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Personal Theatre and Pedagogy: A Dialectical Process

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The Self in Performance

Abstract

This chapter examines the personal and pedagogical function of solo performance as the culminating process of the journey to becoming a drama therapist; interviews with performers and performance vignettes are included to create a dialogue between theoretical readings and lived experience. The theoretical terrain opens up a range of critical tensions between methodologies arising from a dialectical materialist tradition and the performativity of poststructuralist discourse. If autobiographical therapeutic theatre is conceived as a locus of empowerment, then, theoretical concerns that scrutinize the exercise of power form part of the discussion. The individual subjective experience is viewed alongside different conceptions of collective experience, including Ranciere’s reflections on spectatorship.

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Correspondence to Anna Seymour PhD, PFHEA, HCPC .

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Seymour, A. (2016). Personal Theatre and Pedagogy: A Dialectical Process. In: Pendzik, S., Emunah, R., Read Johnson, D. (eds) The Self in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53593-1_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53593-1_14

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54153-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53593-1

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