This is my girlfriend on the radio

Here's my girlfriend talking about the Feast Festival this year. Plenty of thought-provoking shows, wild parties, and great times in the middle of the city! Join us for a Coopers?

See you in Light Square from 12th-27th November

http://radioadelaidebreakfast.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/feast-festival.mp3

This is Why I Like Participatory Performance

Che Guevera said ‘solidarity means running the same risks’

Spreading the Love will be Back in 2011!

Curious about what your love future holds?
My Spreading the Love bed will be roaming Adelaide again in 2011!
Jump in my bed, eat chocolate, read cards, tell love secrets.
More coming soon....

Letting it All Out: Performance as Catharsis

Theories of catharsis offer ways to examine how performance considers and influences the emotions of spectators. Aristotle developed the concept of catharsis through his analysis of classical theatre. While interpretations of Aristotle’s catharsis vary, performance theorist Phillip Auslander understands it as the ability of art to enable ‘a safe discharge of emotional reactions’ (Auslander, 1997, p. 13). Catharsis is a way to train ourselves in the correct use of our emotions, allowing them to rise, and then fall, within a contained and safe environment.

Is Catharsis Feminist?

In looking through a feminist lens, Diamond conceives of catharsis as a shudder rather than an attempt to retain order. Diamond views catharsis as a dynamic state, rather than one that acts to regulate spectator emotions. While theatre maker Bertolt Brecht (1964) claims that traditional uses of catharsis overpowers the emotions and in doing so dulls the intellect, Diamond explores ways that feeling aroused through performances may instead provoke critical responses. Catharsis then, is a disturbance rather than a harmonic interchange between seeing and feeling.

Karen Finley with Egg on Her Face

Diamond describes the work of performance artist Karen Finley as a form of anamorphic catharsis. Through the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Finley’s solo performances explored issues of sexuality, desire, abjection, trauma and disgust. Finley’s catharsis is an immersion in the traumatic material; she is the cathartic subject, both ‘victim of and witness to’, a constant ‘oscillation between seeing and feeling’ (Diamond, 1995, p. 166; p. 153).

This oscillation creates a perpetual disequilibrium, one that works to jolt spectator emotions into recognising the pain of gender and sexual oppression. In performances Finley often appears as if in a trance, regularly covering her body with symbols of defilement. Finley works to arouse and disturb the act of seeing, her shocking performances a counterbalance to constant media images that numb spectators to suffering. She is the permanently objectified woman, an unceasingly shuddering body, threatening to implicate spectators in her pain (Diamond, 1995).



Is Catharsis a lot of Crying?

I am writing about catharsis and crying so much I have to turn the radio off. You know that song 'She Cries'? (I will find the link and put it up). I am crying cos there has been a hole blast right through me with the pain of the song, the story it tells, and all the stories it doesn't tell. It's a gush that rushes through me.

Is this catharsis?

According to Aristotle, not really.
Catharsis, for him (so those who interpret his work say) is the discharge of emotions so that one may be rid of them.
Today, however, I cry out of recognition. I have no desire to rid myself of these emotions. Instead, it is an act of empathy, a desire to open to the world and let it run through my heart. It is no attempt to cleanse my heart (clean! poo-hoo!). It is a desire to let my heart see and be in the world. And some parts of the world can only be honoured through a good cry.

What is Theatre for Development?

Applied theatre is used in the field of development through a group of practices often referred to as theatre for development. These performances frequently work with rural and marginalised communities employing performance, including drama, song, dance and puppetry to convey pertinent health and educational messages (Kamlongera, 2005; Prentki T. , 1998). As a tool for development work, performance may be particularly useful due to performance artists abilities to work with groups of people who are not literate, who do not share a language, or who don’t have access to other types of media. Theatre for development performances often attempt to operate in local languages, and strive for styles, techniques, plots, and characters that are culturally appropriate. This group of performances work towards delivering health and educational messages to those not reached by mainstream initiatives, while cultivating community participation and mobilisation (Chinyowa, 2008b; Kamlongera, 2005; Prentki T. , 1998). Theatre for development may offer a way of looking at how performance can work with communities to create their own approaches to transforming the script of rape.

