14. Learning by Making and Doing: Group Project - Part 1

The next stage of learning by making was a group project, creating another learning play with another partner (from 20 Mar to 3 Apr 2024). The collaborative creation process itself was also a part of the socio-political learning, because it involved communication, negotiation, sharing responsibilities and risks/crisis, integrating diversity of opinions/preferences, reaching consensus, or even managing (potential or actual) conflicts.

However, the process was unexpectedly smooth. It seemed that both of us had a complicity of saying “yes” to each other’s ideas during the brainstorming process, and we had a shared intention to bring certain elements/components from our solo pieces into this group project for modification and deeper exploration. My partner wanted to go further with the “absurd speech at the altar” component and the “trial” component in her piece, and I wanted to continue my exploration of setting up clues and fragmented information for participants to both imagine/guess about a situation/story while being aware of that the clues and fragments also have angles, limitation and interest. Both of us also wanted to get deeper into creating some kinds of social/sociological experiment mediated by theatre, or with theatricality. I was not sure if this smoothness would make me missing something about socio-political learning or affect the richness of complexity in our creation, but anyway...it felt good!

Regarding socio-political topics/elements, both of us were interested in:

1)      Selection mechanism as a fundamental operation of society

2)      Distribution of different social burdens and its criteria

3)      Democracy/democratic procedure (fake/real)

4)      Material/economic condition for art as production

5)      Official narrative versus plural narratives in a post-truth era

6)      The ideology embodied by or inserted in technologies, like AI

We finally dropped the last one within the limitation of time. But still, our main question at the second stage was how to link the five topics together and find a dramaturgical container for them. We spent much time in designing a selection mechanism (and explore how we can include AI in it) because we had a sense that, structurally, it can link the four topics. Later, as we saw the poster of Robert Lepage’s production of Hamlet, we thought maybe Hamlet can be used as a dramaturgical container/playground.

Then we considered the followings as key questions for our project in practice:

1)      Who the audiences consider themselves to be, and how to help them to make sense of shifting into different roles throughout the process

2)      How to highlight the sociological/socio-political aspects

3)      How to facilitate playfulness

4)      How to create a sense of strangeness

5)      How to combine elements from our solo projects for modification?

6)      What are the potentials of Hamlet as the (pre-)text

7)      How to make use of the audiences’ entrance and waiting time before the starting of the “show/event”, as a preparation of mental state or attitude for the upcoming participation and exploration

8)      How to work with the audiences’ sensations and physicality?

9)      Both technically and aesthetically, how the space is to be used?

10) How to bring the audiences on the same page providing some basic “knowledge” (or basics of “official knowledge”) about Hamlet (required for the participation of the middle part), while making them curious about alternative possibilities?

(Promo video for this project)