>At 9:32 PM 10/18/97, Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu wrote:
>Many groups of popular education use theater games in order to increase
>interaction between members. Also as a way of discussing some themes. In
>school education brazilian theater educators are fighting to include
>theater as a regular activity ( drama play, theater games and Theater )
>aside math, portuguese, history etc.
>
>We "got" the inclusion of arts in school education curriculum in the
>recent Law of Education Direction, published last year... after a very
>hard fight involving art educators all over the country. Although
>specially theater games had been used in popular non school education
>movement...
so it sounds like you're saying that popular education models of theatre
have been adapted/adopted for schools? I also take it that the "arts" were
not officially included prior to the recent LOE Direction - which
means, I'd reckon, cheers are called for...! CHEERS!!! You must feel excited
about the prospects...
>
>
>
<snip>
>
>As I told you above, the new law of education in Brazil opens ways to
>concieve school as a place in which people can be organized and decide
>their pedagogic project, voting their director (director of school) -
>students, teachers, fathers and mothers, people who work in school. But,
>theres much to be done. Now, there are discussions all over the country
>about the new Law. In some states and cities/towns people yet elect
>their school director, but in many places they stay beeing indicated by
>governors, city majors...unfortunately. As you see, we think that our
>presence ( theater educators ) in school are very important... We also
>want to participate of brazilian school education democratization.
This is very much in the lines of where I've been thinking, also very
Brechtian/marxist, theatre is a political tool for change... Again, it
sounds exciting!
How do you see theatre particicipating in school education democratization?
>
>
>We "make" the institutions, we can change them... nothing is forever. To
>live is not forever. Everything is always changing all time and we can
>contribute to change things, at least in our neighbohood. Don't you
>think? I said "WE"... one plus another and on other one...
Here I disagree with you. I don't think that "we" make the institutions -
I think institutions are self-replicating systems of privilege and
subordination,
founded on the premises of a Machiavelian model of control.
I think that if someone is working within an institution's systems, it
is impossible to do anything but recreate the institution, however
inadvertently.
No matter well-intentioned we may be, once our work is situated within
an institution, it is structurally wrested from any of its ideological
independence,
through the historicizations of interaction, hierachies of authority,
ideological tyrranies based on a specific balance of power, and so on.
I applaud your work!! But I am not as optimistic about structural change as you.
I've blustered a few times on this list about abolishing compulsory schooling,
because if it weren't state-controlled, people like you and I, and other
creative,
independence-seeking educators, could co-create new spaces for learning
to take place, spaces that are not structurally or ideologically linked to
the institutions of
school.
Someone on this list talked about fractals. A person after my own heart. A
fractal
is a logarithmic equation used in computer design: the fractal is "played"
so to speak, the an "nth" power,
and as it runs, replicating its equation over
and over and over, it literally creates a chaotic, spontaneous,
unpredictable image.
Leaning, to me, is about fractals. We come in to a situation with/as a
certain repeated
equation, but through interactions within chaos-tolerant environments, the
spontaneous, unpredictable surprise of what can emerge changes us and
the environement. Theatre can be a chaos-tolerant environment. Institutions
are not. Here. I think, then, there are irreconcilable limitations... not
to diminish
the work, but just to explain my position.
A local artist in Vancouver describes it well:
"You have to lose art to keep it alive. You must not remain in control of
its expression.
You've got to turn it over... The old notion of the author
is ridiculous. I don't want to be an author anymore. I want to think about
art in groups of two, three, four... in the plural, in the social."
(Jochen Gerz)
>
>Many of the problems you had told me about NA school education are
>present here too. But "in" and "out" school we must be fighting to
>change things, to change the "world" and so change we ourselves too.
>That's what I think, at least until now.
>>
>It's necessary to understand that we can learn not only at school...
>that we learn too in our interaction day-by-day with people, media,
>other countries...
Yes! Here is where and why my focus shifted to adult communities outside
schools, locally-based, grass-roots organizations which service
marginalized community
members (mental-health-consumers, for example; local lesbians, etc) -
all of the groups participating in this "community-of-practice" are
non-institution
orgs., grass-roots; initiated as community-based, activist-oriented
cooperatives,
organized through ideologies about equity, respect, care, and so on.
In this context, I think there is room for the chaos of cooperative,
collective engagements with art. I *think*. I might be way wrong here.
>
>Well, what we call "drama play" are the children dramatic play.
>Now-a-days many children don't have space to play their dramatics...
>neither friends or brothers/sisters... schools had been converted in
>the "hall" or the "park" to those children... A place where they can
>play together safety. Specially in big cities, where the space of
>the living room of people were to much reduced. And as Vygotsky had
>said... children began reading/writting "playing". So "drama play" are
>activities to childreen in kindgarten... not only because it help them
>to discover how writting language operates with symbols, but also
>because many children had left the "space" and "fiends" to play at their
>home.
>
>Theater games, are "games" played by people in which a part of them
>"shows" and antother part "watch", like in theater houses. Those are
>games in which people act as "actors" and as "audience" or "public". (
>My english is very pretty bad, you know... ). The basis of theater games
>is the theatrical improvisation, spontaneous theater... The "old"
>dramatic plays only makes sense for the children now as "theater
>games". Those activities are recomended to children from first to fifth
>class of "alfabetization". Generally we use a tree based methodology (
>make theater/ watch-critical performances/ cultural-historical context
>in wich performance happens. Those are activities very similar to
>many of the American Alternative Theater (off-off broadway) in
>sixties/seventies.
This is so *interesting* - certainly one of Brecht's passions was to
waken the audience to their "role" in theatre, not to sit back and happily
or sadly empathise, but to *realize* their roles as participants in the
collective work of theatre; that once this took place, people would be
thinking about what is happening.,.. Can you tell me more about the
cultural/historical contexts in which performance happens? And
this tree-based method... can you explain more of that?
>
>Theater is recomended to children after fifth classes, in a tree based
>methodology too. Studying the age in witch playwriters did their
>artistic criation/ videos or productions of these plays... re-criation
>of scenes etc
Aaaah!!!!! How excellent!!!!!! Wow. This all is so intimately connected to
the work I am trying to do!!!! Are there are stories you could relate,
which might describe an example of what you do?
>
>Well... I guess I had answered your questions.
>
>
Actually, you have prompted many more!! :-)
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca