Playing on the barricades: Embodied reflections on passion and melancholia in drama education by key practitioners

Abstract

This is the first PhD with creative practice component to be completed within the Faculty of Education at The University of Auckland. This thesis forms the written body of work which integrates with and supports the hour long play I performed at the Musgrove Studio, Auckland, in July 2014. My research explores my loss of passion for drama education after many years teaching drama in secondary schools in England and New Zealand. This loss is described as ‘melancholy’, an aesthetic sense which propels me into a search to re-find my enthusiasm for drama education – an often marginalised pedagogy, art form and subject. I asked six published international drama educators, who have inspired me, to share their stories about what sustains them in their practice. I developed a new research method ‘embodied reflections’ to generate data. This methodology and thesis is constructed like a ‘well-made play’ and uses a framing device to invite my participants to perform their stories and reflect on them through dramatic conventions. I became the ‘researcher-in-role’ as I facilitated each dyadic drama workshop. These stories were captured on video and subsequently mediated by me using theatrical processes resulting in the public performance of the research. I became a researcher, actor, director, designer and dramaturg. This research is informed by arts-based research and by my own immersion in theatre and the work of Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski. I come to embrace serendipity as I frequently made unplanned, unexpected and surprising discoveries – including the important role Motherhood plays in my experiences. During the devising, rehearsing and performing of my play I begin to renew my passion for drama education. I re-engage with drama as art form and pedagogy. I re-discover how to play, to imagine and to perform. I suggest other drama educators could reignite their passion through playful engagement with their own artform. I finally celebrate my melancholia and accept that – in being a drama educator – I am an artist. A DVD of the doctoral performance accompanies this thesis.