10. Learning by Making and Doing: Solo Project - Part 1 - Topic and Targeted Effects
Updated: May 8
The next stage was to learn by making to integrate what we previously learnt and discovered, by creating our own project of a participatory theatre of dialectics utilizing the mediatizing apparatus, with an awareness of both how apparatus is used and how their presence in the space is also considered as performative. This first was a solo creative project (from around 28 Feb to 13 Mar 2024).
From my experiences working as a drama therapist in school, the topic of “bullying and the bystander” concerns me. The problem of “bystander” is also what I find disturbing in a wider social context, when it is not just interpersonal bullying but oppression on a larger scale and deeper level—in which bystanders are structurally a kind of “accomplices” in the long run. As Elie Wiesel said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” I think the exploration of the “bystander” also echoes Brecht’s concern about the passive spectator, which is what all his theatre experiments tried to overcome.
Based on the accumulated learnings from previous classes, I had the following points in my mind about what kind of effects this project should try to bring to spectators/participants:
1) Shifting among different perspectives: from investigators to major roles to themselves to global citizens
2) Activating curiosity and active search/exploration
3) Acquiring a sociological awareness of the situation
4) Developing an awareness to different mediatized and mediated representations of a person
5) Paying attention to the materiality of media/mediation
6) Having a sense of what may be unknown/unaware behind the scenes/curtain
7) Facilitating a gradual awareness that the protagonist presented is actually not “the protagonist”—all the participants themselves are the real protagonists.
8) Creating a safety distance and containment for the heaviness at the part with the closest distance with the “victim”
9) Self-awareness of oneself and one’s possible role in a situation
10) Developing from self-awareness to wider horizon to see global consequences
11) Bringing the global socio-political awareness and reflection without pushing too directly
Reference:
Wiesel, Elie "Nobel Prize acceptance speech" 1986.
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