INDIANA UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
DENVER SOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
Illustrator: Kylie Walls
As young people’s identities continue to be formed by social media, popular culture, and peer approval, mirrored representations of unquestioned ideals have taken center stage. Through an investigative inquiry into this practice, Weltsek and Hammoor emerge with a new possibility for understanding activism and self-formation in the drama classroom—dissociation. Using academic scaffolding and a playful graphic novel, the authors invite teachers, researchers, practitioners and learners to think into a theoretical moment of disconnect. It’s the moment young people talk about when they “let go” and are “consumed” by dramatic activities. The authors argue that moments of disconnect hold hope for the development of individual agency, social justice and equity both for individuals on paths of self-discovery/creation, collective actions for communities that arise within the drama classroom, and for how we think about and share our scholarship. The graphic novel central to Weltsek and Hammoor’s discussion offers a way of thinking into multimodality in scholarship and pedagogy.
Because the illustrations are a large part of this article, the full text is only available as a PDF.
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Gustave Weltsek PhD, Assistant Professor Arts Education, Indiana University School of Education. He examines how critical performative pedagogy (Weltsek and Medina, Pineau) functions as a space of emergent identity for social change and explorations of equity. His publications appear in; Youth Theatre Journal, Arts Education Policy Review, Language Arts, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Professional service includes past editor of the Youth Theatre Journal, and past AATE Chair of Research and Publications. He is the 2013 AATE research award recipient and served as a writer of the new United States Standards for Theatre and Drama Education.
Clare Hammoor EdD, is a theatre practitioner obsessed with object-oriented ontologies, clowning, and creating joyful, absurd theatre with children (and things). Equally committed to the possibilities of justice and philosophy, Clare collaborates with men and women who live the realities of the US’s system of mass incarceration. Clare’s work has appeared in international journals and conferences including Body, Space, Technology and Performance Philosophy. Formerly the Drama Specialist and Director at Blue School in Manhattan, Clare currently collaborates with high school students as the head of the drama program at Denver South High School.
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Cover image by Jonathan P. Jones, 2016.
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