Critical Literacies and Glo/Cal Citizenry: Constructing Reflective Spaces Through Critical Performative Pedagogies

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Critical Literacies and Glo/Cal Citizenry: ConstructingReflective Spaces Through Critical PerformativePedagogiesCarmen L. Medina , Gustave Weltsek-Medina & Sarah TwomeyPublished online: 08 Jul 2010.

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Critical Literacies and GloICal Citizenry: Constructing Reflective

Spaces Through Critical Performative Pedagogies

Carmen L. Medina, Gustave Weltsek-Medina, & Sarah Twomey

" I really engage my whole being, not just the cognitive and the physical self; but also the spiritual and emotional part of me that allows me to appreciate the material in a deeper realm." (Nancy, Kindergarten teacher)

Due to rapid technological development, human transnational mobility, and the expansion of market driven economies, it becomes necessary to envision our lives and actions affecting the global community and to consider how individual and collective pedagogy inform the welfare of the planet. Noddings (2005) considers this a need to become an educator for global citizenship, explaining this is no easy task and pointing to a myriad of challenges, from understanding how we view economic and social justice and protecting the earth, to social and cultural diversity. One constant in her discourse is that education holds a primary place in moving people toward spaces where critical global inquiries might begin. Similarly Luke's (2004) notion of the "cosmopolitan teacher" and "glo/cal education" argues for a redefinition of teachers' critical capacities responding to contemporary economics and geopolitical dynam- ics that deal with local, global and transnational realities. From this perspective, the re-envisioning of a transcultural and cosmopolitan teacher [means] "a teacher with the capacity to shunt between the local and the global, to explicate and engage with the broad flows of knowledge and information, technologies and populations, artifacts and practices that characterize the present historical moment" (pp. 1438-9).

Carrnen L. Medina is an Assistant professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at University of British Columbia. Her research focuses in the areas of critical literacy, Latinola children's literature, drama education and cultural studies.

Gustave Weltsek-Medina is an Assistant Professor of English in the Depart- mento De Ingles, with The University of Puerto Rico, Cayey. His research focuses on emergent language within TESOL and EFL environments framed through DrarnalTheatre as Critical Performative Pedagogy.

Sarah Twomey is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Her research interests are teacher professional development, feminist poststruc- turalist theory, and critical literacies.

YOUTH THEATRE JOURNAL 113 volume 2 1.2007

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114 Carmen L. Medina, Gustave Weltsek-Medina, & Sarah Twomey

As drama and literacy educators, we know that opportunities abound to explore notions of becoming a glolcal citizen. For us, literacy pedagogies are framed within a vision of what Pineau (2005) calls "critical performative pedagogies". When we talk about performance practices as a productive metaphor in literacy education, we are speaking about the facilitation of creative spaces where it is possible to reinvent readers' identities and discourses but also to critically perform and examine everyday social actions (See Medina, 2004; Twomey, 2005; Weltsek, 2005). In this paper we explore how one group of pre- service teachers, in-service teachers and theatre community activists involved in a dramahheatre in education course in a Canadian urban city, used the picture book Se'lavi (Youme, 2004) and performative strategies to enter into a critical reflection of what it might mean to be a local and global citizen and educator and the tensions involved in such reflections. Our intention was to begin a critical dialogue and, as Noddings (2005) suggests, "raise questions so that the positions we take will be well reasoned and not simply ideological reactions" (p. 13). In other words, we believe the objective of this work was to inquire and engage in a dialogue searching for praxis within performative moments. In essence we asked, "Is it possible'to identify moments of praxis and articulate how those moments emerged?" We were optimistic about how, through their performative explorations of texts in a drama class, individuals might critically reflect upon how to read wor(1)ds (Freire, 197011995), perform actions and the multiple social stances that emerged in those spaces. In other words, we hoped the drama would provide opportunities for the participants to begin to think about how many different elements from their lives (social, political, religious, sexual, spiritual, etc.) were negotiated in order to make meaning when engaging with a text and creating a role in congress with that textual engagement. We were also careful to explore how such expectations may be contested and complicated by the limits of what performative practices and literature can do.

We begin this paper with an overview connecting critical literacies to critical performative pedagogies. Next, Gus, the facilitator for the course used as the basis for this study, shares the process of devising the drama from a reflective practitioner's perspective. Carmen and Sarah then add to Gus's reflection, sharing their work as researchers documenting the course to observe the performances and social positionings the participants embodied inside and outside the drama (Edmiston & Enciso, 2002). After this, the students' responses are described within the performative space connecting the students' reflections to notions of glolcal citizenry. The piece concludes with a discussion of the possibilities and tensions within this kind of work and looks toward future implications.

CFUTICAL LITERACIES IN DRAMA AS PERFORMATIVE PEDAGOGIES

Noddings (2005) positions understanding diversity as paramount to any movement toward constructing a global identity. She feels, "Where people not only claim difference but also celebrate it, global citizens cannot pretend that differences are unimportant. Diversity becomes essential to all policymaking conversations because we must hear the voice of the other" (p. 14). When

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CRITICAL LITERACIES AND GLOlCAL CITIZENRY 1 15

unpacked in meaningful ways, critical children's literature may provide awareness toward negotiating the contested meanings within the social and political realities embedded in notions of local and global citizenship. Qualities inherent in critical children's literature are texts that address the reality lived by diverse social and cultural communities exploring how structures of power, privilege and oppression affect people's lives (Leland, Harste, Ociepcka, Lewison & Vazquez, 1999). Within this body of literature, we include critical multicultural literature as part of a larger literary tradition that represents issues of equity and justice across diverse cultural groups (see various perspectives in Comber, 2001; Harris, 1999; Marshall, 2004; Medina & Enciso, 2002; Rogers & Soter, 1997). These explorations, from a critical literacy perspective, according to Comber, frame people's engagement in "asking complicated questions about language and power, about people and lifestyle, about morality and ethics, about who is advantaged by the way things are and who is disadvantaged" (271). She also argues that critical analysis of a text is one where readers work on interrogating textual representations of reality and the way reality is constructed from particular perspectives.

Janks' (2000) evaluation of contemporary directions in critical literacy - particularly through the lens of design and multiliteracies developed by The New London Group (2000), highlights the significance of how design through a multiplicity of semiotic systems "encompasses the idea of productive power . . . to challenge and change existing Discourses" (177). Similarly Enciso (2003 & 2004) and Enciso and Edrniston (1997) argue that engagement with artistic and performative practices provides possibilities for readers to destabilize meaning and taken-for-granted assumptions by exploring the multiple stances and discourses readers construct in an interpretative moment. From critical performative pedagogies (Giroux, 2001; Pineau, 2002,2005), drama engagements in literature response practices create a space where people can engage in reflections of how identities are constructed and performed across spaces both inside and outside a creative experience as people interact in the drama worlds, classrooms and society (See Alexander, Anderson, & Gallegos, 2005). As Alexander (2005) argues, in a critical performative space in classrooms we,

push the perceived borders of performance from the specific domain of embodied doing, to performance in terms of politics to gain insight to the nature of their [our] performative practices, and how they are implicated in the effects of our own labor. (43)

In using drama engagements as critical performative pedagogies, multiple events are created within make-believe worlds providing opportunities for students to improvise and perform meanings implicating their everyday labor and practices. As O'Neill (1995) explains, the performative world "may be activated by a word, a gesture, a location, a story, an idea, an object, or an image, as well as a character or a play script" (19). She describes this initiating moment as a "pretext" activating the performative world development. We believe that, regardless of the context or how the drama is activated, through improvisations such as role playing, tableaux, or exploring the inner thoughts of a character, participants perform in hybrid spaces where personal and social identities are simultaneously reproduced and reinvented.

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Looking at literature as a pretext, Wolf, Edminston, and Enciso (1997) believe that participants within the drama create a space to work "at the edges of the texts" expanding the landscape for self explorations and literary interpretations. Here students may imagine, re-imagine, embody and perform upon issues represented in critical literature not only through spoken discourse but through the range of modes available for interpretation in drama such as ges- tures, writing, speaking and visual images (Enciso & Edmiston, 1997; Medina, 2004; Schneider, Crumpler & Rogers, 2006; Weis-Long & Gove, 2004). By using drama strategies in tandem with critical children's literature, it becomes possible to explore multiple events and to consider, create and perform new and old discourses through the imagination, looking at what is possible, or not, within the context of the characters' and readers' reality. Furthermore, as Edmiston and Enciso (2002) argue in constructing dialogic drama interpretative practices, "if the text is fairly 'open' and thus ambiguous in its context and ref- erents, students' performances will necessarily be preceded by discussions and improvisations of implied events and viewpoints as they sort through possible '

meanings, voices, and settings" (869).

