Open Collections

Foster, Avril

University of British Columbia

In this study I examine the experiences of parents who viewed three collaborative plays based on personal narrative. Drawing from the body of literature on audience response and parent spectatorship, this research uses complementary arts-based methods of A/r/tography and Research-based Theatre to collect interview data and playwrite coded findings. True to the nature of A/r/tography, attention is given to the spaces in between spectator recollections by transforming tensions into a playscript entitled: Meet the Parents. The main conflicts in the scripted play rise out of five key tensions in the findings: closure, purpose, exchange, agency, and witnessing. Meet the Parents weaves snippets of student scripts with parent monologues to address a disconnect between educational theatre and the response it provokes. A post-script discussion provides additional analysis of the spectrum of experiences. I argue that artistically engaging with the five key tensions activates a conversation cut short by lack of audience agency. This study creates a piece of Research-based Theatre to reactivate dialogue by bringing parent voices out of the dark auditorium and into dramatic engagement with teens’ authentic stories.

Text

2023-01-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/83568

Literacy Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/