Theatre as Pedagogy Workshop PDF-NOTE: Internet Explorer Users, right click the PDF Icon and choose [save target as] if you are experiencing problems with clicking. Print

A18–200
Friday, November 18, 1:00 PM–6:00 PM
Moscone Center West–Room 2004

Sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Committee and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
 
This workshop introduces teachers of religious studies and theology to the use of theatre as a pedagogical tool. The pedagogies of theatre have been largely underutilized both in theology and religious studies. Theatre and its techniques offer students methods to engage material by embodying it. While conventional teaching stresses analysis and critical thinking by lecture and class discussion, enactment offers somatic, kinesthetic learning.

Participants will explore specific techniques (i.e., theatre games, improvisations, and writing exercises) to encourage students’ creative engagement with class content. The first part of the workshop introduces teachers to theatre techniques. The second part of the workshop focuses on how theatre can open up the experience of teaching and learning in religious and theological studies. This workshop will also be a time for learning about and practicing pedagogical methods that move beyond “learning from the neck up.” In this way this workshop will promote theatre as another part of our pedagogical repertoires, in ways that are integrally connected to course material and to critical thinking, speaking, and acting.

The goals of this workshop are to:

  • Introduce the theories of the use of theatre as pedagogy
  • Practice a variety of theatre techniques, with direct connections to religious and theological curriculum
  • Explore the implications for building community within the classroom, in the larger campus and beyond (in internship courses, etc.)
  • Play critically and creatively with our own assumptions about teaching and who we are as teachers (Augusto Boal)
  • Create a learning community of teachers for an afternoon through the modeling of theatre games and improvisation
  • Reimagine the word and the world (Paulo Freire) and the possibilities for transformative classrooms.

We will be exploring ways to link the teaching of course content with theatre pedagogies, to create multicultural learning communities, and to create transformative spaces in teaching and learning. Our facilitator is Victoria Rue, a popular workshop leader and the author of Acting Religious: Theatre as Pedagogy in Religious Studies (Pilgrim Press, 2005).

Registration is limited to the first thirty participants. To register, send an e-mail to Tina Pippin at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . There is no cost for participants, but we ask for commitment to the full session.

 

This website contains archived issues of Religious Studies News published online from March 2010 to May 2013, and PDF versions of print editions published from Winter 2001 to October 2009.

This site also contains archived issues of Spotlight on Teaching (May 1999 to May 2013) and Spotlight on Theological Education (March 2007 to March 2013).

For current issues of RSN, beginning with the October 2013 issue, please see here.


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