Applied Theater Methodology as Pedagogy: Drama Engagement, Affect, and Embodied Creative Resilience

• In Event: Applied Theater as Methodological Intervention in Qualitative Research With Urban Youth

Abstract

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVE:

This paper interrogates how applied theatre as methodology may stimulate pedagogical experiences with shelter-dwelling urban youth thereby creating space for the emergence of unique forms of data and embodiments of resilience. By illustrating, through a case study of one research participant, how drama facilitates affective experiences for teaching artists, youth participants and education researchers, this paper elucidates multiple impacts of applied theatre methodologies. Finally, the paper seeks to expand the discourse of youth resilience. We argue that applied theatre as methodology with urban youth may enable creative resilience, that is, agency in the exploration and performance of resistance.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

This paper examines affect in its relationship to drama and subsequent pedagogical benefits of applied theatre methodology as a site for engaging, embodied learning. We approach the concept of resilience as a site of collective resistance, beyond a set of coping mechanisms gleaned for psychological endurance in the unending cycle of systemic inequity.

METHODS/DATA SOURCES:

Over 16 weeks, researchers observed and participated in drama workshops at a youth shelter led by facilitators from an acclaimed Toronto-based theatre company. Data collection included both traditional qualitative methods as well as drama components (e.g. the value line and improvisational scenes developed out of discussions and stories that arose from the initial value line activity). Transcripts of these drama workshops, individual interviews, focus groups, and workshop debriefs by facilitators provided data for analysis.

RESULTS:

The drama activities opened up a pedagogical space by offering various potential entry points for all present to express agency by contributing, on their own terms, which in turn allowed data to emerge that would otherwise be inaccessible. The paper draws from data to explicate the unforeseen, impactful learning experiences engendered through an applied theatre methodology. In one such instance, a youth participant, Ricky underwent a powerful affective journey over the course of one drama workshop. The facilitators applied a drama-informed improvisational style to their pedagogy, which allowed them to honour the raw affective responses of youth participants. Facilitators privileged the experiential knowledge of these racialized, often criminalized youth. This approach supported a learning space in which Ricky would not only commit to the drama, but also adopt increasingly more integral roles in the workshop. In this paper, we will perform an excerpt from this workshop in which Ricky initiates his own participation as storyteller, actor, and finally, as facilitator.

SIGNIFICANCE:

Shelter-dwelling urban youth participants embodied our concept of 'creative resilience' as prompted, validated, complicated and nurtured by applied theatre methodology. This creative resilience encompasses the individual and group act of engaging in drama to expose, critique, explore, claim, articulate and rehearse strategies of survival and resistance. Youth participants take on a variety of roles in the dramatic space, revealing the dynamic pedagogical possibilities unlocked in the interplay of affect, critical reflection and creative resilience afforded by this methodology.

Author

• Rachel Rhoades, University of Toronto