title: The Gods Project: Drama as Intercultural Education. An Ethnographic Study of an Intercultural Performance Project in a Secondary School
Creators: name: Donelan, Katriona Jane
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Drama in intercultural education
subject: interculturalism
subject: drama curriculum
subject: intercultural storytelling

description: This thesis investigates the role of drama in the intercultural education of young people. It considers the relationship between the fields of drama education, intercultural performance and ethnography. The drama curriculum is explored as a site of intercultural learning and performance pedagogy. The thesis also examines the place of ethnography as an embodied, participatory practice in intercultural drama pedagogy and performance research. The study is placed in a context of international exchange and cultural pluralism, and is framed by debates about intercultural performance and the appropriation and representation of cultural narratives. This investigation of interculturalism within the drama curriculum is grounded in an ethnographic study conducted in Melbourne, Australia in a multicultural secondary school community. The study documents the experiences of approximately forty young people who participated in an African drama and performing arts project called ‘The Gods Project’. ‘Jean’, a Kenyan performing artist who was undertaking a two-year residency in the school, led the intercultural performance project. Participants were involved in drama and performing arts workshops, an ‘African’ creative arts camp and a performance of a play, The Gods are not to Blame, by Nigerian playwright Ola Rotimi. The interpretative account of the project draws on ethnographic data from the first year of Jean’s residency in the school and six months of intensive fieldwork in the second year of her residency. It also includes longitudinal data that was collected from a group of participants up to four years after the project. I collaborated with Jean and with a group of senior students, who volunteered to be ‘student co-researchers’, to record and analyse the diverse experiences of participants in The Gods Project and to interpret its educational, social, and aesthetic impact within the school context. Jean’s pedagogy of intercultural story telling within the drama classroom and her role as a ‘cultural guide’ throughout the project was explored. As a participatory ethnographic researcher, drama educator and ‘assistant director’, I worked alongside Jean and the students as they played with, talked about, resisted, created, adapted, subverted, embodied and performed intercultural performance texts. Drawing on Turner (1982) and Schechner (1988), I conceptualised The Gods Project as an intersecting social and aesthetic drama. The phases of ‘social drama’ and ritual were used as a framework for the data analysis and as a structure for the narrative account of the project. Turner’s concepts of the ‘liminal/liminoid’ and ‘communitas’ were applied to the participants’ experiences at the creative arts camp and within the workshop and performance space. ‘Dark play’ was identified as the young people’s response to the difficult social drama they were involved in; their subversive play provided a way to engage with the ‘strangeness’ of the cultural material and the play’s ‘dark’ story and themes. The participants’ dramatic play informed the emerging aesthetic drama and facilitated their intercultural meaning making. The students’ efforts to make sense of and interpret a performance text embedded in a Yoruba context resemble the task of an ethnographer attempting to understand and represent socio-cultural experiences. The study demonstrates that through a process of collaborative ‘intercultural reflexivity’, ethnography can enhance intercultural drama education. The pedagogical features of The Gods Project are related to Turner’s concept of performance ethnography and the role of a ‘cultural guide’ in intercultural teaching and learning is highlighted. With the guidance of their Kenyan teaching artist many of the young people engaged with different socio-cultural perspectives, actively explored new cultural performance conventions and art forms, and experienced the complexities of intercultural representation. The study reveals evidence of significant social, personal, intercultural and artistic learning outcomes for participants within this school-based performance project. However, the study also reveals the difficulties and challenges of implementing an innovative intercultural project within a school context. It demonstrates that kinaesthetic, playful, embodied and performative experiences are central to intercultural teaching and learning.