Matching Items (31)
Description
Examining the elements of the hidden curriculum in theatre education allows theatre educators the opportunity to reflect on their own pedagogy and its effects on the learner. The hidden curriculum refers to the unspoken or implicit values, norms, and beliefs that are transmitted through tacit messages. When the hidden curriculum remains veiled, the impact on the learner's education and socialization process can perpetuate gender, race, and class inequalities. In order to understand how the hidden curriculum manifests itself in theatre classrooms, we have to look at schools as "agents of legitimation, organized to produce and reproduce the dominant categories, values, and social relationships necessary for the maintenance of the larger society" (Giroux, 1983, p. 72). This qualitative study examined the hidden curriculum in theatre at the secondary level and looked at theatre teachers' pedagogy in reproducing elements of the hidden curriculum. Interviews, naturalistic observation, and a researcher reflective journal were employed in the data collection process to better understand: a) the elements of hidden curriculum that appear in theatre education at the secondary level, b) how the pedagogical practices of theatre teachers support societal structures, and c) how the hidden curriculum in theatre reinforces gender, race, and social class distinctions. Data were then coded and analyzed to find emergent themes. Multiple theoretical perspectives serve as a conceptual framework for understanding the hidden curriculum, and provide a neglected perspective of the hidden curriculum in theatre education. The theatre classroom provides a unique space to view hidden curriculum and can be viewed as a unique agent of social change. Themes related to the first research question emerged as: a) privileges for older students, b) school rules, c) respect for authority, d) acceptance of repetitive tasks, and c) punctuality. Themes related to the second research question emerged as: a) practices, b) procedures, c) rules, d) relationships, and e) structures. Finally, themes related to the third question emerged as: a) reinforcement of social inequality, b) perpetuation of class structure, and c) acceptance of social destiny. The discussion looks at the functions of theatre pedagogy in the reproduction of class, inequality, and institutionalized cultural norms.
ContributorsHines, Angela R (Author) / Saldana, Johnny (Thesis advisor) / Malewski, Erik (Committee member) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Multivariate forms of social oppression, such as racism, linguicism, and heterosexism, are manifested in schools that, as part of our communities, reflect the societal stratification and structural inequalities of a larger society. Teacher educators engaged in multicultural education are responsible for providing pre-service teachers with opportunities to critically examine the intricacies of cultural diversity in U.S. classrooms, developing critical multicultural dispositions. What are effective pedagogical strategies that encourage pre-service teachers to develop such critical multicultural practices? The researcher has found that participatory theatre, including Boalian theatre games, Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, and ethnodrama, can be a transformative, emancipatory pedagogical tool to engage students in critical and creative exploration of cultural diversity. The primary objective of this study is to illustrate how pre-service teachers develop critical consciousness through attending the researcher's multicultural teacher education classroom, which was designed at the nexus of Freirean and Boalian critical (performance) pedagogy, followed by analyzing his teaching practice, which focuses mainly on participatory theatre exercises. This doctoral dissertation is an ethnographic documentary of the researcher's striving to challenge the hegemonic status quo in teacher education by liberating himself from the anti-dialogical banking educator, and encouraging his students to liberate themselves as passive consumers of education. Such reflection may provide teacher educators with examples of counter-hegemonic (artistic) practice for social change relating to their own work.
ContributorsMitsumura, Masakazu (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Sterling, Pamela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The Holocaust and the effects it has had upon witnesses has been a topic of study for nearly six decades; however, few angles of research have been conducted relating to the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors--the After Generations. The After Generations are considered the proof--the living legacies--that their parents and grandparents survived. Growing up with intimate knowledge of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, members of the After Generations not only carry with them their family's story, but also their own vicarious experience(s) of trauma. From this legacy comes a burden of responsibility to those who perished, their survivor parents/grandparents, the stories that were shared, as well as to future generations. Using grounded theory method, this study not only explores the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon members of the After Generations, but what it means to responsibly remember the stories from the Holocaust, as well as how individuals might ethically represent such stories/memories. Findings that developed out of an axial analysis of interview transcripts and journal writing, as well as the later development of a performance script, are embodied in a manner that allows the actual language and experiences of the participants to be collectively witnessed both symbolically and visually. Through their desire to remember, members of the After Generations demonstrate how they plan to carry on traditions, live lives that honor those that came before them, and maintain hope for the future. In so doing, the stories shared reveal the centrality of the Holocaust in the lives of members of the After Generations through their everyday choices to responsibly and actively remember through their art, writings, life-work, as well as from within their work in their local communities. Such acts of remembrance are important to the education of others as well as to the construction and maintenance of the After Generations' identities. The representation of these voices acts as a reminder of how hatred and its all-consuming characteristics can affect not only the person targeted, but multiple generations, as well.
