Confronting Sexual Violence Through Dance and Theatre Pedagogy (original) (raw)
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Performing Arts and Social Violence: Innovating Research Approaches to Sexual and Gender-based Violence in the Global South, 2022
Executive Summary Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is a global epidemic. It has been estimated that one in three women worldwide is subjected to physical and/or sexual violence during their lifetime. And yet, there is a paradox between the commonality of SGBV and the ability to speak and address these issues openly. Some of the reasons and rationales for this are culturally specific, but the fact remains universal – it is difficult to talk about and address SGBV. Fighting SGBV is a stated objective for numerous governments and international organisations, as well as researchers. However, methods and approaches can be heavily standardized and bureaucratic, taking no account of the range of emotion involved in tackling SGBV. Relying on these risks neglecting the fundamentally complex and contradictory dynamics of SGBV, and limiting the effectiveness of discussions about it. Driven by a belief in the power of the arts and humanities to provide playful, creative, and counter-intuitive responses to urgent problems, this project used comedy, theatre, song and dance in activities run for women and men in partnership with established NGOs. Emphatically, the project’s findings illustrated how ‘fun’ arts approaches (such as humour and improvisation) may be highly effective in opening up very sensitive conversations about deadly serious topics. Instead of being disrespectful or incongruous responses to the matter, they may provide insights into how concepts such as violence are understood contextually and culturally. Thus these methods have the capacity to open up completely new ways of understanding these notions in order to address them. The methodological headlines of the project have already been published in a peer-reviewed academic article entitled “Embracing Aporia: Exploring Arts-based Methods, Pain, “Playfulness” and Improvisation in Research on Gender and Social Violence.” Some of the conceptual findings around performance and dramaturgy in the midst of workshops can also be found in the forthcoming article “The Theatre of Development: Dramaturgy, Actors and Performances in the ‘Workshop Space’” in Third World Quarterly. The project was evidenced by fieldwork and workshops in Sierra Leone and South Africa. The scoping work highlighted the extent to which SGBV research in the Global South is directly relevant to the Global North. While this project conducted research primarily in the Global South, the findings have broader implications for exploring the nuanced ways in which SGBV is an acute, pernicious global epidemic embedded in the subtleties of individual and collective attitudes and behaviours. In addition to known drivers of SGBV (such as socio-economic privation), there are drivers that are not as well understood. These include socio-cultural narratives supporting individual and institutional responses to stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity (e.g. men’s treatment of wives as property and the complicity of police); the affordances of technology (e.g. easy access to pornography); the enabling role of local institutions and social norms that create barriers to justice; discourses of sex and sexual roles; and geographically and culturally inflected gender performances. Without understanding these drivers, it is impossible to find ways to stem the tide of SGBV, safeguard victims and survivors, and change the behaviours that perpetuate the cycles of social violence globally. Developing this work, therefore, requires new funding streams and award schemes that promote the co-construction by academic and community researchers of creative, discovery-led, longitudinal work. Any ambitious new funding programme should facilitate broader comparative case studies, alongside the further development and deployment of arts and humanities-led interdisciplinary approaches, and expand existing innovations to advance the field. Funded projects should include capacity building, e.g. research training for community participants and for NGO members; doctoral training for local researchers at local universities; institutions and infrastructure to support ongoing work beyond the life of a project. These programmes should be international and integrate the practice of international exchange between the Global North and South to enable comparative study of SGBV cultures and explore the universality of the nuances driving social violence and allow scope for extensive knowledge exchange across these contexts. This should include provision for Global South researchers to participate materially in fieldwork and research activities in the Global North. Methodologically, this project strongly endorses the use of arts-based methods, including comedy, song and dance, and theatre, to engage audiences in discussions around SGBV. The scoping project identified a major new research opportunity for the urgent use of arts and humanities-led interdisciplinary approaches to explore the subtle ways in which social violence, specifically sex and gender-based violence, manifests and persists. The exercise confirmed that arts-based methods (when used meaningfully and appropriately) can facilitate discussion about sensitive subject matter, including SGBV, and may in fact be a ‘natural’ or intuitive way of engaging with this discussion. It also highlighted the value of approaching the design and conduct of research in different ways. These include the need for research to be slow or incremental: that is, building relationships and trust with communities and project partners, co-designing projects and performances with the full research teams and returning to locations over time and for research to involve exchanges. Further, instead of focussing on pre-determined outcomes, arts-based methods enable researchers to maintain flexibility and remain open to travelling where the research leads. Following the affective turn in applied theatre, we aimed to engage the sensory, embodied and affective power of performance and produce certain sensory effects in relation to a particular theme (here, SGBV). Our team are sceptical about transformational, interventionist projects, and recommend that emphasis be placed on how to engage with existing practices as methods that open up difficult conversations and move people emotionally and physically. We argue that fun and playfulness should not be dismissed in the face of sensitive subjects such as SGBV, but rather more fully embraced and explored in greater depth. This means moving away from using flat, binary data as evidence and results, and instead having the intellectual conviction to back the potential of this sensory, ludic, proleptic approach to methods, evidence and outcomes.
Global Studies Quarterly
This article explores the role of play and playfulness—as both methodological and analytical tools—in research on social violence. While play may seem antithetical to both discussions on methods and to studying social violence, we found that actually paying attention to such elements was in fact very productive. This article draws on a series of participatory workshops that engaged theater, dance, and comedy, which were held in Sierra Leone in 2021 that explored various social dimensions of sexual and gender-based violence in rural communities. The “fun” components that are so frequently dismissed in favor of more flat and binary research helped us better understand the complex, and often painful, emotions of women in these communities. We pay particular attention to how singing, which was not originally part of the research plan, became critical to engaging these women on discussions of social violence. We argue that researchers should be more aware and open to the prospects that “...
