Embodying fairy tales: composition training in narrative, image, and performance^*

Abstract

In this article, the authors discuss the results of a semester-long collaborative teaching project that melded composition training practices with traditional literary methods in an interdisciplinary university course for performing and non-performing arts undergraduate students. Drawing on disability studies perspectives, students used light, sound, and movement to reform traditional fairy tales, including the Grimms’ ‘Snow White’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ as well as Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ and the ‘Little Mermaid’ to challenge constructions of normalcy. This paper details the embodied practices and pedagogies used to train performing arts and non-performing arts students in composition techniques and to facilitate the creation of interdisciplinary performances that challenged the ableist ideologies contained within familiar fairy tale narratives.

Keywords:

• interdisciplinary teaching
• interdisciplinary collaboration
• composition training
• fairy tales
• performance studies
• children’s picture books
• ableism
• critical disability studies
• higher education
• children’s literature

Notes

* This project was supported by a Simon Fraser University Teaching and Learning Development Grant.

1 See Siebers (2008) for a discussion of the social model of disability, and for a critique of how certain spaces are meant to accommodate only particular kinds of bodies. See also Oram (2018) for how a social model of disability influenced their approach to actor training.

2 Students were asked to bring in different picture book versions of their fairy tales to compare how authors and illustrators composed ‘normalcy’. Students were directed to resources like surlalunefairytales.com as well as Tatar (2002) for a list of possible titles.

3 See Davis (2013) for a history of the term ‘normal’. Davis (2013, pp. 1–2) argues ‘that the constellation of words describing this concept “normal,” “normalcy,” “normality,” “norm,” “average,” “abnormal” – all entered the European languages rather late in human history’.

4 The field of disability and performance studies is vast and ever expanding. For early scholarship, see Kuppers (2003); Sandahl and Auslander (2005); Henderson and Ostrander (2008).

5 We found Maria Tatar’s (2002) The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales to be an essential resource. It includes original fairy tale narratives, numerous images to use as compositional tools, and annotated notes that give historical context.

6 Mitchell and Snyder (2000, p. 49) use the term narrative prosthesis ‘to indicate that disability has been used throughout history as a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight’.