Collaborative Creation: Young Girls Rescripting Their Experiences and Beliefs of Puberty, Menstruation, and Girlhood

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Documentation, Collective Memory, and Agency: The Power of Collaborative Theatre Across the Lifespan (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper centers on innovative and engaging curricular and research methods that privilege young children’s voices, movements, and creative choices within collaborative performing arts workshops. Pulling from my current work with young girl-identifying participants, I illustrate my use of performance-based techniques (e.g., participatory and devised theatre-making and scripting) alongside established and innovative uses of ethnography to explore young girls-identifying participants' emergent understandings and beliefs around the often-marginalized topics of puberty and menstruation. Using current data, I illustrate how these interdisciplinary curricular and research methods and approaches – that center the interests and expertise of children – encourage greater participant collaboration and opportunities for ethical and relational research and classroom practices with young learners and performers.

Author

• Julie Snyder, Pennsylvania State University