Doctoral Degrees (Drama)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Drama) by Author "Prigge, Lanon Carl"

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    Serious play : exploring the ethical tensions of license and limits in drama, theatre and performance education
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-12) Prigge, Lanon Carl; Du Preez, Petrus; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Drama.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Broad global trends evidence the need for improving ethics in a variety of disciplines. The general education codes do not address the unique culture specific to teaching and learning drama, theatre and performance in tertiary institutions in South Africa. Interrogating ethics could be met with resistance and upset the status quo in education and industry. Imposing ethical frameworks from the outside-in may fail to account for the specific culture they are designed to serve. This study observes that ‘outside-in’ refers to interference from the greater systems of education (social and institutional), as well as any mandated prescriptions or strongly divergent value positions arising from within an individual educator’s own context. This study therefore explores how educators might begin the process of negotiating ethics within their personal pedagogy by assuming personal accountability. This foregrounds the value of a process and practice of ethical self enquiry over the general identification and analysis of ethical considerations. It explores personal preparatory process work ahead of anticipated negotiation of ethical value positions and concerns in group dialogue. Because narrative is central to drama and theatre and performance, this study explores and reflects on personal narrative-oriented enquiry as a means to conscientising personal ethical value positions (and evolving a ‘personal ethos’). The emphasis resides on raising personal consciousness by exploring personal resources in answer to the discussion of ethics. By personal resources is indicated: selfmotivated effort (autonomous moral agency), conscious and unconscious (tacit) historical experience and knowledge, as well as the creative talents, practices and techniques unique to their artistry and pedagogy. Also explored and reflected upon is how a raising of personal consciousness in this manner might 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 to fellow educators. This study finds that the quest for identity and self-knowledge are shared by the three strands this Performed Narrative draws together, namely: performance, education and ethics. It proposes that if the quest for self-knowledge can somehow be foregrounded in performance and its education as an inherently ethical endeavour, it may be possible for ethical self enquiry - as a form of autonomous moral agency – to become desirable as integral to drama, theatre and performance education versus being an imposition from the outside. It suggests that this might result in a ‘paradigm shift’ that addresses ethical concerns at the level of causes rather than effects.