Beyond mimesis to an assemblage of reals in the drama classroom: which reals? Which representational aesthetics? What theatre-building practices? Whose truths?

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the authors argue for novel, less mimetic, ways to harness ‘the real’ in drama practices. They study particular youth theatre-making practices in a Toronto secondary classroom, both successes and failures, to make the case for an untethering of ‘the real’ from realism’s representational aesthetics. They further track the more relational aesthetics at play for a group of young theatre-makers in their context of a multi-sited, global ethnography of youth civic engagement and theatre-making practices. Instead of mirroring reality, some of the devising work of the young people refracts, fragments, and multiplies it, making a strong case for the artistic, political, and educational value of an assemblage of reals in the drama classroom, in so-called post-truth times.

KEYWORDS:

• Theatre of the real
• representational aesthetics
• youth
• drama curriculum
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

Our thanks, as ever, to our international collaborators, Dr Urvashi Sahni, Dr Wan-Jung Wang, Dr Rachel King, Dr Myrto Pigkou-Repousi, and Nikos Govas who each have teams of students, teachers, and artists with whom they are working in their respective sites.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Gallagher is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto. She has published many books and articles on theatre, youth, pedagogy, methodology and gender. Her research continues to focus on questions of youth civic engagement and artistic practice, and the pedagogical and methodological possibilities of theatre.

Kelsey Jacobson is a PhD Candidate whose research focuses on the theatre of the real in contemporary Canadian performance. She works as a research assistant for Dr Gallagher’s SSHRC-funded project Theatre, Radical Hope and the Ethical Imaginary: an intercultural investigation of drama pedagogy, performance and civic engagement.

Notes

1 Regal Heights Collegiate is a secondary school in Toronto that was founded in 1964. The school identifies itself as a ‘Global School’ committed to a focus on Social Justice, International Development, Environmentalism and Multiculturalism. The staff and students represent over 100 countries. Of the 843 students at Regal Heights, 48% hold a primary language other than English, 6% of students have lived in Canada for 2 years or less, and another 7% have lived in Canada for 3–5 years. The school population contains 51% female and 49% male students. The school provides programmes for the Developmentally Delayed, Physically Disabled, and support for students with Learning Disabilities. Regal Heights has also offered the two-year International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme since 2007, which is characterised by its rigorous academic curriculum and focus on critical thinking skills and community involvement. The classrooms we worked in were not from the IB programme but from the regular stream of the high school.

2 The Verbatim unit in year one was about seven weeks long and the research team was there five days/week for those seven weeks. The Oral History Performance was about eight weeks long and the research team was present five days/week for that time. In each of the years of the study, the practice was led by a unit created by a team member in a particular site. In Year 1, the Toronto team, working with our artist collaborator Andrew Kushnir (see http://www.projecthumanity.ca), led the global team with our Verbatim theatre unit. This involved various experiments with verbatim, specific exercises, and culminated in a final performance. In year 2, our collaborator Dr Wan-Jung Wang of Tainan shared a unit on Oral History Performance that was enacted across all sites and also culminated in a final performance. In year 3, our collaborators Dr Rachel King of Warwick University with her artist partners at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry along with our Athens collaborator Dr Myrto Pikgou-Repousi and her artist partner Nikos Govas together led the unit on Devising and Ensemble. The devising work also culminated in performances for audiences in our various sites.

3 For an exploration of teachers’ familiar sense of failure/melancholy following student performances, see Gallagher, Freeman, and Wessels (2009).

4 Students participating in our study choose their own pseudonyms and offer any social identity markers they wish to share.

5 On the heels of seeing the documentary The best worst thing that ever could have happened, a 2016 documentary by Lonny Price chronicling the unexpected flop (closing after just 16 performances) of the much-anticipated 1981 Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince collaboration of the Broadway Musical ‘Merrily We Roll Along’, the experience of the young people in our research made some sense. Some speculated that the Sondheim–Prince production was such a failure because the director, Hal Prince, had decided to have all the roles played by young people between the ages of 16–20, which he cast through an open call. The main conceit of the play is that it starts at the end, and moves backwards towards the actual ages of the youth. This meant that for most of the play, young people portrayed much older adults. For audiences and critics, it was impossible that these young, amateur actors could represent the cynical, disappointed adults the characters had become. Legendary Broadway director Price says, at one point in the retrospective documentary, ‘I’ve never been happier rehearsing actors. I’ve never gone home surer that a show was going to be a success. I thought: this is just it.’ Like the young people in our research, the process had been so fulfilling, the relationships and hard work so much in evidence, an audience’s failure to appreciate the magnitude of the experience had never even been considered.

6 The first-year class was much smaller (12) than the second-year group (27); hence their decision to work as one group.

Additional information

Funding

Our gratitude extends to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435140368] for their funding of this multi-sited, international research project.