White Settler Colonialism and (Re)presentations of Gendered Violence in Indigenous Women’s Theatre
2016
and surreal, the representation successfully relates the destructive nature of family violence. Jay’s transformation, his gradual transition to abuser, is displayed visually as Clements uses bruise-like lighting effects projected onto Madonna’s body and “clear pipes of exposed liquid,” revealing blood, to abstractly – rather than gratuitously – portray the progressive escalation of violence. Notwithstanding the incremental character of Jay’s abuse, it is very early in the relationship that he asks Madonna “[h]ow Indian [she is]” (15), making clear the inextricable connection between racialization and violence: Madonna is considered violable because of her gender and her Metis heritage. Jay’s sexual demands and abuse increase in 105 In recent surveys, one-quarter (24%) of Indigenous Canadian women reported abuse at the hands of a current or former partner, while only 7% of non-Indigenous women reported an experience of intimate partner violence (Scrim 138 proportion to Madonna’s dimi...
Performing Gendered Violence: A Study of Two Contemporary Indian Plays by Women
Ruminations: The Andrean Journal of Literature, 2019
In a culture that simultaneously glorifies and disempowers women, it is expected that violence against women will often be performed behind closed doors. Moreover, this domestic (or sometimes public) violence is usually normalized or silenced. However, Indian feminist playwrights have, time and again, broken this silence and lifted the veil off the spectre of violence on women. It is difficult, though, to depict violence on-stage without sensationalising or spectacularising it. This short paper attempts to understand the performative and political aspects of how two plays engage in different ways with gendered violence: Shaoli Mitra’s Five Lords, Yet None a Protector (2002; translated from the Bengali play Nathbati Anathbath), which is based on the Mahabharata myth, and Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out (2000), which is based on a real-life incident in Santacruz, Mumbai, in 1982. By harnessing different eras, genres and dramatic traditions, the paper will explore the continuum of gendered violence, and it will also situate the performative polemics of these two plays in the context of the contemporary feminist debate on violence against women (including domestic violence) in India.
more than just flesh: the arts as resistance and sexual empowerment
This thesis addresses a long history of colonization and intergenerational traumas still existing today, and the ability that Indigenous performing arts have in addressing sexual health barriers that Northern youth are facing. In this year of Canada’s 150th celebrations there have been several arts initiatives that are working to build confidence and leadership amongst Indigenous youth. As Inuit are facing some of the highest suicide rates in the world, overcrowded housing, lack of mental health resources, high costs of living, intermittent access to reliable internet, intergenerational traumas, food insecurity, and high levels of sexual assault, it is easy to feel hopeless. This thesis focuses on the ability that the arts have in making tangible differences, bringing Indigenous youth into conversations that work through historical colonial suppression, paving new narratives to pass on to future generations, looking at how the arts are being used as a way to inspire what Gerald Vizenor termed as survivance. Focusing predominantly on Qaggiavuut!, an Arctic cultural performing arts group which promotes performance while highlighting non-colonial forms of Inuit self-identity and wellness—with a particular focus on some of the key members of this group whose interest in sovereignty and wellness specifically focuses on Inuit sexual and emotional health, exploration, expression and education. The arts are integral in helping future generations of Indigenous peoples gain confidence and break cycles of intergenerational traumas, thriving through survivance.
In D. Bretherton & Siew Fang Law (2015). Methodologies in Peace Psychology: Peace Research by Peaceful Means (pp. 293-308). New York: Springer , 2015
In this chapter we examine community theatre as an example of arts practice that has gained significant interest as a form of social action in different social and health science disciplines. Community theatre is an umbrella term for different forms of Participatory Theatre such as Forum and Playback Theatre, which have the broad goal of challenging forms of structural violence through processes such as story- telling, active witnessing, and embodiment. In this chapter we discuss community theatre and highlight its use as a research methodology. We frame our discussion of community theatre with reference to arts-based research and performative social science which challenge the singular master narrative underpinning traditional methodologies. We discuss community theatre in relation to participatory action research and argue that it provides unique tools for making visible the ways in which racism, sexism and other forms of exclusion are produced, and it also opens up possibilities for new narratives to inform social identities. We illustrate these points using projects from two different countries - Melbourne, Australia, and Kingston, Jamaica - that have used theatre praxis to address forms of structural violence. We discuss community theatre as an ethical participatory approach that can contribute to the goals of peace psychology research.
Anthropology, Theatre, and Development: The Transformative Potential of Performance
2015
From Pussy Riot and the Arab Spring to Italian mafia dance, this collection provides an interdisciplinary analysis of relational reflexivity in political performance. By putting anthropological theory into dialogue with international development scholarship and artistic and activist practices, this book highlights how aesthetics and politics interrelate in precarious spheres of social life. The contributors of this innovative interdisciplinary volume raise questions about the transformative potential of participating in and reflecting upon political performances both as individual and as collectives. They also argue that such processes provide a rich field and new pathways for anthropological explorations of peoples' own reflections on humanity, sociality, change, and aspiration. Reflecting on political transformations through performance puts centre stage the ethical dimensions of cultural politics and how we enact political subjectivity.