GUS'S PRACTITIONER'S STANCE ON DEVISING THE DRAMA

I am a dramaltheatre practitioner and theorist with over 15 years experience encompassing traditional Western theatre production in multiple settings: elementary and secondary schools, universities, after-school programs, and teacher training programs in process drama, arts based transmediation strategies and traditional Western theatre. I am influenced by the post-structural critical feminist perspectives of Butler (2007), Britzman (1993) and Ellsworth (1989) and am aware of the need for constant critical reflection upon my pedagogy. Car- men and Sarah's objective to explore the construction of "drama worlds" through a critical performative pedagogies in my classroom aligned with my own need to deconstruct my work as a reflective practitioner; furthermore their focus on the social and political discourses that emerged within and outside the drama space appealed to my need to critically engage with my praxis as a recovering White Supremacist Patriarch Capitalist (hooks, 2000). Since I was not included in the research team, but as part of "that which was researched", I felt comfortable that the dynamic of the class would not be affected. After Car- men and Sarah approached the class, the class and I shared feelings about the potential interruption to the course. It was agreed that we would all be "in the same boat", and that this was merely another variable in a contested power dynamic between teacherlfacilitator and studentlparticipants.

I devised the drama, under exploration in this study, using the picture book Se'lavi by Youme (2004). (See Figure 1 for a summary of the drama sequence.) Se'lavi is based on a true story about children made homeless through the rav- ages of war in Haiti. My intention was to create make-believe worlds that emerged parallel to the text, working in encounters before, during, and after the reading of the book. My agenda was to do as much as I could to separate myself as the one who transferred knowledge during the engagement with the text. Also, I work through what I call Transparent Pedagogy. By this I mean that I am always explaining "Why" I am engaging in a strategy with the group. I

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CRITICAL LITERACIES AND GLOJCAL CITIZENRY 1 17

FIGURE 1 SUMMARY OF DRAMA SEQUENCE

A. Read Overhead of United Nations Declaration on Children's Rights

B. Living Snap shot and 3 captions interpreting the U.N. Declaration

C. Tableau of children's stories of homelessness

D. Pair; A= Child, B =Community Me memberfAdult- Reenact interaction between a child and stranger in the street.

E. Teacher in role, meeting with children to gather responses

F. Hot seating "The military" is interview by media reporters

G. Children's dream room design

H. Proximity to the problem-Take the role of an implicit or explicit character, positions yourself in relation to the problem and share your thinking.

I. Writing in role a letter to the family

J. Final Thoughtsf InnerfOuter Circle (Military, Towns people, Parents, Children in center, who are in the innermost circle)

discuss politics, power and theory through these moments as a way to make my agenda obvious as a means for the group to critically engage with the moment.

The story began, "Not so long ago and not so far away, people with guns could take a family, bum a house and disappear, leaving a small child alone in the world" (unnumbered pages). The tale follows SClavi as he attempts to sur- vive alone. He connects with other homeless children forming a ragtag family unit. The group lives behind a banyan tree and survives by foraging in dumps, doing odd jobs, and begging. It is not long, however, before the military chases the children from their makeshift home forcing them to once again roam the streets. A group of concerned citizens, calling themselves the "Mighty River", embraces the children and raises funds to build a home and provide for education and food. This safe place is short lived as the military bums the house to the ground. Undaunted, the community rebuilds this time creating and running a radio station with the children and proclaiming, "We will write our messages in the air where they cannot be painted out." Se'lavi is a story of trial and tribu- lation, of success in the face of strong opposition, and of the strength of the human spirit to endure in the face of great adversity.

While devising the process drama, I considered Noddings' belief that many students are deprived of not only a critical appreciation for the places they live, but also "with an understanding of what place means in the lives of people in other parts of the globe" (57). Her premise is that in order for us to engage in considering ourselves globally, we must first engage in critical dialogues about our locality, what Luke (2004) defines in terms of "glofcal education". In short, if we are not actively involved with issues of social equity and justice in our own towns, cities, and nation, how can we possibly hope to engage with people

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from other places about the situation here, about their situation, and about how we as a global community might address all our concerns without imposing any one view through imperialism or colonialism? I hoped that two recent events would make the exploration of Se'lavi relevant on a "glo/cal" perspective. Recently, a Tsunami devastated Thailand, killing thousands, leaving countless others homeless. Also, in this Canadian city a media blitz gave a great deal of attention to the "problem" of growing youth homelessness or the "Squeegee kids." The blitz was spurred on by the passing of new city ordinances outlining "proper" panhandling etiquette including: no more than two requests in a row to a single person, keeping a distance of at least three feet between you and the individual from who you are requesting funds, and restraining from the use of profanity should a request be denied. Failure to observe the panhandling etiquette could result either in stiff fines, imprisonment, or revocation of panhandling rights. As the objective was to explore the student group's notion of glotcal citizenry, I felt that selecting a critical children's literature text with an issue "close to home," yet situated far away, might allow the students an immediate personal referent point through which to make connections to the larger global community.

