“Theatre in the ‘Engaged University’: A Context for Habermas’s Communicative Action”

Abstract

Throughout its history, the American university has learned to accommodate divergent functions-theological, humanistic, vocational, and scholarly, for example-that have been organized into curricula, and legitimized on the basis of changing ideas about the uses of knowledge. The growth of theatre studies has been complex and multifaceted but, in the end, its generalizable characteristics can be understood to fall into two prevailing curricular orientations. The first, an aesthetically-oriented curriculum, teaches the values of the liberal humanist approach. The second, a market-oriented curriculum, is characterized by professionalism and vocationalism. These formulations mark the triumph of "Enlightened" objectivity that has afflicted our practices with discordant beliefs about whether to teach humanistic content or the crafts of theatrical production. In the 1930s, this debate came to be identified as a dichotomy between "craft" or "culture."

Performing the Global University

“…Its previous report, in 1960, had noted that undergraduate theater programs had doubled and that theater curricula were found at most colleges and universities. 19 Along with their heightened presence, theater programs became the producing units that staged the U.S. university's spectacular growth from 1945 through the 1970s. The dual spectacle of growth was achieved rather theatrically through mainstream theater productions showcasing the fruits of vocational instruction at newly built performing arts facilities sprouting by the hundreds across the nation.…”

Conflict Resolution through Communication: Habermasian Study of Pinter’s The Homecoming

“…He investigates Fallujag by Jonathan Holmes, The Permanent Way by David Hare, and Talking to terrorists written by Robin Soans to show that it is possible to bring the actual words of private people to public arenas. Berkeley (2007) and Balme (2012) are other authors who bring Habermas's notion of 'public sphere' within the context of theatre and performance. Berkeley uses Habermas's theory to offer the concept of an 'engaged curriculum' for theatre which would shift its traditional interest from the formalist study of aesthetics and the crafts of theatre, to an exploration of the art of the theatre as a way for participation in public sphere.…”