Robin Pascoe and Peter Wright: Representation and authenticity in drama research

The ways that research is shared is often reductive, pseudo-scientific and may be missing the richness of lived experience.

The ways that research is shared is often reductive, pseudo-scientific and may be missing the richness of lived experience. While experience is always embodied as researchers we work to be less removed from the experience itself through varying ways of capturing and expressing it. The well-established practices for observing, interrogating, describing and reporting inquiries have strengths and weaknesses. Transcripts, interviews and journals presented on paper and as text, even video and audio presentations are analogues of the actual experience. Are there better ways of sharing the researched experience? One suggestion investigated is how the Graphic Novel format might usefully address issues of representation and authenticity.

Peter Wright:
Associate Professor of Arts Education and Research Methods at Murdoch University. He works across the Arts committed to personal, social, cultural inquiry, agency, education, expression, health and wellbeing. Central to his work is socio-aesthetic pedagogy, social justice, and social inclusion mediated in and through the Arts an interest. He is recently published in Arts Education Policy Review and Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Robin Pascoe:
Senior Lecturer Arts and Drama Education, Murdoch University. He teaches Drama and the Curriculum, Teaching the Arts (Early Childhood /Primary), Engaging Communities through Drama. Robin’s research interests: arts and drama education, teacher education, curriculum implementation, assessment in drama. Robin is also President of IDEA, International Drama/Theatre and Education Association.

Laura is a keen advocate for the Arts in Education. A graduate of the Comparative and International Education MA program at Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA, USA), Laura’s research interests revolve around how Arts subjects, and Theatre in particular, can play a crucial role to the development of a student’s social and emotional well-being, whilst bolstering their academic attainment. Having lived in numerous places around the world, and worked to support international students in a university setting, Laura is interested in supporting global Education policy. With an avid interest in Theatre & Performance, she is delighted to be bringing her two passions together to lead on Dialogue’s Community Performance for Education work.