Disrupting the Stage: Theatre as Embodied Social Activism
Gustave Weltsek
School of Education
The highly popular and provocative Brazilian author, educator and social arts activist, Augusto Boal once explained that: “It is not the place of the theatre to show the correct path, but only to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined.” (“Theater of the Oppressed”, p.141, 2000). This course disrupts the idea that theatre is a passive spectator event and rather is designed to make visible students’ diverse trajectories as active creative participants in socially situated contexts.
From our earliest moments and throughout our entire lives we are socialized into culturally organized narratives or culturally constructed stories if you will, that form our world views and as a result how we see and act in and upon that world. Through this course we examine the formation of ourselves as members of a complex and diverse society wondering how our individual and collective discourses intersect and depart as we challenge ourselves to create a play that speaks to a collaborative story.
The course aims to explore the relationship between our lives (past, present and future), within the context of our academic experiences and through the collective creation of a new play, as ways to center our narratives in relation to those of Other people and communities. Furthermore, looking at the theatre as a doing rather than something one observes and analyzes, as a form of embodied social activism, brings attention to connections of affective and intellectual encounters through more passive forms of theatre viewing.
This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College.
Catalog Information: EDUC-F 203 TOP EXPLORATION IN EDUCATION