Healing Trauma and Creating Friendships Through Ethnodrama and Other Forms of Research-Based Theatre

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

We focus on the experience of three scholar/artists engaged in auto-ethnographic performances intended to evoke trauma and healing. We use the metaphor of the labyrinth to discuss the artist's journey from trauma to performance to healing. We perform the experience if 1) taking a step away from a field one had spent more than two decades pursuing 2) going into exile after one’s country is invaded 3) a friend’s death. Each performance asks the scholar/artist to return to the site of their trauma, but in a different place--a place with friends, colleagues, and resources for healing and personal development. The session weaves together script excerpts and performer reflections to expand our consciousness and build relationships with others.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Elliot Eisner

Chair

• Charles F. Vanover, University of South Florida

Papers

• Live Performance Excerpt from Teaching Anti-Racism in Charleston, South Carolina - K. Nicola Williams, St. Mary's County Public Schools; Charles F. Vanover, University of South Florida

• Searching for Wholeness After Academia: Mindfulness, Trauma-Sensitivity and Community-Based Literacy. - K. Nicola Williams, St. Mary's County Public Schools

• “How did this war start for me?” Processing Trauma Using Documentary Theatre in the Theatre Project "Voices" - Svetlana Fouer, Young Theatre Cologne

• Immersion Into «Living Worlds» Through Documentary Theatre: A Reflective Essay Based on Theatre Project "Voices” - Daria Vystavkina, Cologne-Bonn Academy in Exile

• Walking Labyrinths Through Arts-Based Research Practice - Charles F. Vanover, University of South Florida

Discussant

• Ruth Nicole Brown, Michigan State University