Tapestry and the aesthetics of theatre in education as dialogic encounter and civil exchange

Abstract

This article is based upon research into a participatory Theatre in Education (TiE) programme that toured the West Midlands in 2009, funded by the UK's PREVENT initiative intended to counter the radicalisation of young British nationals by extremist political groups. The article provides a summary of the TiE programme and then presents quantitative data to demonstrate its success in terms of its ability to both provoke and entertain the young audiences whom it engaged with. The article then goes on to examine qualitative data gathered from two contrasting schools in an attempt to theorise why and in what ways it was successful as both a social exchange and an aesthetic event. In this the authors draw heavily from a recent work by Richard Sennett and propose that the programme constitutes the kind of dialogic encounter and civil exchange that he suggests we need in order to foster forms of cooperation and dialogue within the social and cultural complexities of the modern world. At the heart of this dialogue, we suggest, is the playful charm of actor-teachers and the productively cool dynamic they can bring to bear when working with highly emotive and politically charged issues.

Keywords:

• participatory theatre
• countering violent extremism
• controversial issues
• dialogic encounter
• civility
• mixed methods research

Notes

1. See also Bartlett (2009) for script and teachers’ notes.

2. For a highly critical response to Davies's book ‘Educating Against Extremism’ see Angela Quartermaine's review in the British Journal of Religious Education 2010, Volume 32, issue 3 available on http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2010.498625#tabModule

3. See Winston (2005) for an analysis of this aspect of a previous programme devised by the same artistic director.

4. A copy of the report, which includes a fuller analysis of both the quantitative and qualitative data, can be obtained on request from the authors at [email protected]

5. See Eagleton (2005); the beautiful and sublime are presented here as predominant tendencies only. Each play arguably contains aspects of both. Tapestry, for example, opens with images of conflict and the sounds of a riot, whereas Not in My Name ends with a dialogical encounter between the audience and the young Shahid a year before he commits the terrorist outrage.

6. The BNP stands for the British National Party, one of the UK's more notorious extreme right-wing groupings.

7. We are aware that there is some tension between this labelling of identity and the argument we go on to make, but we feel it is more helpful than not to indicate it given the nature of the play. As Hassan was conscious of being Muslim in the play and Jason conscious of being White British, we are using these signifiers of identity throughout. All British South Asian students interviewed apart from one Hindu boy told us they were Muslims. Only one White British boy said he was Christian and none professed any other religious preference.

8. Taken from Sen (2006, xv).

9. See Butler (1993, 236) and Lawler (2008, 115–21).

10. See, for example, Jackson (1993).

11. See for example Bolton (1984), Jackson (2001) and Winston (2005).