‘Magic mothers and wicked criminals’: Exploring narrative and role in a drama programme with women prisoners (original) (raw)
Related papers
Aesthetics of Truth-Telling: Intercultural Applied Theatre Praxis in an Australian Women's Prison
2019
Our Ancestors, Our History, Our Lost Culture was a devised theatre performance that I developed with women inside Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre (BWCC) Australia in 2017. The performance was based on a memoir from the Stolen Generations: the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from tribal homelands and separated from family in Australia throughout the early nineteenth century up until the 1970s. The intergenerational trauma of these forced removals continues, as do the wider structural inequalities brought about by the colonial project, including the crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration. Indigenous leaders refer to this as the “torment of powerlessness” (Referendum Council, 2017) and believe that there must first be a process of truth-telling before healing and reconciliation can occur. An example of Applied Theatre as Research (ATAR), the purpose of the project was to investigate how a group of incarcerated women would enga...
Across the fields of applied theatre and prison theatre, there appears to be little analysis of aesthetics and aesthetic engagement for participants in prison-based partici-patory practices. This article presents a pragmatist aesthetic frame that I developed to analyse the experience of a drama programme I ran in a women's prison. This frame evolved alongside the practice, drawing largely from John Dewey's (1934) Art as Experience and a selection of contemporary scholars who, influenced by Dewey, work in the areas of aesthetics, ethics and education – most notably Richard Shusterman (2000, 2008) and David Granger (2006). I also incorporated narrative within this frame as an interpretive and expressive structure for experience, and a key element within my applied theatre practice. I began to conceive aesthetics in terms of an 'art of living', identifying a 'poetics of renewal' that informed the self-and world-creation of participants in the drama. I share this theoretical framework as a possible way to integrate the instrumental and the aesthetic in applied theatre theory and practice, specifically in a prison context.
Performing Belonging in Prison and Youth Theatre: Reflections on two participatory projects
This paper considers performances of belonging in two participatory theatre projects. The Traction Youth Ensemble is an outreach program offered by Queensland Theatre in the city of Logan - recently portrayed in the media as a hub for crime and race “riots”. Traction was established to counteract some of these negative stereotypes, to promote social cohesion, and to fill a gap in high quality theatre opportunities for young people there. Barambah Mission Talk is a theatre performance being developed with women prisoners in Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre (BWCC). The work is based on Ruth Hegarty’s memoir Is That You Ruthie? which describes her time growing up in Barambah Aboriginal Mission (now Cherbourg Community) in the 1930s and 40s. Many of the women in BWCC have strong connections to Barambah, as well as other Aboriginal missions around Australia, where their families were forcibly removed and institutionalised as part of the Stolen Generations. Both of these projects generate performances of belonging in often-fraught political and social contexts. Barambah Mission Talk contains performances of belonging and not belonging in carceral sites, where there exists simultaneously a strong sense of home, and the anguish of separation and displacement. The Traction Youth Ensemble offers 50 young theatre makers in Logan a unique place to belong, developing their voice and identity, and leading ultimately to positive forms of social and civic participation. In both projects, there is a sense of vitality and hope, generated by the performers’ engagement with their own evolving sense of story and culture.
NOT LUKE: The Development of an Applied Theatre Performance for Youth Justice Settings
2021
This portfolio thesis is a practitioner-researcher led enquiry into the processes and practices underpinning the development of an applied theatre performance for youth justice settings. More precisely, it is a practical enquiry into how a group of applied theatre practitioners drew inspiration from restorative justice practices, intimate theatre practices, theories of narrative transportation, proxemics and the Levinasian philosophy of alterity to develop a performance for young offenders that attempted to elicit active spectator participation and disrupt victim/offender narratives. As a piece of practice-based research, the study identifies a performance format that can inform the work of applied theatre practitioners in their "in role" work with people who have offended. Chapter Two is written as a journal article entitled 'Too Close for Comfort' and explores the specialist work done by actor-facilitators in role as victims and offenders in criminal justice treatment and intervention programmes. Chapter Three provides a more detailed introduction to the thesis project, the methodological choices and a discussion of the key critical concepts of narrative transportation, proxemics and the Levinasian ethics of alterity. Chapter Four describes the group devising process; here I provide insight into how the critical concepts and practice models were woven together into the performance format which came to be known as Not Luke. Chapter Five describes two of the three performances of Not Luke, which were staged between August and December 2016; a film of the third performance forms a part of the submission. Chapter Six provides a summary of my conclusions and reflections on the development of the practice. Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.
