Critical pedagogies and the theatre laboratory. Issue 2 (3rd April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Heron, Jonathan; Johnson, Nicholas
• Is Part Of: Research in drama education. Volume 22:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 282
• Page End: 287
• Publication Date: 2017-04-03
• Subjects: Critical pedagogy -- theatre laboratory -- Samuel Beckett -- applied theatre -- ensemble-led; Drama in education -- Periodicals; Drama -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 792.071
• DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2017.1293513
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1356-9783

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This dialogue contributes reflections on the 'theatre laboratory' to the scholarly debate surrounding methodologies of drama education and applied performance. The co-authors suggest that the experimental and ensemble-led approach of the Samuel Beckett Laboratory, founded at Trinity College Dublin in 2013 as a space for research into Beckett in performance, may offer one response to a question that Kathleen Gallagher proposes in the twentieth Anniversary issue of RiDE (20.3), concerning 'how drama educators might incorporate such practices of hope into their pedagogy' [2015. "Beckoning Hope and Care." RIDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Drama Education 20 (3): 423]. This work suggests that the hopeful practice of laboratory exploration de-hierarchises a scholarly endeavour and recasts the student as co-creator of knowledge, rather than consumer of cultural capital. The values and practices of such a laboratory may open one avenue of participatory pedagogy that scaffolds risk and re-values failure. In the dialogue that follows, we draw on Gallagher's 'practices of hope' to develop our own interests in the subjunctivity of performance pedagogies in Beckettian contexts [cf. Heron, J., N. Johnson, B. Dinçel, G. Quinn, S. J. Scaife, and Á. Tyrrell, 2014. "The Samuel Beckett Laboratory 2013." Journal of Beckett Studies 23 (1): 73–94].