Creativity in Theatre: Theory and Action in Theatre/Drama Education

289 Pages·2018·4.31 MB·English

by  Suzanne Burgoyne

Creativity Theory and Action in Education 2
Suzanne Burgoyne E ditor
Creativity
in Theatre
Theory and Action in Theatre/Drama
Education
Creativity Theory and Action in Education
Volume 2
Series editors
Ronald A. Beghetto, Department of Educational Psychology, University
of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
Bharath Sriraman, Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University
of Montana, Missoula, Montana, USA
Editorial Board
Don Ambrose, Rider University, USA
David Cropley, University of South Australia, Australia
Vlad Petre Glăveanu, Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland
Beth Hennessey, Wellesley College, USA
Maciej Karwowski, University of Wroclaw, Poland
Scott Barry Kaufman, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Todd Lubart, University of Paris Descartes, France
Jean Pretz, Elizabethtown College, USA
Ai Girl Tan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Yong Zhao, University of Oregon, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13904
Suzanne Burgoyne
Editor
Sarah A. Senff • Simonita Perales Simkins
Assistant Editors
Creativity in Theatre
Theory and Action in Theatre/Drama
Education
Editor
Suzanne Burgoyne
Department of Theatre
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO, USA
ISSN 2509-5781 ISSN 2509-579X (electronic)
Creativity Theory and Action in Education
ISBN 978-3-319-78927-9 ISBN 978-3-319-78928-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78928-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946614
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Preface
When Ron Beghetto invited me to submit a proposal on theatre and creativity for the
Creativity Theory and Action in Education series he is co-editing, I felt both hon-
ored and excited. Since I had recently founded the Center for Applied Theatre and
Drama Research1 at the University of Missouri and had started teaching theatre-
based creativity courses for non-arts majors, I viewed this opportunity as serendipi-
tous. My goals for the past 40-some years have included lending my voice to the
chorus of arts advocacy efforts, particularly through demonstrating how theatre
techniques can enhance pedagogy in multiple fields.
I developed a specific interest in using theatre to teach creativity in 1980. In my
application for a Kellogg National Fellowship (leadership training and interdisci-
plinary research), I explained, “I’m not suggesting that theatre can save the world.
On the other hand, I’m no longer willing to dismiss the possibility that it could
help.” My “save the world” but humble romanticism apparently appealed to the fel-
lowship organizers, who accepted me as the first member from an arts discipline in
their cohort of fellows. Kellogg’s goal for the three-year program was to empower
people passionate about making a difference. They showed us how society’s evolv-
ing overspecialization caused tunnel vision, and then sent us forth with an interdis-
ciplinary network of like-minded reformers to keep an eye on “the big picture.” My
actual exploration of theatre and creativity got postponed until the twenty-first cen-
tury, when I joined my voice to an additional chorus, this one calling for the integra-
tion of creativity teaching and learning into education. Convinced that theatre
techniques can indeed assist in enhancing student creativity, I designed a course in
creativity for the non-arts major and recently expanded into teaching an adapted
1 In the second edition of Applied Drama: The Gift of Theatre (2014), Helen Nicholson points to
the rise of “umbrella terms” such as applied theatre and applied drama in the late twentieth cen-
tury “as a kind of shorthand to describe forms of dramatic activity that are specifically intended to
benefit individuals, communities and societies.” She notes that in Applied Theatre: Creating
Transformative Encounters (2003), theorist/practitioner Philip Taylor defines applied drama as
“process-based” and applied theatre as “performance-based,” but she herself sees the terms “often
used quite flexibly and interchangeably” (2014, pp. 3-5).
v
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version to bioengineering students (for further description of the journey, see chap-
ter 15, this volume).
Once I accepted Ron’s invitation to submit a proposal, I started looking for con-
tributors. To my dismay, I discovered that theatre and drama educators know from
experience that performance classes enhance student creativity, thus we have not
done much research on the subject. The question of how theatre and drama nurture
student creativity is rarely analyzed or supported with evidence. Assuming that our
work is creative, many theatre departments just include “developing student creativ-
ity” in their mission statements. As Kathleen Gallagher points out in her chapter in
the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, the topic of creativity is
“an under-theorized area in the field of drama education” (2007, p. 1237).
However, creativity is not the only under-researched and under-theorized issue in
theatre and drama education. Some time ago, I conducted a literature review on the
educational impact of Theatre of the Oppressed for a book chapter, “Learning to
Teach with Theatre of the Oppressed,” by Peggy Placier et al. (2005). In the process,
I came to agree with Adrian Jackson’s observation in “Researching Drama and
Theatre in Education: Notes and Queries” (1996) that few researchers had investi-
gated the benefits of educational drama until the late twentieth century; I also found
discussions of possible reasons for the lack of research in theatre and drama
education.
The avoidance of empirical research I encountered may relate to the long-
standing tension in academe between the humanities and arts on one hand, and the
sciences on the other, as postulated in C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures (1959). Arts
practitioners and scientists, according to this perspective, have opposing world-
views; artists espouse subjectivity and regard scientists’ insistence on objectivity
with suspicion. During the three years I served as editor of Theatre Topics (from
1993 to 1996), I received only two submissions which featured quantitative research,
and the reviewers definitely viewed both with suspicion.
As shrinking educational budgets put further pressure on the arts, some educa-
tors resorted to empirical research methods to support their legitimacy. Others
insisted that drama is valuable within its own disciplinary field and should not be
reduced to a mere pedagogical tool. Still others suggested that the epistemology
underpinning qualitative methods, which seek to understand how people give mean-
ing to their experiences, is more compatible with the artistic worldview than empiri-
cal methods and can more easily capture the complexity of the theatre experience.
Jackson argues that “There has also been a FEAR OF RESEARCH” on the part
