Learning for a new society: the <i>Lehrstück</i>

Mueller, Roswitha

doi:10.1017/ccol0521857090.007

Cited by 7 publications

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“…From this point of view, societal structures are not permanent but constantly in flux, subject to a perpetual process of change through interaction and dialogue. In consequence, conscious, critical and active citizens can change the course of history (Mueller, 2006). Crucial to Brecht's practice was the desire that audiences transfer the insights made in the realm of the theatre to their everyday world.…”

Section: Brecht: Epic Theatre and The Fight Against Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

The intellectual whakapapa informing the New Zealand Drama Curriculum

O’Connor¹,

Gregorzewski²

2022

tandc

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Underpinning drama education in New Zealand is the desire to improve the lives of individuals, communities and societies by catalysing embodied learning in and through the art form of theatre. Learning in drama is intended to foster well-being, social cohesion and active citizenship. Put another way, drama education in New Zealand has always been about more than training actors for the theatre stage. It has been about fostering the development of actors who engage in, on and with the world. This determination has led to the particular pedagogical and curricular response that frames how drama is taught in New Zealand. In drama education in New Zealand we have focused for a generation on working practically to explore the nature of drama as a meaning making tool. Students not only study theatre by passively watching, they actively partake in framed fictional worlds and reflect on these embodied experiences. By engaging students in dramatic encounters, we argue drama education bears the potential to engage in critical and creative engagement with pivotal social issues in the real world (Anderson & O’Connor, 2015). The nature of the meaning making has seen a deliberate privileging of non-naturalistic forms of drama presentation and representation. Progression is understood in the curriculum as moving from exploration of narrative through imagined and social play at junior primary to understanding how to use conventions as dramatic structuring devices (Ministry of Education, 2007). This can be understood as a conventions approach (CA) to drama education. In this article we consider the pedagogical and theatre traditions that informed the New Zealand curriculum to contextualise the planned curriculum refresh in 2023.

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Section: Brecht: Epic Theatre and The Fight Against Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

The intellectual whakapapa informing the New Zealand Drama Curriculum

O’Connor¹,

Gregorzewski²

2022

tandc

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“…Roswitha Mueller (1994) notes that, "the historical basis for the Lehrstücke is a society in transition to socialism. Roswitha Mueller (1994) notes that, "the historical basis for the Lehrstücke is a society in transition to socialism.…”

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Brecht’s Lehrstücke and Drama Education

Hughes

2011

Key Concepts in Theatre/Drama Education

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The term Lehrstücke, or learning-plays, describes a series of experimental works written in the 1920s and early 1930s by Bertolt Brecht and a number of collaborators, including Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Elisabeth Hauptmann. The intention behind writing and performing these experimental plays was not necessarily to culminate in a finished, final product to be replicated exactly during each performance. Rather, the ideal Lehrstück performance is also something of a rehearsal, or, as Frederic Jameson (1998) describes it, "one continuous master class" (p. 62-63). Jameson suggests that the process of acting in a Lehrstück is the end result: "the decision to act out this particular gesture; or not to act it out, or to act out its opposite-now proves to be the annulment of difference on another, and perhaps even more basic, one: namely, that between actors and public" (p. 65). As performer and audience are synthesized, this opens up a new realm of possibilities for action and choice within the framework of the play.In experimenting with the fundamental dynamics of the stage through the Lehrstück, Brecht dissolves the difference between player and spectator, and instead advocates a "große Pädagogik" which "only recognizes actors who are simultaneously students" (Brecht, 2003, p. 88). Whereas difference is eradicated in terms of actor/spectator, it is highlighted in the potentials open to the characters within the world of the drama. In focusing not on one final product, but rather on the process of artistic development as in a rehearsal, the Lehrstück aims to bring about a kind of self-realization in those taking part. Brecht suggested that "[t]hese experiments were theatrical performances meant not so much for the spectator as for those who were engaged in the performance. It was, so to speak, art for the producer, not art for the consumer" (Brecht, 1964, p. 80). As this essay explains through an examination of the process and development of the 1930-31 Lehrstücke for young audiences, Der Jasager (He Who Says Yes or, He Said Yes) and Der Neinsager (He Who Says No or, He Said No), audience members were empowered as they became engaged in the process of production. As such, Brecht's Lehrstück-theory can be useful to both practitioners of theatre for young audiences and its scholarly community.While children factor into Brecht's ideas on pedagogy and theatre, the Lehrstücke are not traditionally thought of as children's theatre; only Der Jasager and Der Neinsager were written for young people. Much of Brecht's Lehrstück-theory deals with adult participants, both as performers and audience members, yet these ideas

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Brecht’s Gale

Boyle¹

2016

Performance Research

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Learning for a new society: the Lehrstück

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The intellectual whakapapa informing the New Zealand Drama Curriculum

The intellectual whakapapa informing the New Zealand Drama Curriculum

Brecht’s Lehrstücke and Drama Education

Brecht’s Gale

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