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The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing

Performative counter‐storytelling can be a powerful experience for both the artists who create these stories and the audiences who witness them. This study examined audience responses to a counter‐narrative (entitled “AMKA”) performed by Africans in Australia which intended to present more complex,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Maxwell, Christina, Sonn, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8672364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33350474
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12493
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author Maxwell, Christina
Sonn, Christopher
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Sonn, Christopher
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description Performative counter‐storytelling can be a powerful experience for both the artists who create these stories and the audiences who witness them. This study examined audience responses to a counter‐narrative (entitled “AMKA”) performed by Africans in Australia which intended to present more complex, holistic, and strengths‐based representations of their communities than those currently circulated by dominant discourses. Guided by a critical whiteness lens, the study explored how 34 self‐identifying white audience members interpreted the performance and how they questioned whiteness by assuming the role of implicated witnesses. Following thematic analysis of mixed closed‐ and open‐ended post‐performance survey responses, audience members made connections between the content of AMKA and the contemporary political and cultural contexts in which it was performed and began to examine their positions of privilege and power. This study has provided evidence for the potential of political theater in creating spaces of encounter whereby responsible listening positions can be nurtured in the journey toward dismantling personal, and potentially structural, racially‐based injustices.
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spelling pubmed-86723642021-12-22 The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing Maxwell, Christina Sonn, Christopher Am J Community Psychol Original Articles Performative counter‐storytelling can be a powerful experience for both the artists who create these stories and the audiences who witness them. This study examined audience responses to a counter‐narrative (entitled “AMKA”) performed by Africans in Australia which intended to present more complex, holistic, and strengths‐based representations of their communities than those currently circulated by dominant discourses. Guided by a critical whiteness lens, the study explored how 34 self‐identifying white audience members interpreted the performance and how they questioned whiteness by assuming the role of implicated witnesses. Following thematic analysis of mixed closed‐ and open‐ended post‐performance survey responses, audience members made connections between the content of AMKA and the contemporary political and cultural contexts in which it was performed and began to examine their positions of privilege and power. This study has provided evidence for the potential of political theater in creating spaces of encounter whereby responsible listening positions can be nurtured in the journey toward dismantling personal, and potentially structural, racially‐based injustices. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-12-22 2021-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8672364/ /pubmed/33350474 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12493 Text en © 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Community Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Community Research and Action https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Maxwell, Christina
Sonn, Christopher
The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title_full The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title_fullStr The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title_full_unstemmed The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title_short The Performative is Political: Using Counter‐Storytelling through Theater to Create Spaces for Implicated Witnessing
title_sort performative is political: using counter‐storytelling through theater to create spaces for implicated witnessing
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8672364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33350474
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12493
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