1,720,969 research outputs found
Managing applied theatre: Negotiating tangled webs and navigating murky terrain
No full textFunding and financial relationships have significant implications for the aesthetics, pedagogies, politics and ethics of applied theatre practice. This research addresses concerns about the way in which such relationships constrain and compromise socially committed theatre making. Dependency on external funding can make theatre companies and practitioners more likely to align with the agendas of those who financially support their work. Aesthetic-pedagogic experimentation and radical political aspirations can be limited by the requirement to demonstrate effectiveness in ways that can be measured. Ultimately, accepting funding from the state and other donors is seen to compromise both the aesthetic ideal of artistic autonomy and the social ideal of serving the needs and interests of participants. Looking critically at such concerns with practitioners in applied theatre companies, this research identifies possibilities for negotiating a way through the tangled webs of economic arrangements and the murky terrain of relationships with particular funders. Following a multi-sited ethnographic approach, fieldwork took place with three theatre companies in different national contexts, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the UK. In each company the research questions were addressed with key practitioners and through participant-observation of their day-to-day work. The three ethnographic narratives at the heart of this thesis provide a practice-based perspective on the ways in which applied theatre practices intersect and interrelate with local and globalised economies. Drawing on feminist economics and performance theory, these narratives examine the nuances and dynamics of particular relationships as they develop over time, making an array of economic practices visible, and revealing the coexistence of a plurality of values. Taking elements of J. K. Gibson-Graham’s work on postcapitalist politics, this research proposes that managing diverse economic practices can involve ‘resocialising’ financial and funding relationships. Theatre companies attend to the political and ethical implications of funding and financial relationships and how they connect their practice into wider networks of interdependencies. In applied settings, then, management is not limited to rational models and practices, driven by profit and efficiency and carried out by designated ‘managers’. It can also consist of arts-led, care-based practices, distributed throughout an organisation and sustained by particular kinds of love
Inviting entanglements: Researching within applied theatre companies
No full textThis article focuses on methodological and ethical challenges encountered when planning and carrying out nine months of fieldwork with three applied theatre companies in Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. This research was designed to address concerns about the ways in which funding relationships affect applied theatre. By working with the three companies, my aim was to develop a complex understanding of how they experience and manage their funding relationships. Designing and carrying out this research raised many questions for me about how to ‘be’ as a researcher working within organizations that are in the business of applying theatre. Drawing on ideas from ethnography, applied theatre research and organizational research, I address these questions and outline two ‘ways of being’: being reciprocal and being performative. Using the metaphor of entanglement, I discuss my struggles to enact these ‘ways of being’ through my researcher position and research relationships
Re-Storying Disability through the Arts: Providing a Counterpoint to Mainstream Narratives
No full textThe arts can counter powerful cultural narratives that regulate the lives and bodies of disabled people. But, the performing arts practices that disabled people typically participate in are themselves enmeshed within such problematic narratives. As a result they can play a role in reproducing stigmatised identities and inequitable social relations. In some international contexts, conflicting narratives of disability have meant that the relationship between different areas of arts practice has been either non-existent or fraught with tensions. In this paper, we suggest that the performing arts can contribute significantly to the vision and aspirations articulated in New Zealand’s Disability Strategy if different areas of practice find common ground on which to engage in dialogue and work in coalition. This paper is a reflective report on Re-storying Disability Through the Arts, an event that aimed to provide a space for productive conversation between students, researchers, artists, educators and practitioners with different involvements or interests in disability arts (broadly conceived). It begins with a story that introduces some of the tensions this event evoked. This is followed by a critical commentary that unpacks these tensions, examining the three examples of community-based arts practice that were presented. In each instance we identify the ways in which these different forms of performance engage in a strategy of re-storying disability. The paper concludes by identifying some of the key issues that arose in the discussion that ended Re-storying Disability and from our reflection on the event. These include pressing structural issues and questions for consideration by those involved in disability arts in Aotearoa New Zealand.http://www.drama.org.nz/publications/new-zealand-journal-of-research-in-performing-arts-and-education-2016
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The ‘diverse economies’ of applied theatre