Theatre for development in practice

Rather than being simply a method of communicating health and educational messages to communities, theatre for development aims to create a forum for people to negotiate their own change. The pedagogical theories of Paulo Friere (2002; 2006a; 2006b) offer a framework for working with communities and have been instrumental in developing concepts of theatre for development. Friere initiates a ‘bottom-up’ approach to education, in which students institute their own solutions to problems. In his most famous text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2006a), Friere separates his work from what he calls the ‘banking’ method of education. The banking method refers to the assumption that students are an empty vessel and the teacher’s ‘task is to ‘fill’ the students’ with knowledge (Friere, 2006a, p. 71). The student is filled up like a bank, a receptacle to be sustained by the teacher. The teacher tells, while the student listens, records, remembers. Knowledge can be possessed or lacking, with the teacher acting as regulator, or depositor of essential information. Meanings are delivered as if they are absolute and unchanging: ‘The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable’ (Friere, 2006a, p. 71). According to Friere, this banking method reflects an oppressive society which clearly delineates ignorance from knowledge, and denies any attempt to transform existing power structures. Knowledge is given value according to who holds it, so that wisdom held by students is not as valuable as that held by teachers. It is the ‘teacher [who] chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it’ (Friere, 2006a, p. 73).

Paolo Freire and freedom through education

This banking method of education annuls possibilities for transformation and creativity. It is the same framework that delivers communities ‘’folk’ songs, dances, poems and stories that have already been planned for them’ (Chinyowa, 2008a, p. 18). It presumes that ‘the individual is a spectator, not re-creator’ of the world (Friere, 2006a, p. 75). Instead of simply delivering knowledge, Friere suggests education as the posing of problems, a dialogue between equals in which all are responsible for intellectual and personal growth. Friere’s philosophy engages learners in dialogue that invites them to be become ‘co-investigators’ in building awareness (Friere, 2006a, p. 106). Learning expands into a process of conscientizacao, or a developing of awareness and taking action against of one’s oppressions (Friere, 2006a). In the spirit of Friere’s theories, when considering theatre for development Kennedy Chinyowa (2001; 2007; 2008a; 2008b) writes that the process assumes ‘people are capable of transforming themselves if they are afforded the space to participate in their own development’ (Chinyowa, 2008a, p. 5). Theatre for development is influenced by a Frierean framework and aims to become ‘the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it’ (Friere, 2006a, p. 79). Performance is participatory, awakening people from a passive state of acceptance, into a critical consideration of their realities.

Despite the impact of Friere’s participatory framework upon theories and practices of theatre for development, performance processes may continue to silence women participants. While women may be visible in theatre for development shows, performance theorist Esi Dogbe (2002) argues that they do not necessarily have a voice in the process. In her analysis of theatre for development in Ghana, Dogbe writes that plays may deliver messages of women’s strength and decision-making abilities, yet these same performances do not allow women to become active decision makers in the play-making process. While Ghanaian policies on development aim for the empowerment of women, none of the projects that Dogbe studied explicitly attempted to challenge gender frameworks. Instead, performances target women ‘with messages to work harder, keep their surroundings clean, develop eco-consciousness, and discipline their sexual behaviour’ (Dogbe, 2002, p. 88). As Dogbe puts it, women are ‘simultaneously ‘vocal’ and ‘silenced’, ‘visible’ and invisible’’ in a contradictory approach to participation (Dogbe, 2002, p. 85).

While participation is a key tenant of theatre for development, without a critique of gendered practices, theatre for development cannot offer alternative ways for women to participate. Chinyowa maintains that while ‘community theatre remains in search of social change, it seems to be confronted by ambiguities in terms of the agency, power and representation of its participants’ (Chinyowa, 2008b, p. 11). According to Chinyowa, those working in the field of theatre for development, who are often outsiders to the communities with which they work, can fail to fully observe and understand the cultural norms of target communities. He examines how notions of participation involve more than simply performing plays in local languages, and post-performance discussions (Chinyowa, 2008a). Both Dogbe and Chinyowa warn of the potential of shaping theatre for development projects to suit stakeholder needs, rather than taking into account the specificities of each community. If performance is to prevent the script of rape then it must take as a starting point communities’ own attitudes and configurations of gender and relationships, inviting participants to consider and critique the social implications of these.

Intro to Applied Theatre

Applied theatre is an umbrella term for a group of performance practices in which artists work with individuals and communities to foster social change. The term ‘applied theatre’ may be used to refer to community theatre, political theatre, youth theatre, theatre in prisons, theatre in conflict resolution, playback theatre, psychodrama, dramatherapy, theatre in education, and theatre for development (Prentki, 2009). The term ‘applied’ in applied theatre points to two predominant functions of theatre. Theatre may be ‘applied’ to a community for self-development and exploration, or ‘applied’ to an issue that is addressed through theatre (Ackroyd, 2007). This notion of ‘theatre’ is not a distinct form of art that is understood in the same way in every community and context (Ackroyd, 2007; Prentki, 2009); in fact, applied theatre may deliberately contest and purposefully transgress theatrical traditions (Jackson A. , 2009). Both these notions ‘applied’ and ‘theatre’ therefore point to performances with a similar purpose but different theoretical frameworks and approaches.

