Image Theater as Participatory Democracy

• In Event: Response Abilities: Generating Arts-Based Research With Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King

Abstract

Purpose
This presentation uses Image Theatre as an opportunity for participants to challenge and blur the boundaries that exist between art and life in order to engage in historical ideologies of democracy, stereotypes, symbols, icons, norms and values embedded in the sculptures and monuments. Participants will leap from a material, specific time and place to a more abstract, ideological space in which they might think about democracy in terms of questions such as: Why this image of democracy as evoked through the sculpture, monument, or plaque? What is real versus ideal democracy? What might I do to change this image of democracy? Participants will move back and forth between different types of “imaging processes” (Linds & Vettraino, 2008) based upon interactions with the monuments and sculptures: brainstorm and interrogate concepts of democracy through dialogue and image-making; create their own sculptures using thematic material pertaining to images of democracy; invite passersby to comment on their sculpted images; and ask audiences to resculpt the images that they encounter. The purpose is to continually perform democracy as a fluid construct.
Perspectives
Image Theatre was first developed by Augusto Boal (1985) as part of a range of theatrical forums and techniques. In a series of exercises that are generally wordless, participants involved in Image Theatre “sculpt” an image of a selected theme with their own and others’ bodies, expressing their feelings and/or experiences. Images are thus given three-dimensional, sculptural form. Powell adapted this format to engage university students in participatory democracy practices via recursive image making and dialogue (Powell & Serriere, 2013), the format of which will be the structure of this event.
Democracy can be theorized as a continuous and lifelong process or mode of associated living of which its end is never realized (Dewey, 1916). Additionally, democracy can be rebellious, episodic, transgressionary and diverse (Parker, 2003) rather than cooperative and agreed upon. Image Theater contributes fluid and performative dimensions to these tenets of democracy through an integration of visual approaches framing image making as primary in a “wide-awakeness to imaginative action, and to renewed consciousness of possibility" (Greene, 1995, p. 43), highlighting the ways in which the arts might frame experience for fuller possibilities of awakeness, participation, and agency.

Data
In the case of Image Theater, data emerges through and as performance, through the specific interactions between the performers and the audience, and through image and dialogue.
Results and Significance
Results will continually be in the making as participants sculpt an image, reflect via dialogue, resculpt an image in relation to the dialogue and public opinion, and dialogue again, in a recursive cycle. This type of interactive performance concerning public images—and the messages they carry—might encourage viewers to challenge and blur the boundaries that exist between art and life, thus permitting engagement with historical ideologies and breaking with fixed representations of democracy, and, as a result, confronting the complexities and contradictions of stereotypes, symbols, icons, and conventions that are embedded in images.

Author

• Kimberly Anne Powell, The Pennsylvania State University