Herekorenga: Towards a Critical Ensemble Pedagogy
Gaenor Brown
gaenor@wordspark.co.nz
Ka mua, Ka muri DI Symposium
October 8-10 2022
Whāngārā Marae
Research Context
Practice -led methodology
Ensemble
Co-operation: the intense unobstructed traffic between artists at play and the surrender of self to a connection with others even while making demands on ourselves
Altruism: the moral imagination and the social perception to realise that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The stronger help the weaker, rather than choreographing the weak to make the strong look good
Trust: the ability to be appallingly honest and to experiment without fear
Empathy: caring for others with a forensic curiosity that constantly seeks new ways of being together and creating together
Neelands and Nelson, 2013, p.17
Affective belonging
Politics of belonging
Principles of Practice:
The Workshop
Herekorenga
Our home
A process drama for Aotearoa
Herekorenga
Herekorenga is a fictional, self-sustaining, rural township somewhere in Aotearoa. Distance to the nearest city is 237 kms, over sealed and unsealed roads. Herekorenga is an area of outstanding natural beauty, with rugged pae maunga, dense bush, clean rivers and sandy coastline. Population: 4000
This is your home. You have everything you need here.
The township has just celebrated 25 years of liberation from oppression. Twenty five years ago a sculpture was designed by people in the township, and erected to commemorate the liberation (which meant different things to different people) in Herekorenga.
Mapping Herekorenga- our values
Creative work
Create group “sculptures” which must have all players connected and may be static, or moving images. These sculptures are abstract representations of all your different interpretations of freedom.
Share this work in a canon, with or without accompanying sound/music.
Teacher in Role- discussion
Herekorenga’s Mayor Joan Armatrading ( signifier is a coat, jacket) calls people into a meeting- she needs help: the following may be an improvised speech or you could write it out as text for audio announcement.
“Thank you for coming at such short notice- need your help to decide next steps re this tragedy, our beloved art work has been trashed/ ruined/ defaced/ damaged beyond all recognition/ and we know who has done it… Four Year 11 students from the school. They have admitted it and are currently at home with parent/parents. What shall we do with them?”
The Apology
We are really sorry that we have created bad feelings in Herekorenga and upset you.
We thought that you would appreciate what we added to the sculpture, as art- we did not think you would see it as damage. We actually thought you would be pleased that the sculpture represents all of us now, not just the older people in the town. As you know, last month we went to the city to see the graffiti exhibition with our art teacher and we learned lots about the power of this art form to raise awareness. We are so happy to live freely here in Herekorenga and wanted to celebrate that. We thought we were adding value, not being destructive. We are sorry you don’t like what we have done.
Click below to hear a spoken version of this presentation
References
Anderson, & Dunn, J. (2013). How drama activates learning : contemporary research and practice (Anderson & J. Dunn, Eds.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472553010