Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAn Uncertain Time: toward an Australian dramaturgy for Theatre for Babies(ADSA, 2022-12-09)Theatre for the Early Years (TEY), or Theatre for Babies, looks and feels quite different to any other type of performance work. Defined as ‘professionally-created theatrical experience for an audience of children aged from birth to around three- years-old, accompanied by carers’ (Fletcher-Watson; 2016), theatre for babies is largely constructed as immersive, sensory performance, utilising music, dance and visual elements and only rarely positioning a central narrative or journey as part of the work. Critically, scholarship in theatre for babies has identified the doubling of audience involved in the carer/infant dyad and has termed this relationship the ‘Triangular Audience’ (Desfosses, 2009). This is particularly unique to baby theatre. This audience experience of baby and carer travelling together into the literal and figurative uncertainty provides a rich and dynamic provocation for artists working in baby theatre whose work must respond and provide an audience journey for all who attend. A highly varied, international practice which has taken some time to gain the validation and recognition that might lead to critical acclaim and increased funding and investment, there are now significant companies and practitioners working in the UK, Europe and America with a dedicated specialism in Theatre for Babies. The Australian sector, although small, has received little critical and scholarly attention to date. Whilst studies from the field of psychology and neuroscience in the last two years have measured the ‘engagement’ of children younger than 12 months (Barbosa, M., Vences, M., Rodrigues, P. M., & Rodrigues, H; 2021) and looked at the positive impact on the paternal child bond that results from interactions in baby theatre (Cowley,, B., Lachman, A. ,Williams, E. and Berg, A.; 2020), research into the creation principles and aesthetic methodology of theatre for the very young remains a neglected area of scholarly investigation. This presentation uses practice as research principles to explore embodied knowledge and attempt to elucidate the robust dramaturgical principles that have emerged after creating two original performance works for infants aged 0-12 months and their carers. These experiences of making theatre for babies resonate strongly with the conference theme of arrivals and new beginnings, and the experience of witnessing theatre for babies is one of great connection and exchange. Resisting any practice as led approach that might veer toward the ‘anecdotal’, the focus of my presentation will be on the rigorous creative and aesthetic considerations that might make up the dramaturgical principles of theatre for babies and how these contradict or are in tension with existing understandings of baby theatre. The presentation seeks to ask whether there are culturally specific understandings of childhood at play in the design of these works, and propose early thinking toward a possible Australian dramaturgy of theatre for babies.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCollaboration and consent: teaching boundaries in creation methodologies to Theatre undergraduate students at the Victorian College of the Arts(ADSA, 2022)This proposal is for a joint paper by Dr Sarah Austin and Isabella Vadiveloo, colleagues at the Victorian College of the Arts teaching into the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Theatre) degree. The presentation will detail how new approaches to curriculum and pedagogical practice are emerging that are designed to respond to urgent issues around intimacy, collaboration and consent in creative arts collaboration through two key strategic processes; the practice of Brave Space which has emerged from social justice facilitation discourse and consent and boundary practices developed by Chelsea Pace for tertiary students. These two approaches combine to provide new strategies for navigating this complex and nuanced area of theatre practice and our presentation will foreground how and why we are adopting these approaches and early indication of their impact on inclusive, safe and compelling theatre making. The presentation will introduce and demonstrate the emergent practice of 'holding Brave Space' in artistic collaborations with young people as a strategy for addressing the hunger for cultural change in the Australian arts sector. This practice is designed to foreground inclusion and safety and to strategically shift the way power might operate in a collaborative project. The framework for cultural safety posited by healthcare scholars Elaine Papps and Irahapeti Ramsden (1996) urges us to find ways of working that are ‘regardful of the unique intersections of individual identity’ rather than creating models for collaboration that are ‘regardless’ of these things. Moving from these foundational ideas from Ramsden and Papps, the framework for Brave Space works as a stakeholder-centred approach that emphasises ‘sharing decision-making, information, power and responsibility’ (de Souza, 2020) across collaborative contexts and disrupts and decentres the colonial paradigm that supports and upholds the status quo within Australian cultural institutions and conservatoire training environments. Likewise, United States based Intimacy director and scholar, Chelsea Pace (2020), has developed strong frameworks for actors and performers to recognise, articulate and document their physical boundaries. Combining this framework with above mentioned principals of cultural safety facilitation offers students an empowered understanding of agency and self-advocacy in setting physical boundaries and working with safe and appropriate limits of touch. This is especially pertinent in training spaces, where power differentiation between teaching staff and students is particularly pronounced. Kim Shively and Suzanne Shawyer have written about “repeated calls for ethical actor training that acknowledges the importance of boundary management” (2019) within the conservatoire model of training, and offered the consent-based tools the emergent field of Intimacy Direction as a “possible response”. When offering students vocabulary, time and encouragement to articulate physical boundaries, we are able to set a precedent for the management of emotional, cultural and spiritual consent and boundaries too. This helps us in creating and evolving our understanding of the brave spaces we are working towards. Responding to the urgent and compelling need and desire for transformation within the Australian theatre sector that acknowledges the inequities that permeate the industry ‘in an environment of increasing polarisation and heightened global attention on injustice, racism and inequality’ (Creating the Future, 2020), the combination of a brave space and boundary and consent centred framework intentionally creates accessible pathways for student to experience cultural safety within arts and training institutions. We ultimately posit that these approaches have the potential for fostering the capacity of these young people to reckon with the colonial paradigm of making work on stolen land, the ability to bring their full authentic selves to the work they make, and to move into significant artistic decision-making and culturally significant roles across the arts sector.
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ItemAn Uncertain Time(Fuse Festival, 2022-03-23)An Uncertain Time was an original performance work for babies aged 0-12 months and their carers. The culmination of a a praxis based approach to investigating dramaturgical principles of theatre for very early years audiences, this sensory and immersive performance work incorporated two performers, live music and song, projection and object puppetry.
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ItemHold On: Australian innovations in access aesthetics(Australasian Drama Studies, 2020)This co-authored article examines the use of aesthetic access technologies and processes in both rehearsal and production of contemporary performance. Drawing on a legacy of disability performance strategies designed to increase access and inclusion, and the authors’ position as both disabled and non-disabled practitioners, the article examines Australian innovations in access aesthetics in two recent performance works and suggests the potential of these processes to expand the creative and aesthetic dimensions of performance.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWorking with Children: Elasticity, Creativity, and Disruption(Performance Studies international, 2021)