Performance as an Embodied Praxis for Language Reclamation

• In Event: Language and Literacy Practices

Abstract

This paper draws on the stories and performances of students in a language teacher education program in Oaxaca, Mexico’s linguistically and culturally most diverse state. Adapting forum theater (Boal, 2000) to a virtual environment, students created performances based on their own language stories. Performance can be used as an expressive technique and heuristic tool to (re)present and intervene reality. As such it is a pedagogical intervention but also a platform to (re)create alternative possibilities and spaces for Indigenous languages and cultures. This paper illustrates and analyzes the work of the class through an ethnodrama, underscoring the value of the arts and performance pedagogies to foster critical ideological awareness, advocacy and activism for language reclamation.

Author

• Maria Cecilia Schwedhelm, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author