‘Now we are real women’: Playing with gender in a male prison theatre programme in South Africa
The use of sexual violence as a means of power and control within the South African prison system has been well documented. Sexual violence is intimately linked to the gendering of roles, such that rape and coercive sex is used as a brutal means of imposing a feminised identity; a violent enactment of who penetrates and who gets penetrated (Gear & Ngubeni 2002). Within this context, this article aims to examine both the performative and performed notions of gender and sexuality in relation to a prison theatre project located in a medium-security male prison in South Africa. I situate myself as a white feminist working within a black, all-male context, and examine moments from our theatre-making when men assumed feminised or female roles, and gender was actively and deliberately played with in an uncensored, open way. This article aims to analyse the relationship between the deliberate performance choices within the theatrical frame and the performative notions of gender and sexuality that are played out external to the theatrical moment. I question when and how prescribed gender scripts that dictate an aggressive and often violent masculinity might simultaneously be enacted and violated through theatrical performance. Drawing on my own reflections and interviews with participants, the article highlights how participants make sense of the gender choices made, and how these choices relate to wider questions of identity which need to be navigated. The issue of how such gender play might translate to a lived experience beyond the theatre space and outside of prison remains unknown, and further research is needed to understand the dynamics of the identities explored within the theatre event and how they are transferred to the world outside of it.
Journal of Psychosocial Studies, 2019
This article discusses psychosocial aspects of a short drama module, drawing on observational research into the adaptation of ‘forum theatre’ by Odd Arts theatre company for people in educational, care and custodial settings. The course facilitated the enactment of life experiences and choices, enhancing self-awareness and reflective capacity. The drama space is considered as ‘third space’, and a transitional space, where participants play with creative illusion in what Augusto Boal called a ‘rehearsal for reality’. We argue that the use of third-space and third-position thinking is key to understanding forum theatre as a restorative practice both through rehearsal and in ‘playing for real’ before an audience ‐ a symbolic community that offers the opportunity for recognition. Problems attendant on the performance of ‘false self’ arise where there is collusive avoidance of difficult issues because the value of forum theatre lies in the achievement of authorship and authenticity ‐ or ...
The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 2011
relating to the work of Loïc Wacquant, whose books Punishing the Poor and Prisons of Poverty have generated both excitement and controversy. Criminology has undoubtedly benefitted from Loïc Wacquant's inputs-as he traverses the boundaries between searching theoretical analysis and wide-ranging empirical findings, and between politics, policy and practice and discursive disciplinary fields. In a context of UK-based riots and looting and populist and punitive stances in relation to the sentencing of rioters and protestors (August 2011) we might expect interest in the work of Wacquant to intensify-as he charts an inextricable link between the ascendency of neoliberalism and the rise of the penal state. The works of this sociologist, Wacquant, are hugely important. The two reviews that follow offer some useful insights into the intellectual resources proferred within. We are most grateful to Vanessa Barker whose review is based on an 'author meets critic' session at the American Society of Criminology conference in November 2010. In the spirit of 'author meets critic' we will be inviting Loïc Wacquant to respond to these reviews in a future issue of the journal.
Theatre, incarceration and citizenship
Tūtira Mai: Making Change in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2021
In this chapter, I provide an overview of the Forum Theatre plays that were developed by the incarcerated community at Auckland Prison, Paremoremo in 2017. I begin by providing a context for understanding theatre in prison, before providing a brief outline of the Forum Theatre approach. The chapter will then describe the three short plays that were performed, and explain the significance and the implications of the issues presented. This chapter explores how the Forum Theatre project worked to empower the community to take action and be involved in deliberating the issues of dysfunction presented in performance, in an effort to enhance the health and wellbeing of prisoners. I will then conclude by arguing that theatre in prison offers wider society a useful and pragmatic means to redefine what citizenship can mean by highlighting the importance of cultural rights.
Drama Therapy Review
This article is an updated assessment of ‘The Shakespeare Prison Project’ (SPP, Wisconsin), informed in part by post-COVID-19 reflections. Founder and artistic director Jonathan Shailor provides an exploration of the theory and practice that informs his work, which he calls the Theatre of Empowerment: storytelling, dialogue and performance, in the service of personal and social evolution. The key to understanding this work is seeing the prison theatre ensemble as a ‘community of practice’ that cultivates the virtues of individual empowerment, relational responsibility and moral imagination. The author tests these claims with a preliminary analysis of participants’ stories and draws conclusions from this analysis that will inform the next chapter of ‘The Shakespeare Prison Project’: Shakespeare’s Mirror, an approach that connects themes from Shakespeare’s plays with the personal narratives of incarcerated actors.