Improvisational Theater as a Means of Ecstatic "Worlding"

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: The Power and Possibilities of Art-Based Community Participatory Research and Pedagogy in Preparing Critical Educators

Abstract

While inspired by Freirean critical praxis, hooks (1994) and other feminist scholars of education have critiqued Freire’s work on the grounds that he neglects the “ecstasy” of learning. hooks explains that, “given that critical pedagogy seeks to transform consciousness…to some extent it must rely on the presence of the erotic in the classroom” (1994, p. 194). In this sense, the erotic is not sexual, but rather refers to the embodied, sensate, and affective intensities that circulate throughout a group engaged in transformative education and activism. Separations between the mind and body serve only the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”; therefore, progressive educators must activate the power of sensuous, physical, and emotional experience while engaging in consciousness-raising praxis (hooks, 1994). Following hooks and other feminist scholars, we seek to expand upon the work of Freire and his followers by animating the energies of pleasure, danger, joy, and fascination to “excite the critical imagination” (hooks, 1994, p. 195).
For decades, Freirean educators inspired by Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed (Teatro do Oprimido) have used theatrical improvisation to engage learners in radical enactments of “collective social dreaming” (Gutiérrez, 2008). in our work, we similarly explore the potentials of dramatic improvisation to create powerful movements of embodied affect and to play out potentials of radical “worlding” (Stewart, 2007). Yet unlike many critical pedagogues before us, our work with improvisational theater does not only seek deeper interpretations or readings of the world. The improvised drama is not an image of the world—it does not represent the world as a thing to be analyzed. Rather, informed by feminist theorists, process philosophy, and poststructural critiques of representation, we draw upon imaginative improvisation to call forth alternative ways of being-in-the world (Dreyfus, 1991) and explore fresh and ecstatic practices of world-becoming.
In this work we position ourselves alongside improvisational players as students of the craft to experience first-hand way these artists transmit circuits of energy while engaged in imaginative worldings. We reflect on our months practicing improvisation, during which time we experienced intense sensations of pain, membership, connection, isolation, identification and disidentification, loss, resilience, and a host of other affective movements concerning issues of social justice. We also draw from the stories of improvisational players who are fellow members of a local training center to foreground the experiences of artists of color and LGBTQ, and multilingual players as they use improvisation to amplify the experiences of these communities, challenge sociopolitical injustice, and explore new social possibilities. Finally, we draw from our own experiences in developing and co-teaching a teacher education course that places improvisational theater at the center of teacher-becoming. In our analysis and presentation of our findings, we have sought to honor our collaborators’ attention to affective intensities by attuning ourselves to moments that evoke powerful embodied and sensate responses for us and our participants. In so doing, we seek to discover how improvisation might activate vital and passionate forms of social justice praxis

Authors

• Laura Carter-Stone, Vanderbilt University

• Kevin M Leander, Vanderbilt University