REFLECTIONS FROM PARTICIPANT OBSERVERS

Methodology Design

This qualitative interpretive research (Erickson, 1986) was designed using case study methodologies. A case study approach was selected because the designed drama events in this classroom took place in one situated context (or case) where a group met to construct meaning in particular ways. We specifically used an instrumental case study approach (Stake, 2000) to examine a case -a group of students in a drama course-who provided insight and broadened the researchers' understanding of an incident or event-the performance of discourses in drama as critical literary response.

Researchers Carmen and Sarah, interested in investigating drama practices and its relationship to critical literacies, asked Gus and the students to allow them to document the course. Our intention as researchers was to better understand the construction of "drama worlds" as critical performative pedagogies and the social and political discourses that emerged within and outside these spaces. A variety of data collection tools or methodological triangulation was used on this study to obtain multiple points of view from the classroom dynam- ics and as a form of data triangulation to minimize bias and increase trustwor- thiness in the conclusions. Data collection included video and audio tape docu- mentation of all fifteen sessions of the course lasting two and half hours each. This included the students' engagements within drama experiences, moments devising the drama and reflections outside the drama. All artifacts produced in the course were collected, such as weekly reflections and documents created in the drama. At the end of the course interviews were conducted with k r teen out of the fourteen students enrolled in the class.

Following the guiding principles for data analysis on ethnographic work, the first level of analysis was to look at the responses within the drama using a

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CRITICAL LITERACIES AND GLOICAL CITIZENRY 1 19

grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) which means coding the data looking for connections, and common and emergent themes. IRB approval was secured through the university. Consent was secured from the participants first through a spoken invitation to participate and then through written consent. An additional release was signed for the use of visual, written and audio artifacts for presentation in professional journals and conferences. All names that appear in this paper are pseudonyms.

Participants' Description

The students were enrolled in a Drama and Theatre for Elementary Educa- tion course as part of a two year teacher education degree at a public university in western Canada. For many of them, this was a final elective course before graduation. There was a mixture of undergraduate pre-service and in-service teachers and community theatre teachers enrolled in this drama in education course. The students were preparing for diverse teaching professions, such as librarians, kindergarten teachers, secondary English teachers, community theatre practitioners working with children, secondary science and home e onom- 9 ics teachers ranging from experience with pre-kindergarden to seventh and eighth grade.

At times this mix of expertise and interests made it challenging for some students to engage in certain strategies; for example, those who had never engaged in any type of dramaltheatre experience found it difficult and even intimidating to work with those who were more experienced. In general, however, the hybridity of voices added to the complexity of the students' engagement. Many times the theatre folks would reach out and take the lead in some of the creative moments and, at other moments, those non-theatre people were able to lend their particular area of expertise to the substance of the fictive moment. In one particular moment, for example, the students were asked to "draw their dream room." A student whose focus was math eagerly reached out to other students to help "design" the space with mathematical precision. This give and take was constantly present in this particular hybrid groups' interactions with each other.

Similarly, the group reflected the city's cultural diversity. The class was also ethnically diverse having students from backgrounds such as Philippine, Chi- nese, Western European, First Nations, Eastern European, Venezuelan, Singa- porean, and within this group first, second and third generation immigrants and Canadian-born citizens. From the total of fourteen students, twelve were women and two men.

