Description
The creative ecologies of drama research and education
Daniel X. Harris
This monograph is largely about word construction—how we describe other people, other places, and our creative processes. Even if moved by non‑representational/more-than-human forms of ‘representation’, we are still trying to make one thing appreciable to others by means of representation (abstraction, analogy, poetry etc.), broadly construed. And yet, this ‘description’, whether in a script, a silent performance, or any other kind of creative output, often comes after weeks, months, potentially years, of ‘being with’, in place, in a shared co-made-by-strangers context, as an ensemble of sorts. So, how do we then parse that co-presence, that culture-making for others? How do we re-compose (usually in relative brevity after extensive relationship-making) that story of co-being for other others, who were not there, who did not share space, time, air, worry, laughter? How do we do it ethically? Artfully? And oriented to change and justice, which for Harris, is the point of it all?
This monograph offers so much to readers and scholars. Dan shows through examples drawn from their own research, how a creative ecological framing of drama education and research might provide ways to create and interrogate the experiential practice of ‘doing’ our artful research work.
This is a special monograph, not only for its rich provocations, but also for the love, hope and care it exudes.
