Serious play : exploring the ethical tensions of license and limits in drama, theatre and performance education

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Broad global trends evidence the need for improving ethics in a variety of disciplines. The generaleducation codes do not address the unique culture specific to teaching and learning drama, theatre andperformance in tertiary institutions in South Africa. Interrogating ethics could be met with resistanceand upset the status quo in education and industry.Imposing ethical frameworks from the outside-in may fail to account for the specific culture they aredesigned to serve. This study observes that 'outside-in' refers to interference from the greater systemsof education (social and institutional), as well as any mandated prescriptions or strongly divergentvalue positions arising from within an individual educator's own context. This study thereforeexplores how educators might begin the process of negotiating ethics within their personal pedagogyby assuming personal accountability. This foregrounds the value of a process and practice of ethicalself enquiry over the general identification and analysis of ethical considerations. It explores personalpreparatory process work ahead of anticipated negotiation of ethical value positions and concerns ingroup dialogue.Because narrative is central to drama and theatre and performance, this study explores and reflects onpersonal narrative-oriented enquiry as a means to conscientising personal ethical value positions (andevolving a 'personal ethos'). The emphasis resides on raising personal consciousness by exploringpersonal resources in answer to the discussion of ethics. By personal resources is indicated: selfmotivatedeffort (autonomous moral agency), conscious and unconscious (tacit) historical experienceand knowledge, as well as the creative talents, practices and techniques unique to their artistry andpedagogy. Also explored and reflected upon is how a raising of personal consciousness in this mannermight furthermore contribute to a raising of collective consciousness.The study is presented as an autoethnographic enquiry, or Performed Narrative, that describes,examines, demonstrates and performs a process and practice of ethical self enquiry as an evocation tofellow educators. This study finds that the quest for identity and self-knowledge are shared by thethree strands this Performed Narrative draws together, namely: performance, education and ethics. Itproposes that if the quest for self-knowledge can somehow be foregrounded in performance and itseducation as an inherently ethical endeavour, it may be possible for ethical self enquiry - as a form ofautonomous moral agency – to become desirable as integral to drama, theatre and performanceeducation versus being an imposition from the outside. It suggests that this might result in a 'paradigmshift' that addresses ethical concerns at the level of causes rather than effects.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University