REFLECTIONS WITHIN AND IN-BETWEEN PERFORMATIVE PRACTICES

Tableaux

Throughout the drama, we observed critical moments of engagement, contradictions and possibilities as the students embodied explicit and implied characters and situations in the story. For example, at the moment when SClavi met

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other homeless youth, the class was invited to imagine what these other children's stories might be. Tableaux were constructed representing some of those stories and the class discussed multiple interpretations of what they saw and what they created. In the construction of tableaux, the students were challenged to negotiate meaning and portray stories through images. In the negotiation of images, we could perceive the complexity in the limits and possibilities as participants construct "the other" situated in their own interpretative perspectives, particularly as it relates to constructions of homeless childhoods. As the groups began reflecting on possible images and the realities lived by the children fol- lowed by the groups' visualization of the children's lives, we were able to cap- ture some of the phrases from the groups: "Seeing people shot probably or God knows like . . . and then you are angry that your family has been destroyed," "Fear like . . . or like bombs or you know like I just have this feeling this kids are . . . so they have fear. But also they have to be strong. They can't be children anymore they got to take care of themselves." Their dialogues continued focus- ing on an interpretation of the children's fear and envisioning their reality as being desensitized. They looked for ways to physically portray images that they described "like a stone face." Among the interesting aspects of this kind of devising interaction is the "in between" space created to personally interpret the children's lives while collectively negotiating how to embody the children in a dramatic moment through a frozen image. By looking at this devising moment we began to understand how the students' discourses merged with the performance of the children within drama and around the drama.

Improvised Conversations between Children and Strangers in the Street

The students performed another interpretation of the homeless children's experiences as Gus invited them to take on the roles of a person approached by a child for work, food, money or help of any kind. When Gus asked those in role of the children to come into the center of the room to discuss what some of the strangers said, their comments ranged from "They ignored me," "He yelled at me to get away." to "He gave me money." In this performative moment, the participants worked in a space to reflect not on what their characters' (children) said in the improvisation, but as children reflecting on the other students'tchar- acters (the strangers) statements. Gus, as the facilitator, worked to create a "dialogized" performative moment similar to the ones advocated by Edmiston and Enciso (2002) who argue for performative practices in reading interpretation as opportunities to dialogize discourses. They suggest that "monologized meanings be given social meanings as they [participants] moved into social action . . . we need to place one discourse in dialogue with other discourses" (187). In this moment, multiple voices and perspectives are constructed as the participants get a sense of the children's lives as perceived by possible "others" such as people walking by in the streets.

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CRITICAL LITERACIES AND GLOICAL CITIZENRY 121

Building a "Dream" Room in Role as a Child

Within the drama, they also moved from emotional engagement to critical reflections. This shift from emotional to critical was particularly present in two moments. First, a deep emotional engagement was perceived in a sequence when Gus invited the students to, in role as the children in the story, design their ideal bedrooms. Drawing an imagery circle in the middle of the class, he invited the students' to place their designs on the floor that represented a space "anywhere in the house". Then, while reading the lines in the picture book, "some stood by and did nothing as others set fire to the building that had been a home for SClavi's new family" (Youme 23), Gus removed the student's drawing one by one until the circle was empty. This was a powerful moment where Gus's skills as a storyteller and performer moved the text, drama, and interpretations to a very deep emotional level. Very similar to the construction of empa- thy in a play, the students worked through their designs and embodied the pos- sibility of getting a house but also the feelings of losing that house. This is a perspective the students brought up in their final reflections outside the drama to be discussed later.

Proximity of the Problem

A more critical moment was created during the "Proximity of the Problem" strategy. Here the students were invited, out of role, to identify explicit and implicit characters they felt directly affected the tensions within the story. Gus placed a chair at the front of the room stating that it represented "The Problem" in the story. The students were then invited to take on the role of either an implicit or explicit character in the story, physically position themselves in relationship to the problem (for example either close to, in the middle, or far away from the problem) and verbally state who they were, how they related to the problem, and why they positioned themselves in that specific location (See Fig- ure 2). The roles performed involved both the embodiment of individual and institutional discourses creating another dialogic space similar to those previ- ously discussed and grounded in the work of Edmiston and Enciso (2002).

These dialogized discourses were brought into action as part of the students embodied roles such as a The Politician speaking from the top of a table: "I am a politician and I'm above the problem because everyone's down below me and I'm sort of turning my back. I can see the problem but, I'm not really going to do anything about it." Close to The Politician and looking out a window, also turning her back to the problem, was The Corporate: "I am the corporation and I don't see any problem going on." The Red Cross was also represented not as "savior" but, instead, situated in a more critical discourse of what the limits of the Red Cross's support is: "I'm with the Red Cross and [sic] can see that there is a problem but, I am just going to ah! give money to solve the problem." Com- munity Members were performed by various students adding multiple perspectives such as those who embodied a discourse that perpetuated the children as a problem: "I'm Juanita. I live in the neighborhood I need to do my shopping but I'm always fearful of being robbed; I just need to live life and this is just too much for me." North American people were situated far and unaware of the

