Abstract:
This dissertation explores collaborative theater of testimony performance as a form of
critical performance pedagogy, examining its transformative and heuristic potential for
actors, audience members, and community members. Through an examination of two
case studies, the author argues that participation in collaborative theater of testimony
performance allows each of these constituents to experience insights about themselves
and others that more traditional forms of knowledge acquisition do not or may not allow.
As co-constructors of meaning during performance, audience members may experience
moments of acute awareness that lead to new ways of seeing themselves and the world.
This transformative potential extends to the community members whose experiences are
reflected in the performance piece; for example, they may experience healing,
vindication, or a sense of empowerment. Finally, collaborative theater of testimony
performance challenges actors to address their own perspectives about identity,
representation, and difference. Because actors in such performances have worked closely
with the people they embody on stage – and have developed relationships with them
during the production process – their experiences differ from performers engaged in more
typical rehearsal processes (study the script, learn the lines, rehearse the play). In light of
these findings, the author calls for theater practitioners and performance studies scholars
to engage their students not only with others across disciplines in their own institutions
but also with community members outside the university campus. In so doing,
community members, actors, and audience members have the opportunity to experience
for themselves the transformative potential of collaborative theater of testimony
performance and, ultimately, to use their new knowledge to effect social change.
