The dramaturgy of theatre fieldtrips: studying cultural relativism in situ

ABSTRACT

Short fieldtrips offer unique opportunities to teach cultural relativism in context. Through travel, theatrical practices can be experienced as nodes in complex social webs, where the material aspects of performance are inseparable from the people who make, sponsor and attend performances. The author reflects on his experiences organising theatre fieldtrips to Indonesia over a six-year period (2013–2018) to think about the implications of travel more generally for the pedagogy of theatre, using concepts from geography, anthropology and theatre studies. Thinking of field trips as dramaturgical processes provides a framework to better devise, conduct and evaluate such trips.

KEYWORDS:

• Fieldtrips
• Indonesia
• cultural relativism
• wayang kulit

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Miguel Escobar Varela is a theatre scholar, web developer and translator. His main interests are the digital humanities and Indonesian performance practices. His research has been published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Theatre Research International, Contemporary Theatre Review, Asian Theatre Journal, Performance Research and New Theatre Quarterly. He is currently Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore and director of the Contemporary Wayang Archive (cwa-web.org). More information at miguelescobar.com.

ORCID

Miguel Escobar Varela http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8396-1664