Performative Inquiry Encounters Education

• In Event: Performance as a Social Context for Transformative Educational Praxis

Abstract

Objectives As an arts researcher in a Faculty of Education, I focus on the pedagogical and curricular possibilities of performance as I work with undergraduate students pre-service teachers, and graduate students (mainly teachers). I hope to share the theoretical underpinning of performative inquiry, and its application within education spaces as a means of making visible the scripts and environments that inform, and perform us. For teachers (and students), the concept of performance as an action-site of inquiry and learning is emancipatory and frightening, for it requires that we release our concepts of classroom control and autonomy and trust in the unfolding of learning on “the edge of chaos” (Waldrop, 1992).
Perspectives Performative inquiry had its beginnings in the pedagogical engagement of classroom plays, role dramas, and curricular investigations. Through experience working with children and adults, I came to a theoretical praxis that understands performance as an action-site of learning and inquiry ( Stothers, 1996). Drawing from performance studies, enactivism (Maturana & Varela, 1992), complexity theory (Davis, Sumara & Kierans, 1996), performative inquiry invites researchers and educators to be active participants and attend to their own learning as they engage with others. Performance theorist Phelan writes, “Performance boldly and precariously declares that Being is performed (and made temporarily visible) in that suspended in-between” (1993, p. 167). Within these elusive moments of performance, new possible realities emerge; performance as a curricular process offers students new ways of seeing, reflecting upon, and recreating what they know. Performance invites embodied narratives into pedagogical spaces (Garioan, 1999) in ways that invite new relationships, new understanding and the ability to express what matters. Drama educator, Gavin Bolton (1992), speaks of the “here and now,” “spontaneous,” and “existential” moments, which may be found in dramatic playing which he states have two components: the descriptive and the existential. Such emergent moments, or stops (Appelbaum, 1995) hold the possibility of new learning, new choices of action. Theatre director, Eugenio Barba (1995,), advises us to avoid the “walls of cements” that define us, and to create with our own bodies and embodied interactions the “melodies of your temperature.” And theatre activist, Augusto Boal (1985) writes of the transformative possibilities of performance; through performance we may come to recognize the feasibility for change that will ignite revolutionary action, in our classrooms, our communities, our world.
Scholarly significance Implementing performative inquiry through theatre/drama activities within educational spaces invites a new lens of understanding of what matters, how we engage, and invites a reimagining of conventional curricular and pedagogical engagements. Through my research, I have witnessed performative inquiry as a means to develop leadership and collaborative skills among undergraduate students; understood how individuals can put their lives at risk for social justice; and how students teachers can come to understand classroom management and learning dynamics. Inquiry through performance invites us to reimagine our presence within pedagogical encounters, and reflect anew on how we engage with the world.

Author

• Lynn Margaret Fels, Simon Fraser University