of theatre and drama scholars (1996, p. 35). In addition to rejecting positivistic
worldviews, theatre scholars may resist demands for “scientific methods” due to the
lack of such methods in our training and artistic practice. Until quite recently,
research methods in theatrical fields have been drawn solely from the humanities
(e.g., history, literary theory and criticism, text analysis). Theatre practitioners
shudder when confronted with statistics. With the rise of performance studies, new
research methods have started to be accepted in the broader field of theatre and
drama.
Preface vii
Another factor is that academe values “traditional” scholarship more than teach-
ing and thus discourages pedagogical research. To address this bias, the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been promoting the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Theatre professors, of course, have been engaged
in a long battle to attain academic respect for creative practice as the equivalent of
traditional research and may not yet have expanded their efforts to SoTL (For a
more detailed analysis of barriers to empirical research in drama and theatre, see
Placier et al. 2005).
When I looked to other disciplines for potential contributors, I found problems of
a different sort. Outsiders to the field of drama and theatre often assume that per-
formers are (merely) interpreters rather than creators. Even Thalia Goldstein, a
developmental psychologist whose research interests include theatre, argues in her
co-authored chapter in the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains
(2017) that acting is not a creative practice. Some outsiders, like the Associate Dean
of the University of Missouri College of Business to whom I explained my new
creativity course, went as far as to insist that “Artists aren’t creative. No, no.
Musicians—that’s all just skill.”
The purpose of this volume is to bridge the interdisciplinary abyss between the
study of creativity in theatre/drama and in other fields. I searched for and fortunately
found authors who could provide provocative chapters from a variety of disciplinary
perspectives. Since I anticipate a multidisciplinary readership, I advised some con-
tributors to provide information about their background and relevant research. You
will see that some chapters are somewhat formal, while others employ a more per-
sonal approach. Gathering and sharing theories, research findings, experiences, and
pedagogical practices, I hope this collection will stimulate further discussion among
creativity and theatre scholar/educators, as well as more multidisciplinary research.
In my invitation letter, I encouraged contributors to draw from existing empirical
and theoretical work but push beyond “what currently is” and comment on future
possibilities. I included a list of sample questions that might be addressed:
• In what ways might the work of theatre artists (actors, directors, playwrights,
designers, etc.) be considered creative by scholars of creativity? Does the work
of theatre artists suggest possible new perspectives on creativity theory?
• Does performative embodiment impact student creativity? If so, how so?
• Do classes in theatre and drama practice enhance students’ creativity in theatre
arts? Could pedagogical activities that enhance creativity in theatre arts be used
to enhance students’ creativity in other fields?
• Is it beneficial to apply theories from the literature on creativity to student learn-
ing of theatre practice?
• What new insights do neuroscience and cognitive science provide into the teach-
ing and learning of performance creativity? Into the use of drama as a means of
learning creativity for other disciplines?
• What is the relationship between active learning pedagogy and theatre peda-
gogy? Between theatre pedagogy and transformative learning?
viii Preface
• What comparisons can be made between particular acting theories and particular
theories of creativity? For instance, is there a relationship between Stanislavsky’s
magic if, the as if worlds created onstage, and the what if prompts to
brainstorming?
• Does applying theatre pedagogy to creativity in other fields devalue theatre’s
power as social critique and lead to its appropriation for the purposes of neolib-
eral capitalism?
• Research suggests that experiences in drama education and theatre enhance ver-
bal cognitive abilities. Do these activities also enhance verbal creativity? If so,
how and why?
• Can ensemble-building techniques that are used to create a safe space for risk-
taking in acting class serve a similar function in environments intended to
develop collaborative creative teams?
• How does theatre education allow students to explore alternate identities and cre-
ate cultural artifacts?
• Does drama education stimulate creative behavior rather than the discovery of
original products? Is one of the goals of theatrical practice to create a more col-
laborative, empathetic culture?
This volume by no means offers definitive answers to the whole list of questions.
But once again I feel honored that so many of the significant theorists, researchers,
educators, and theatre/drama artists I invited took up my challenge, addressing a
number of these questions as well as ideas of their own. I hope that pondering their
reflections on the relationship between theatre and creativity will stimulate readers
to set off on their own journeys of discovery. Assisting our students to develop into
actively creative members of society and of their various disciplines is a goal I fer-
vently believe worth pursuing.
Columbia, MO, USA Suzanne Burgoyne
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks to Ron Beghetto for encouraging me to propose a volume for the
series, thus embarking me on this adventure. Thanks too to Natalie Rieborn at
Springer for fielding a barrage of questions large and small along the way. Many
thanks to all the authors for putting up with my editorial pickiness and for sharing
their perspectives on creativity, thus challenging my assumptions and deepening my
understanding. Much appreciation to colleagues at Mizzou and elsewhere for con-
sultation and an empathetic ear. Thanks to my bioengineering partners, Ferris and
Heather, for believing in the value of our educational experiment, as well as to all
the theatre grad students who took the risk to teach creativity to engineers. Gratitude,
or perhaps I should say “cattitude,” to my three angels—Dee Dee, Kiki, and Fifi—
who curled up around me at the computer and when hungry strove to distract me
with claws and yowls. I must not forget to thank the undergraduate students for
sharing their experiences of learning creativity, as well as William Palmer and
Kathryn Tetley for helping with a qualitative analysis of one class’s journals. Thanks
also to the University of Missouri for providing me with a semester’s research leave,
without which you, gentle readers, would not be reading this book. Most of all, my
eternal thanks for their hard work and insightful suggestions to my two assistant
editors, Sarah and Simona.
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