Understanding Adolescents' Identity Formation Through Arts-Based Research: Transforming an Ethnographic Script into a Play (original) (raw)

2010, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education

May-'1t o '1v:e o st1.1ccnts to emor.ice exa"Tlplcs c; ar. and u,e ,.,.s:o-•es ot ,irt,St.S wno have re1 s'.ed vie oppress. ve forces •n thc,r rcspec-t.ve e,•;; This ,1•t1clc examines the rn e Czec:hoslova.<J,,ri ar' sts nave ::ilayt~. and :he works they created in 0000,rt on to So .e~ o::c• pa• or ,-'"'= city o' B• ;~ ~!ava 1r t c a:e I g60, and ea '/ 970,. ,., adc. on !O :.ircw,d ng a c <J a po .: cz. 1 ard r ..-:orca cor:e fc r,er.:iret r,g these NOl"kS, tr.e a;;:"o•• advocit es lor he m:roc ... ct,or o' wc,•ks of a,•~ tha, ;,e.,, ',om th:; un•q,.c ~ct of cwc.imstanccs to h,g •chool students. Tre a,'tice also uses "e d scl.!ss•cn cf u official Cz.ec'>os,ovd •tan art ;; 'lG ar st.s of B"at s va to ex;i.ir•r" Conce:)tuJI and Perfcrma•,ce Ar a,id :ne •-;, cat o~s ., de • ng frof"l tJ"i!d • o~a "•~ s-~oo a-• aci" rig pr?.cr.ces PROLOGUE People are homo pcrformam, beings tha1: perform according to social standards (Turner, 1982). He advocated 1:ha t written ethnographic notes be transformed into performance script so that srudents can come to an experiencebased understanding of the findings of ethnographic research. In chis way, they can find a way ro perhaps "walk-in-the-shoes" of research participants, rather rhan merely role-play. Role-playing is an enjoyable activity or spontaneous amusement; play-acting is pretending co be a cercain identity or pomaying a character in a script; thus play-acting as performing is serious play or meaningmaking (Mayer, 1986). 1 Play can be a way of relieving tension by way of "fooling around." Prcadolescenrs narurally play when they are among peers. Benelheim {1976) speculated , " ome unconscious pressures in children can be worked out through play" (p. 55), and play relieves stress from adolescence crises. The concept of play itself can become deep and rich when it contains uncercainty, illusion, fancasy, and when it includes role exploring or risk-taking, thereby developing its own life (Ackerm an, 1999, p. 288). On e can play and the result can be a thea1:r ical play (Hicks, 2005). Play then, is a kind of performance, which can be classified in different ways: natural, involving a staged reading of a recorded conversation• Ja,~es Su, 15 '" ,re,• pair ts ,Ju t. a, serious :> .iy •ncludcs 'ch d•-en p••etcnd ng, playact."g and lov111g W"Z'.: ,~ey u. .Tney a,•e !O!.d f erg•-ow•d : 1 e bus ress ofse f .. (Ma>'e 986).