Abstract
This chapter investigates the unexpected emergence of novel connections between self-creation, documentary theatre technique, performance pedagogy, and educational community that manifested themselves within an international, ethnographic study of youth civic engagement and theatre. Over the course of two years of observation and 45 individual and focus group interviews in one Toronto high school, we witnessed a sophisticated and novel voicing of the nature of self and its unique growth within the social nesting of a drama classroom, even under the occasional shadow of oppressive conditions. We examine, through the multidisciplinary lenses of feminist political theory, performance theory, and the students’ own theorizing, the unique roles that collective narrative creative practices (including verbatim theatre and oral history performance), relationality, critical dialogue and performative/playful skill-building enact in a creative and resilient expansion of the quotidian lives of youth. We conclude by gesturing towards a theory of youth selfhood and creativity.
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- 1.
A decade ago (2007), Kathleen published “Conceptions of Creativity in Drama Education” in L. Bresler’s (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (pp. 1229–1240), in which she lamented the paucity of literature in the field that entertains the centrality of ‘the collective’ in conceptions of creativity in drama and suggested that future research ought to take seriously this lacuna. This chapter moves in that direction.
- 2.
One way notable performance studies theorist Richard Schechner defines performance is by conceptualizing it as action that emphasizes “showing doing” (2006, p. 28).
- 3.
We are borrowing this metaphor from the seminal legal philosophy of Jennifer Nedelsky who has argued that rights must be understood as existing within larger embedded social communities that are always fundamentally influential and ideally nurturing in nature.
- 4.
Regal Heights Collegiate (pseudonym) is a publicly-funded secondary school in Toronto which was founded in 1964. Of the 843 students at Regal Heights, 48% hold a primary language other than English; 6% of students have lived in Canada for 2 years or less, and another 7% have lived in Canada for 3–5 years.
- 5.
All names are pseudonyms selected by the students and any social identity categories used have also been chosen by the students as self-descriptors.
- 6.
On the qualitative coding software NVivo.
- 7.
We are not wishing for our cited students to stand in for their race, or gender, or indeed any other social identity category but we are paying close attention to what the young people say about their experiences in drama class. In this regard, we are understanding young people as theory producers and cite their theorizations alongside other theorists. Further, we are not using our empirical data as ‘display-pieces’ for others’ ideas, but are instead wrestling with the theoretical constructs we hear at play in young people’s own analyses of their creative contexts and relations. Here, we are taking seriously St. Pierre’s (2009) caution about “the unexamined celebration of voice in qualitative research [as] increasingly tiresome” (p. 221) and have instead brought so-called ‘voice data’ into dialogue with other theorists.
- 8.
For instance, students referred to performance as an opportunity to showcase “different sides” of themselves and explained how they sometimes felt ethically pulled in the class between sides of themselves (Samson, individual interview May 25, 2015; Mya, individual interview May 24, 2015).
- 9.
He is clear in his explanation that his dislike for plays of this sort is because they “don’t make sense” to his life interests rather than any ineptitude on his part to recognize the themes that are being explored. It is a failure of relevance rather than fact.
- 10.
Zeida, for instance, decided to enrol in a business degree, for the coming first year of university, but to take theatre courses as electives.
- 11.
In Year 1 alone, the four most regularly attending students of African heritage, M&M (individual interview May 22, 2015), Jamal (individual interview May 25, 2015), Mya (individual interview May 24, 2015), and Maliky (individual interview May 25, 2015), all expressed such sentiments.
- 12.
It is important to add that “family” stories extend beyond the biological. We’re thinking here of the work of a colleague, Cameron Crookston, who writes about ‘family narratives’ that are shared within queer communities (Crookston in press) or of Andrew Kushnir, Damien Atkins and Paul Dunn’s creative turn in the “Gay Heritage Project,” where they imagined what they had inherited and all they had missed from those elders in the queer community who were lost to AIDS before they were able to ‘pass on’ their stories and teachings to a younger generation of gay men (https://www.facebook.com/TheGayHeritageProject)
- 13.
Richard Schechner, who dedicates an entire chapter of his seminal book, Performance Studies, to play, sees playing as a fundamental aspect of social exploration and expression and “at the heart of performance” (p. 89); while Prendergast centrally argues for the important relationship between play, art, and self-representation in her article “Playful Attention” (2004).
- 14.
Note that Estelle is defining oppression in a way similar to Marin: as a foreclosure on the expression of self by the dominant powers in a social setting.
- 15.
A few of many comments along this line include Zeida’s suggestion that their teacher’s approach is “like he maybe gives us an idea or the theme—we work on that” and Year 2 student, Josh Rontego’s explanation that “…[Their drama teacher] is giving us a lot of freedom and we haven’t been given that freedom before” (individual interview May 22, 2015; individual interview January 18, 2016).
- 16.
The willingness to allow the students to self-guide is seen as one of the great strengths of this teacher who was extremely popular among the students in both years.
- 17.
Such as, “What kind of changes would you imagine would be in your life in ten years?” or “What changes do you expect to happen when you finish school?”
- 18.
The students performed their verbatim work for the entire school in afternoon assemblies and for their families in the evening.
- 19.
Once again, we are not trying to draw gross generalizations across these vastly different cultural contexts, but only wish to make good use of the theorizing of our research collaborator, which has been extremely valuable to us for understanding the particulars of our own cultural context.
- 20.
He compares the study of breath to the study of psychology (a vital interest in Stanislavsky era acting training) and also, like Sahni, infers a connection between self, breath, and spirit by referencing the Greek term psyche (Benedetti 2005, pp. 10–11). One might also consider the term pneuma, which in the Judeo-Christian tradition is similarly used to express the deeper reality of life in both breath and spirit.
- 21.
To somewhat complete the Muckles’ account, despite the potential for negative reaction, his story was performed in front of his entire school. He believed this “paid off in the end. Because I had everybody knowing my story. I don’t have anything to hide now. Everything’s off my chest, and it’s just normal—just feels normal” (focus group interview December 16, 2015).
- 22.
Both of us have worked as actors and have spent decades training professional and amateur actors. We would add that even the listening required of, say, a professional therapist (which Scott has been), is of a different nature than theatre artists’ listening.
- 23.
In November 2015, some members of our Toronto research team spent 10 days at Prerna School. During that time, we witnessed Sahni, and other drama teachers at the school, carry out this practice of ‘critical dialogues’ in a variety of classes, with both boys and girls. For video footage of this practice and other performances created by Prerna students, please see http://studyhallfoundation.org
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the drama students and teachers at Regal Heights Collegiate, our international collaborators on Youth, Theatre, Radical Hope and the Ethical Imaginary, particularly Urvashi Sahni and her students at Prerna School, and our research team member Kelsey Jacobson who offered invaluable support in conceptualizing some of our initial ideas. The research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant #30536.
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Gallagher, K., Mealey, S. (2018). Staging Our Selves: Towards a Theory of Relationality, Possibility, and Creative Youth Selfhood. In: Burgoyne, S. (eds) Creativity in Theatre. Creativity Theory and Action in Education, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78928-6_9
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