Applied theatre from the Centre of Applied Theatre Research

In writing about contemporary discourse on applied theatre, Judith Ackroyd (2000; 2007) however, wonders if ‘the term is actually worth having’ (Ackroyd, 2007, p. 7). While she had previously embraced this term (Ackroyd, 2000), Ackroyd more recently argues that the discourse on applied theatre has created a hierarchy of performance approaches (Ackroyd, 2007). Ackroyd maintains that applied theatre must not be considered as an ideology or a method. Instead, as a range of separate and overlapping art forms that seek social transformation, these performances must continually reflect upon their purpose and engagement (Ackroyd, 2000). My interest lies in the potential of each form to work with communities to reconfigure gender and negotiate ethical relationships. Like Ackroyd, I am not merely interested in the efficacy of applied theatre performances in reaching their purported goals (Ackroyd, 2007); I am also interested in examining and critiquing these goals, asking if they have the potential to transform the script of rape.


Effect or Affect?
Applied Theatre has traditionally focused on social efficacy over aesthetic experience (Prentki T. , 1998; Thompson, 2009). Discourse on applied theatre promotes performances as working towards positive social change and personal growth; performances aim to assist people reflect upon and change their lives, to work through trauma, engage in learning, and depict ‘something of the truth of the lives of those involved’ (Thompson, 2009, p. 116). Performance theorist and director of DramaAidE (Drama Aids Education), Lyn Dalrymple tells that in the context of South Africa, the impact of applied theatre is primarily seen in terms of ‘the effect an activity or experience has had on its target audience’ (Dalrymple, 2006, p. 202; italics in original). In working on applied theatre projects that attempt to prevent the rise of HIV infections through raising awareness of the issue, Dalrymple cites the difficulty of evaluating the goals of applied theatre, and of attributing these changes to the project itself (Dalrymple, 2006). It may however be problematic to simply see applied theatre performances in terms of their social impact; evaluation is notoriously imprecise, and this perspective homogenises the types of performances that are endorsed (Ackroyd, 2000).

What about the affect of applied theatre?

James Thompson in Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (2009) argues for a methodological shift that considers the affect, rather than the effect of performance. Performance may be educational and informational, or offer ways for communities to differently negotiate their social realties. However, according to Thompson, these are not the primary attributes of performance, and he quotes Claire Colebrook who argues ‘what makes it art is not content but its affect’ (Colebrook in Thompson, 2009). This viewpoint acknowledges that performance is not merely a bundle of meanings, but a force which generates individual impressions and creative force. In suggesting a move away from a focus on efficacy, Thompson is not proposing that applied theatre become politically insignificant. Instead, he claims that ‘the aesthetic intensity is in itself the propellant of political action’ (Thompson, 2009, p. 128). In Thompson’s opinion, critique of applied theatre must move to acknowledging how aesthetic experiences of performance invite intellectual engagement (Thompson, 2009, p. 130).


Richard Schechner's Efficacy-Entertainment Braid
While Brecht and Schechner make clear distinctions between entertainment and efficacy (Schechner, 1988), Thompson does not write these functions as dichotomous, but argues instead for a discourse that acknowledges their continual interweaving. Schechner arranges entertainment and efficacy into a braid, and outlines how historically, performance has oscillated between these two extremities (Schechner, 1988). Schechner writes that at ‘any historical moment there is movement from one pole to the other as the efficacy-entertainment braid tightens and loosens’ (Schechner, 1988, p. 136). Yet for Thompson the concept of affect ‘tries to turn a braid into a mesh of felt responses’ that disrupts the opposition between efficacy and entertainment (Thompson, 2009, p. 130). Performance is promoted as having sensory, experiential, and expansive affects that promote engagement. Thompson argues that applied theatre performances must be appraised for both sensation and meaning, so ‘the joy – the buzz of the participatory arts is inseparable from the total impact of the event’ (Thompson, 2009, p. 131). In my analysis of performance as a way to prevent rape I wish to explore how the experience of performance itself may be transformative, rather than investigating transformation as some future social change.