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FIGURE 2

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problem: "What problem, I'm in North America." Other roles included parents, children, teachers, and the middle class as both personal and institutional responses to critically talk back to the social issues in the text. As it will become clear in their reflections afterwards, it was the multiplicity of social positionings, the emerging identities and critical and non-critical perspectives within the drama that made this a significant context to think of both the limits and possibilities of global and local responsibility. These conflicting reflections were also present as participant observer, Sarah, reflected on the class and wrote in her field notes about the drama and what she saw in these moments:

Today's class was very powerful as students worked through a critical process drama about a Haitian boy who was traumatized by war . . . the sadness in the room was tangible as people constructed responses in role to the suggestions from Gus. At the end of the class it was really clear that nobody wanted to leave and that what had happened was very profound for some. The classroom as a place to question teaching and pedagogy became a place to question life and how one takes responsibility for

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poverty and war on the smallest, local scale. In my experience, to bring a class to this kind of learning space is no easy task. There was discussion about feeling guilty, "swimming in an ocean of hypocrisy7' as one student put it, but surprisingly no sense of feeling disempowered. I couldn't help but feel conflicted at how difficult it was to get past othering the problem or seeing oneself as able to solve the problem if we so choose. This sense of superiority was approached very gently by one student, but not taken up in a way that moved the discussion in another direction. Overall, however, it was a significant shift toward thinking about how we embody moments of discomfort and conflict as a site of possible new understanding at both a micro and macro level of identity and collective energy in the drama classroom. (Sarah, Reflective Journal)

STUDENTS' REFLECTIONS "OUTSIDE" THE PERFORMATIVE SPACE

When selecting strategies for use with Se'lavi, it was necessary for Gus to find ways for the students to work in two planes simultaneously. First, they needed to consider their own sense of place in order to position their engagements through an intensely personal critical perspective of what it meant to experience loss. This was an attempt to help avoid a non-critical othering and fostering a pluralistic sensibility, but not always achieved within the drama. Second, the experience needed to connect to the larger global community so the students could engage with issues of equity and justice grounded in complex notions of local self.

Carmen and Sarah analyzed the students' written reflections and interviews to look for emergent themes that related to their perceptions of local/global issues in the performative explorations of the literary text. Overall, we located themes not looking for consensus or similarities but, on the contrary, searching for multiplicity, tensions and diversity in the reflective moments.

Pam's response to the design of a dream room exploration signals that she was working at several planes of meaning making and experiencing at once: "When [Gus] took the house away, I realized that I had made an emotional connection to the story and the issues being discussed. Concurrently, it was an empowering experience because it instilled in me the thoughts of never giving up & to have hope. I will rebuild that house with my friends!" Pam's personal connection to the events in the story stimulated a desire to imagine her own life to "never give up and to have hope." It was also a discourse situated in her reality perhaps in a more "privileged" position, where to never give up might not be as complicated as it was for the characters7 lives. Likewise, her engagement through the drama connected her to the conditions experienced by the characters in the story, expanding her construction of meaning into the realm of the "other." When Gus read the final line in the story, "Your voice has joined the river," she shared, "I found myself thinking: what difference can we make, where is the river going? I was critically thinking about the issues and felt compelled to take action." Pam experienced a complex multilayered interaction with events and issues within the story through the drama. She was able to

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make very definite personal connections, "I will never give up" and larger locally/globally situated ones "I felt compelled to take action." Her positioning within the notion of glolcal citizen was informed by the limits and possibilities of understanding of her own identity, needs and concerns.

Virginia, in her reflection of the drama, recognized the mulitlayered or hybrid meaning of the fictional worlds in her understanding of the problem: "I think the real world has a lot to do with how we construct drama because you're acting out things that happen in reality, but these may not be things that are actually happening to you." And, yet, Virginia was able to construct a response to Se'lavi in context of her work as a teacher but also the "world as a whole":

It was kind of connecting it to me as a teacher working in a classroom where you work with kids that come from all different backgrounds. Some of them have supportive parents, some of them don't, some of them come from foster homes and I was thinking of different issues within society and I guess the world as a whole.

This connection of global to local also found resonance in how Virginia thought she would respond outside of the drama world:

It was interesting to actually read that book and think, oh, okay, if I were there, you know, I would want to step in with the parent and do what I can do. Just like I would here, working in Canada.