No full textSome of the perennial tensions in applied theatre arise from the ways in which practice is funded or financed. They include the immediate material pressures and pragmatic dilemmas faced by theatre makers on the ground and the struggle to secure the resources needed to produce and sustain work or to negotiate the dynamics and demands of particular funding relationships. In the applied theatre literature, there are many examples of groups and organizations that have compromised their political, pedagogic, artistic or ethical principles to make their work economically viable. There are also ongoing debates about the nature of the relationship between applied theatre and the local, national and global economic conditions in which it is produced. These debates examine the extent to which economic conditions shape the forms and intentions of socially committed theatre movements over time. This article takes a practice-based approach, drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2012 with three applied theatre companies: Applied Theatre Consultants Ltd in New Zealand; C&T in the UK; and FM Theatre Power in Hong Kong. This multi-sited organizational ethnography generates critical insights into the ways in which these companies bring social and artistic values to bear on business models and financial relationships. Analysis of the companies’ practice takes seriously the aim of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s (2006) diverse economies project: to imagine and create spaces of economic possibility. Organizational, management and economic processes can be insidious technologies by which capitalist/neo-liberal ideologies infiltrate socially committed theatre and performance. But they can also be critically informed practices, involving considerable ethical consideration, creativity and care.Pre-prin
Writing Innovative Narratives to Capture the Complexity of Lived Experience: Poetry, Scriptwriting and Prose
No full textThe task of capturing the lived experiences of individuals, groups, communities and societies is at the forefront of many qualitative methodologies. Yet, creative writing methods in research often demand courage. Courage to disrupt traditional notions of research and courage to give voice to issues that are complex, ambiguous or controversial; courage to be creative and design new methods to respond to tricky research topics and scenarios. However, in collaboration with others, and with recognition that others have gone there before, the emerging researcher is encouraged to (as we say in Aotearoa New Zealand) ‘give it a go’. This chapter explains and explores how two such emerging researchers have employed creative narrative methods to capture the complexity of lived experience
Taking care and playing it safe: Tensions in the management of funding relationships
No full textApplied Theatre Consultants Ltd is a theatre company based in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Since 2003 they have received funding from a government department for ‘Everyday Theatre’, a programme about family violence and child abuse. Drawing on an ethnographic study undertaken with the company, this article presents an analysis of the ways in which they have experienced and managed changes to this funding relationship. It will address concerns raised in the academic discourse of applied theatre about the ways in which funding can determine, constrain and compromise practice. Over nine years, tensions have emerged between the arts and social justice values that informed the creation of Everyday Theatre and the rational management systems that have since been implemented by the funder to manage the contractual relationship. Rather than just focusing on the negative effects of these changes, I will draw on theories of arts management as an ‘arts-led’and care-based activity to highlight the particular affordances and strategies used by the company to negotiate between the requirements of their funder and their core artistic and organizational values. I will argue that to understand better the implications of funding relationships for the practice of applied theatre companies, attention needs to be paid to the changing dynamics of such relationships and to the particular ways in which management is constituted within such organizations
Rangi Ruru Walk: social and spatial connections through hybrid intermedial practices
No full textIn 2013 Becca Wood, Spatial Performance Practitioner, and Molly Mullen, Applied Theatre Practitioner, collaborated to create a short ambulatory performance with audio score for a group of drama educators attending a conference workshop on the possibilities of walking as performance. The performance was created remotely from the intended site: Rangi Ruru Girls’ School, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Following the destruction of the 2012 earthquake, this site was in a state of transformation and recovery. The performance walk attended to the histories, geographies and politics of this place, somatically, architecturally and socially. This paper engages with three critical questions: How might mediated listening and walking activate the coming together of bodies and place? What performative shifts occurred for the participants in the walk and workshop? How might we come to our senses? Through a performative practice of mediated site-based listening and walking, this paper is a reflection on the creative process and performance. We consider the potential for technologically mediated performance to offer new modes for learning and creative practice through interdisciplinary and evolving intermedial practices.http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/crde20/currentAM - Accepted Manuscrip
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