe in education for a better world for all, not just the privileged, and we both share a belief that the arts, and particularly drama, is key to how that might be achieved. We are also firmly of the belief that lack of access to drama and the arts more broadly is a marker of disadvantage globally, and we are deeply cognisant that the work we engender and write about is not available to many who need the benefits of its nourishment most of all.

Our personal identities are tied up in our national identities, something which is dwelt upon in greater detail in the chapter on migration. In order to better understand us, it is worth dwelling upon it for a moment here. Migration is a touchstone issue for both of our countries, but it is a potent lens through which to reflect the caution and complexity required to approach many of the dynamic issues contained in this book. Storytelling has a tendency to reduce the multifaceted to the linear, particularly areas as potent as the many of which we seek to tell and understand here.

History teaches us that migration has been a facet of human behaviour for as long as we have told our stories. In Irish folklore, there is a tale of Brendan the Navigator setting out to spread Christianity by sailing forth in leather-clad boat in the 5th century and reputedly discovering America. If he did indeed reach America, he was the first of many generations of Irish people to travel west; some to escape famine, some to help build the New World, some to seek opportunity and fame. It could be argued that Brendan set the tone for a tradition of Irish migration – some 100 million people claim membership of the Irish diaspora, outnumbering the population of the island by a factor of 20. Equally, many people have come to live in Ireland; some peacefully, others forcibly. The Celts, the Vikings, the Normans, the Anglo-Saxons and the British have all called Ireland home over 2,500 years. British invasion, planting and the eventual conquest of Ireland led to 800 years of sporadic rebellion, slaughter and warfare, and remains to this day a contentious issue in the state of Northern Ireland in the North Eastern corner of the island. In the Republic of Ireland, a largely clerically repressed and culturally homogenous nationalistic state existed throughout the 20th century. Irishness was represented in singular ethnic and religious terms, deliberately ‘forgetting’ the genetic riches of previous waves of migration. That has now been supplanted by the reality of a state in which up one in six of the current residents were born off the island. That figure is not to suggest that it is an oasis for newcomers: immigration laws are notoriously tight; migrants with claims for refugee status are housed in ‘direct provision’ centres until they are (slowly) processed and which have been the subject of much controversy; racism is a facet of Irish life and the loathsome fearmongering of the far-right is emergent.

Australia's relationship with migration is even more complex. First colonised by white Europeans from 1788, Australia was home to indigenous (Aboriginal) Australian peoples for 50,000–120,000 years previous to that. British-led settlement brought dispossession, disease and genocide and resulted in a white-led nation where universal suffrage was only extended to Aboriginal citizens in the 1960s, and where their communities remain highly disadvantaged by all metrics. No settlement has ever been reached between the colonisers and the indigenous nations. In contemporary times, Australia has enacted a strict immigration policy to deter illegal migrants, while continuing to welcome skilled and unskilled economic migrants into the country to service an expanding population and economy. The harsh policy regarding illegal migrants involves the turning back of small boats containing people without papers, who are subject to mandatory detention. Some of these people are housed offshore rather than let them reach Australian shores, in notorious detention camps on Manus, Papua New Guinea and on Nauru Island in the Pacific.

For all these complexities and deficiencies, our nations remain amongst the world's most privileged, progressive and pluralistic democracies, generally with high levels of educational attainment, health outcomes and political stability. Our identities as the authors of this book are wrapped up in these national identities. They are complex, emergent, critical, dynamic but ultimately privileged.

Our understandings of war, migration, poverty and violence are through the study of these areas and through working with those affected, rather than as a result of being directly affected ourselves. In this text, we seek to use our unique position as both insiders to drama practice and communities, and outsiders to the experiences of many of the participants we write about, to engage in a critical exploration of the drama of these times.

So, what is the drama of these times?

It seems that every drama book must begin with a discussion of what it considers drama. That is a study in itself. We know that there are sectoral and at times power-related issues regarding how we label what we do. This is territory well-charted in theatre studies, drama education and in applied theatre research. The range and diversity of terminology reflects what is privileged, preferred, understood and accepted as much as referring to different practices and theoretical perspectives in the field of drama and theatre. It also accurately reflects the range of global and context-specific practices as well as the assortment of ways in which it is understood that they operate. We have, as much as possible, tried to be appropriate and inclusive in our terminology. We are, however, attempting to map a broad and complex terrain, and therefore require (and ask of our readers) some license to use and adapt terms in ways that are at times more nuanced and at times blunter than might be preferred.

To that end when discussing practices and ideas in this book, we simply use the word drama. In doing this, we willingly incorporate and perhaps appropriate a huge range of theories and practices across the spectrum of theatrical and dramatic activity: mainstage theatre practice, applied theatre, drama education, street theatre, drama therapy, theatre for development, community theatre and performance art and myriad other variants and emergent practices.

We chose ‘drama’ rather than ‘theatre’ (which was the other obvious choice) for reasons of etymology and history. The Greek origin of the word drama is ‘to do’, which we felt holds active connotations of agency and action. The Greek origin of theatre is to ‘behold’, which we felt draws more on passive notions of witnessing. While either would have been appropriate given their modern use, it seemed to us that much of the work we discuss here has a specific change-orientation and aspires to being agentive. We consider drama porous enough as a word to allow all from playwright to primary teacher to performance artist to locate themselves somewhere within it. When discussing particular instances of practice or topics, we use more nuanced language to describe or orient to particular alignments to sub-fields.

Our personal histories come into this equation as well. We are both former drama teachers. Kelly works in university teacher education, particularly in the arts, applied drama and social justice. Michael, having worked in teacher education, now runs a theatre studies programme with a strong applied theatre orientation and practices as a theatre artist. Our shared narrative comes from our background in drama in education/process drama and our graduate training in those domains with two of the senior figures of the field (John O’Toole and Jonothan Neelands, respectively). This was the drama we began our professional lives with, but for both of us, it has evolved quite significantly in terms of form, mission and perception.

Drama in these times functions at both the macro and micro level. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Framing the drama of these times
• PART II: Examining the drama of these times
• PART III: Preparing for drama of future times
• References
• Index