ContributorsRath, Sandra (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / Corey, Frederick C. (Committee member) / Eisenberg, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation is a qualitative study based on the experiences of five high schoolers and five college-aged students who grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and participated in theatrical productions within their schools, churches, the Erie Playhouse Youtheatre, and other community theatres. The author begins with an introduction of the theatrical scene in Erie and explains the options available to these youth during the times they performed, so the reader will have a better understanding of the background of these young people. The author then explores the current literature dealing with youth participants in a youth theatre setting. In his research, he notes that there were few scholarly books or articles that directly dealt with youth who participate in youth theatre. Most of the books dealt with youth who are part of theatrical programs in school settings, and few researchers utilized the youth's voice as part of the process. The author interviewed ten participants about their theatrical experiences asking them about aspects such as: positive and negative experiences, why they performed, and what they learned from doing theatre. After transcribing the interviews, the author analyzed the participants' responses for values, attitudes, and beliefs about theatre. From this analysis, the author found six themes emerged focusing on: fun, friendship, family, personal growth, commitment to productions, and negative experiences in the theatrical process. Throughout the document, the author utilized the youths' voices and kept their words and thoughts as the basis for all findings constructed and discussed.
ContributorsKosnik, Craig (Author) / Saldana, Johnny (Thesis advisor) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Committee member) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation uses constructivist pedagogy to teach acting via Practical Aesthetics, a system of actor training created in the mid/&ndash1980s; by David Mamet and his college acting students. Primarily taught at the Atlantic Theatre Acting School in New York City, Practical Aesthetics has been the focus of little academic research. The same lack of research regarding constructivist pedagogy exists in academic theatre scholarship. The author takes a step toward rectifying this situation. Using an action research methodology, based on approximately thirteen years of teaching experience, the author suggests that Practical Aesthetics and his accompanying voice and movement exercises can be effective in training novice actors. The author melds theory and practice into the educational approach called Praxis to create specific detailed lesson plans which can be used to implement Practical Aesthetics. These lessons constitute primary research on this topic. Compatible voice and movement exercises are also included to provide a comprehensive semester length digest. The first chapter is an introduction, the second outlines Practical Aesthetics, the third focuses on constructivism, the fourth discusses teaching acting using Constructivist Learning Design, the fifth provides narrative lessons that can be used in the classroom, and the closure provides a review as well as suggestions for further research. An intriguing point made in the closure is a call for studies that might determine Practical Aesthetics' applicability and usability in other fields such as law, business, politics, public speaking, and even non-profit work. Although the primary audience for this dissertation is secondary school and college acting instructors, any scholar studying acting theory or constructivist pedagogy may find value in its contents.
ContributorsDobosiewicz, Troy L. (Author) / Saldana, Johnny (Thesis advisor) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Committee member) / Eckard, Bonnie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation employs an ethnographic methodological approach. It explores young people's performance of a New Afrikan subjectivity, their negotiation of a multiple consciousness (American, African-American, New Afrikan and Pan-Afrikan) and the social and cultural implications for rearing children of African descent in the US within a New Afrikan ideology. Young people who are members of the New Afrikan Scouts, attendees of Camp Pumziko and/or students enrolled at Kilombo Academic and Cultural Institute were observed and interviewed. Through interviews young people shared their perceptions and experiences of New Afrikan childhood. The findings of this study discuss the ways in which agency, conformity and the spaces in between are enacted and experienced by New Afrikan children. The findings particularly reveal that in one sense New Afrikan adults aid young people in examining their racial and cultural subjectivity in US America. In another sense New Afrikan adults manipulate young people into performing prescribed roles that are seemingly uncritical of the implications of these performances beyond an adult agenda.
ContributorsSunni-Ali, Asantewa (Author) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Thesis advisor) / Davis, Olga (Committee member) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Guided by Clifford Geertz's notion of culture as symbolic stories people tell themselves about themselves, the purpose of this study is to examine how youth in an urban area of Phoenix, AZ experience collectively creating and performing original documentary theatre. I pay attention to the ways youth participants--also known as artist-researchers--construct, perform, and/or perceive their identities as they practice drama techniques including improvisation, physical theatre, and Theatre of the Oppressed for the purposes of making docutheatre for social justice. First the artist-researchers chose the topics for their play. Next, they learned and applied drama and research skills to gather and examine data sources used to construct a script that explores hiding and exposure. In the process of sharing and gathering true stories our unique docutheatre-making culture was created. This multimodal qualitative research case study draws upon the genres of arts-based research and visual ethnography as primary modes of data collection and interpretation. Narrative description and the ethnodramatic mode of representation are used in conjunction with still images and this study's companion website (www.meant2see.com) to report research findings. Primary data sources include participant observation fieldnotes, over twenty hours of recorded video footage, photographs, and the project's original script and performance of To Be What's Not Meant to See . Further data include journal entries, drawings, and social media. All data were coded using In Vivo and Process Coding methods and analyzed through a cultural studies lens. Codes were sorted into phenomenological categories representative of recurring ideas and themes. Assertions were then solidified once specific key linkages were constructed. This study's key assertions are: Key Assertion 1: Participation in devising documentary social justice theatre influences and affects the construction, perception, and/or performance of urban youth identities through profound connections made with interviewees during the interview process and through the collection of true stories that provide new information and rare opportunities for self-reflection and self-realization; Key Assertion 2: Portions of the roles urban youth play in their identity narratives are disguised or hidden--purposefully, reluctantly, and/or subconsciously--in order to appeal to friends, families, or the codes of dominant culture.
