Behind the scenes with affect theatre

“Cristiana Giordano and Greg Pierotti have finessed performance ethnography as a collaborative pedagogy situated at the intersection of the social sciences and performance studies. In this interview, Meghan Rose Donnelly lifts the curtain on affect theatre as it plays out in the classroom, in an interview with Cristiana and Greg for a special issue in Postgraduate Pedagogies titled Conversations on teaching in the contemporary university: Perspectives from within and across disciplines The excerpt below features two passages from the interview – why Meghan Rose chose to interview Cristiana and Greg, and a lightning round series of questions and answers where Meghan Rose quizzes them about the big ideas, the muddiest concepts, and her favourite podcast This post is part of a special issue, Conversations on teaching in the contemporary university For decades, educators have used theatre techniques such as role play and theatre of the oppressed to engage students and bring course material to life – literally – in the classroom. Some take it further, using theatre methods with students to reimagine disciplinary concepts. At the forefront of this movement are Cristiana Giordano and Greg Pierotti, who have developed a theatrical pedagogy to teach budding anthropologists about the entangled relationship between experience and representation in research. I met with Cristiana and Greg over Zoom in 2022 to talk about their interdisciplinary collaboration, which spans 13 years. The pair have developed what they call affect theatre , a method inspired by affect theory that uses theatrical techniques to process, analyse, and represent anthropological research. Their approach draws heavily on devised theatre : a genre of performance in which an ensemble collaborates to build a play from scratch. They have developed their practice as a pedagogy for teaching ethnography. Drawing on academic research on affect theory in ethnographic methods and pedagogies that centre co-creation and communities of practice, they teach students to feel the connection between complex experience and scholarly representations. I was curious to understand what these innovations teach students about their discipline and its methods. Can they teach us about the assumptions and consequences of more traditional approaches to higher education? Our discussion – which touched on the impulse to explain, the ethics of representation, and the power of collaboration – explores new ways to get caught again in the wonder of teaching. Lightning round Meghan Rose : What is one concept every student on your course should come away knowing? Cristiana : Devising. Greg : Not understanding. Meghan Rose : Name one idea covered in this course that most students struggle with. Greg : Ethics. Cristiana : Affective representation. Meghan Rose : Name one topic on this course that you really enjoy teaching. Greg : Analysis. Cristiana : The actual making of episodes. Meghan Rose : Can you recommend a blog post or a podcast, or an op-ed that a stranger to this field should read and will understand? Cristiana : Our interview in the Anthropod podcast. Greg : The performative talk we gave at UPenn in 2021. Meghan Rose : What would be your dream course to teach? Greg : A longer course where we make a theatre piece based on empirical material together. Cristiana : Yeah, me too. Meghan Rose : As a teacher, what do you find the hardest? Greg : Assessment. Cristiana : Students who think they know best. Meghan Rose : Can you recommend an invaluable resource to your fellow teachers in this area? Cristiana : Our new book, Affect Ethnography: Exploring Performance and Narrative in the Creation of Unstories . Greg : And Favret-Saada . Meghan Rose : Whose teaching or pedagogy in this area do you follow or are inspired by? Greg : Liz Lerman and her critical response theory ; Mary Overlie , her writing on the viewpoints . And Tectonic . Cristiana : And I have been inspired by Eugenio Barba since I’ve met them. Meghan Rose : What is your magic trick when it comes to giving feedback on an assignment? Cristiana : Tap into what the person wants to do and help them achieve that, whether we agree with it or not. Greg : Assess students in a way that builds their confidence and makes them feel their choices are valid and valuable. Read the interview in full in Postgraduate Pedagogies who have kindly permitted us to re-publish this excerpt. Main image: affect theatre image: screengrab from Performative Talk This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions. The post Behind the scenes with affect theatre first appeared on LSE Higher Education .

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