Applied Theatre Research - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2017

This article discusses the relationship between theatre and democracy in the Athenian city-state. The multivocal form of theatre and its dialogical character were essential to a functioning democracy. In tragedy, the dialogical and participatory aspect also involved the staging of ambivalence, linguistic ambiguities, the characters’ misunderstandings, their selfish hubris and fatal choices. Tragedy shows the democratic potential of theatre to open up the acknowledgement that no single voice or way of living is absolutely or completely true. Tragedy was also an option when it came to giving marginalized groups (women, youth, slaves and foreigners) a voice, and challenging hegemonic perspectives and traditional conceptions; however, I will also show how both these institutions fortified men’s dominance in society.

Through historical evidence and a research review, the positive assumption behind the Norwegian project is that theatre may provide democratic inclusion where any felt understanding can be accepted as aesthetically valid insights to be uttered on stage. This is how drama is created, and ultimately how diversity is treated and tolerated. However, dilemmas occur when applied theatre aims to be participatory democracy in action. These dilemmas, which are linked to conflicting practices and discourses, as the French philosopher Jacques Rancière (2004) shows, also connect to conflicting aesthetic thinking or regimes. The particular dilemma discussed here deals with the location of aesthetic autonomy as well as the dilemma of free utterance versus transformed mediation. A short analysis of two contemporary performance cases further illuminates the dilemma.

Why is it important to pay attention to democracy and polyphony when working with remediation in a multimodal drama project in introductory schooling? This question is elucidated and investigated in this article on the basis of a drama project case study conducted at Hundborg Friskole. The study is analysed on the basis of the concepts of remediation (Bolter and Grusin 1999; Christoffersen 2009), dissensus (Biesta 2013; Rancière 2013), dialogue and polyphony (Dysthe, Bernhardt and Esbjørn 2012). The examples in the investigation show how dialogue, polyphony and dissensus influence the art-based process of remediation, and how this impacts children’s democratic education.

This is a follow-up study to a previous large-scale qualitative study that explored teacher practice, in which it was suggested that the teacher’s role is best understood by considering three main categories of activities: the directing, the supportive and the distal teacher roles. These three are dynamic roles or positions among which the pedagogue continuously alternates to achieve the aims that foster learning and socialization in students. Based on new data from primary school classrooms, where the teaching method is process drama, we analyse how the teacher can stimulate democratic bildung in the drama classroom through alternation between the directing, the supportive and the distal teacher roles. A dramaturgical and educational analysis of the participants’ actions and communication in the classroom shows that one important factor in democratic bildung in the classroom is the teacher’s pedagogical judgement. The alternation between teacher roles shows that the teacher has a conscious perspective of their professional role in the learning process. The analysis also shows that process drama is a teaching strategy that provides space and opportunity for the directing, the supportive and the distal teacher roles – all of which, when practised dynamically, make possible different forms of democratic student participation.

This article explores how cultural democracy is performed in care services for people with dementia, refugees and psychiatric patients in today’s Norwegian welfare state. The potential of art to emerge as an alternative care regime is discussed in the light of arts learning, marginalization and the Eichmann problem. The article is based on a study of three analyses of care regimes seen as performances in line with Gadamer’s view of the aesthetic experience performed with roles, inherent narratives and scenographic frameworks.

This article presents the Norwegian applied theatre project called P:UNKT, which suggests a meeting point, a crossroads and encounters. The aim of the project was to stimulate integration and cultural diversity, with the outreach nature of P:UNKT resulting in new ways of interaction and collaboration across groups and institutions. I conducted research on the project from 2010 to 2012 and three years later, in 2016. I claim that the project enabled ethnic Norwegians and immigrants to create unique storytelling theatre together that transcended the conventional preconceptions of us and them, resulting in the emergence of a new ‘we’. This type of social and applied theatre run by a professional, state-funded theatre is not common in Norway. The findings of my research are therefore of relevance to local communities, theatre companies and politicians. The P:UNKT project is an example of the active role that applied theatre can play in shaping Norwegian identity construction in the twenty-first century.

In 2014 there was a constitutional anniversary in Norway. The documentary theatre Vår Frues Folk (Our Lady’s Folk) was based on a hypothesis that staged experiences by people who function and live on the margins of the welfare state serve as a critical contribution to the celebration of the constitution. The director is at the heart of any theatre production, and is therefore at risk of colonizing the material and reproducing the interviewees’ voices from their own perspectives and artistic interests. A major question was therefore how ownership and authority could unfold thematically and aesthetically in collaboration with the interviewees. The theatre project was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s thoughts about authority and about creating arenas where the potential for spontaneous actions, dialogue and aesthetic experiences can be linked to debate about democratic politics. This article explains and discusses how design-based artistic strategies safeguarded the ability to act as an authority, act with authority, and create authoritative, aesthetic communication in documentary theatre.