ContributorsGiannone, Enza (Author) / Saldana, Johnny (Thesis advisor) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In this dissertation I use Henri Lefebvre's concept of the production of social space to study how political theatre companies and artists in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, appropriate and resignify, through performance, their current social space as a strategy to contest Puerto Rico's neoliberal state policies. As Lefebvre suggests, modern industrial cities like San Juan maintain hegemonic power relations through spatial practices, processes through which users and inhabitants of the city conceive, perceive and live space. Lefebvre further suggests that for social justice to be possible, space must be resignified in ways that expose otherwise invisibilized struggles for social belonging and differentiation. I argue that theatrical performance, by staging various social conflicts and contradictions between the dominating space and the appropriating space, can produce new "performance cartographies" through which its audiences – in large part disenfranchised from the neoliberal processes so celebrated elsewhere on the island – may find ways to resignify space or envision new spaces for social justice on their own behalf. Specifically, I examine five theatre groups and artists from oppressed sectors in San Juan, whose work is to various degrees in opposition to neoliberalism, to reveal how both their artistic and quotidian performances might be resignifying space toward these ends. How does the work of Agua, Sol y Sereno, Y no había luz, Teatro Breve, Deborah Hunt and Tito Kayak strategically claim or appropriate space? What kind of knowledges emerge from these spatial tactics, and how are they helping envision new forms of living and social justice in the city?
ContributorsGonzález, Jorge (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Using arts-informed ethnographic approaches, theatrical techniques and a feminist/performance studies lens, this study analyzes the construction of US girlhood from the perspective of girls ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen by examining their original artistic creations and performances. Placing the artifacts of girl-created culture and the girls' representations, which I view as a performative practice, at the heart of my study, I connect girlhood studies to Butler's gender performance theories and to the larger field of performance studies. Rather than strictly analyzing these original works myself, I involve the girl participants as co-theorists in the analysis of the resulting artistic creations as a performance of girlhood. Through our theory building sessions, we aim to discover a nuanced understanding of girlhood and how gender identity can be performed by adolescent girls, as well as how artistic and theatrical practices can serve to assist youth in exploring complex issues. The adolescent female participants serve as active writers and performers of girlhood and through their writing and performances demonstrate their understanding of what it means to be a girl in contemporary US society. In viewing the girls as theorists, I demonstrate their capabilities while honoring their experiences and knowledge, an approach I believe should be more often employed in academia and in everyday life. Specifically, my study's central research question asks: how do US girls consume mass media representations of girlhood and reproduce or subvert these representations? In what ways do girls perform their understandings of their own identities and what it means to be a girl in contemporary US society through their creations of original art and literature, live theatrical pieces, and digital cultural practices? These works include theatrical performances, creative writing, self-portrait sculptures, and blogs/journals. Additionally, I conduct and analyze both solo and group interviews. I assert the importance of creative space and theatrical/artistic practices as tools with which girls can examine and challenge girlhood and gender discourses.
ContributorsMinarsich, Teresa (Author) / Etheridge Woodson, Stephani (Thesis advisor) / Saldana, Johnny (Committee member) / Melo, Carla (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Traumas are moments which disrupt a way of being, often involving death or injury and a period of recovery for its survivors. They can be personal, experienced by an individual, or collective, experienced by a group of individuals, such as a family. Others, like the bombing of Hiroshima, impact much larger communities, such as an entire town, an entire nation, or even the world. These national traumas often include large-scale death or injury and impact the lives of thousands. In addition to their immediate physical and material affects (mortalities, economic impact, creating a need for aid), these events shatter not only an individual's sense of well- being, but also larger notions of national identity, stability and security. In many cases, they also reveal the limits of prevailing concepts of national cohesiveness, citizenship and belonging while often simultaneously upholding or reconstructing newly problematic concepts of national cohesion. Traumas are documented and grappled with through various media, including literature, poetry, art, photography, and journalism. This dissertation, "Performing Nation, Performing Trauma: Theatre and Performance after September 11th, Hurricane Katrina and the Peruvian Dirty War" examines how theatre and performance are utilized to respond to, document, memorialize and represent national traumas resulting from such historical crises as the Peruvian Dirty Wars, Hurricane Katrina, and September 11th, as well as how they resist dominant narratives that construct national traumas as such. These traumas are relived and expressed through performance perhaps precisely because the members of a nation (consciously or subconsciously) recognize that nation is also performed. This dissertation focuses on both the content of and the reception of these performances and the particular implications that performances about national traumas hold for theatre critics/scholars, performance practitioners and audience members (those immediately connected and not so obviously connected to the event).
ContributorsNigh, Katherine Jean (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Woodson, Stephani (Committee member) / Whitaker, Matthew C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011