Similarly, Renaldo saw the exploration of the critical children's literature through drama as functioning on multiple levels. He shared:

Not only is drama a mirror for reality, where the audience can peer into various scenarios and apply it to their own reality, drama is a medium that allows students to take on a role of a character and begin to empathize, feel, and peel away the layers of humanity.

In this case, Renaldo is seeing the event as taking place within his own life or the "mirror for reality" and as functioning as a conduit through which to deconstruct a larger global sensibility or an opportunity to "feel and peel away the layers of humanity." Again, the participant articulated a multilayered experience that informed both his personal locally situated identity and provided insight into possible larger connections.

In an almost text book description of what Bolton (1984) terms "analogous reflection", one participant, Rosie, explained, "While doing the process drama, I found myself evaluating and reflecting on my own beliefs and ideas about the children and their situations in the story 'Salavi' [sic]." Through "analogous reflection," a participant in a drama actively reflects upon how they are creating identity by accessing their own lived experiences as a way to interpret, react, and create meaning within the fictional moment. In the above participant quote, Rosie reflected upon the events in the story by thinking about events in her own life. This multilayered thinking of self in relationship to the other, in this case the children in the story, emulates situating the local self in relationship to a sense of global citizenry.

For Nancy, in the space created within the drama, it is possible to see things differently from other participants but still work collectively to construct mean-

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ing around the issues: "I think it is really profound how people thought about the issue and the people surrounding the issue." Specifically reflecting on the "Proximity of the Problem." Nancy believes it is in negotiation of self and other values that drama becomes a site for struggle:

[Tlhinking actually for myself it is a mixture, what was the reality getting mix[ed] with my own values and how there was a bit of a struggle for me because I had to be, I had to think of what was happening and the people around and try to think of a role and at the same time my own personal values getting involved in the thing in deciding where to place myself in this whole picture.

Struggle in this sense could be perceived as a productive action where, in constructing and performing new realities one reinvents self and other in tensions. This is a key element in developing critical performative pedagogies where pro- ductivity and tension become more important than fixed products (usually related to reenactments or final theatrical productions) and simplistic solutions. As one student noted, it was not about finding a linear response, but allowing an indeterminate flow of ideas and responses, an opening up of "the space instead of keeping on a lat level [to] try and see if we could develop this problem, almost like a sphere, like we're a circle."

CONCLUSIONS

As we envision uses for this type of work and possible extensions for further inquiry, the words of educational feminist theorist and public intellectual bell hooks (2003) come to mind. She writes in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, "To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination" (36). An approach to drama practices as critical performative pedagogies, regardless of the overall effect upon the individual, do provide spaces where intense personal reflection is mediated through complex social interactions within the creation of fictional worlds. When positioned critically, these interactions necessitate the juxtaposition of participant ideologies. Once accessed for the facilitation of character's needs, these ideologies are made apparent and scrutinized. It is through this scrutiny that positions of power and domination may be explored.

It is not our intention to position drama practices as a panacea able to solve the world's problems, foster intense personal introspection, andlor long term change. Nor do we suppose that our own ideological identities are absent in the construction, planning and facilitation of the drama (Gus) or on the interpretation and analysis for Carmen and Sarah. Rather, by reflecting on this experience through the lens of global citizenry, certain phenomena were noticed, sig- nalling spaces where the students began to engage with multileveled thinking about their performance in their everyday actions and identities, the other and the relationship of their local identity in conjunction with a larger global one and their identity as educators. Dave's response touches upon this complexity:

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At first I have to admit that I felt uncomfortable with the issues presented in the Ce'st la vie [sic] book. I don't know whether it was because of my guyness or just that this was a really uncomfortable issue for me to deal with. I found resolution at the end through the class discussion. This topic really made me think about addressing critical issues and the need to do so. I am thinhng about implementing some type of drama into a unit that I am going to be doing with my grade 10 planning class this coming year. The unit is to raise awareness of a village in Uganda and the end result will be to raise funds for 50 village children for one year of education.

Dave's expression of wanting to move outside of his "guyness" speaks to Foucault's (1978) notion that there is no origin of gender or authentic sexual identity, but these categories of sex, gender, and desire are the effects of particular workings of cultural institutions like schools. Dave seems to have allowed himself the chance to resist a dominant construct of masculinity and enacts a way of connecting the fictional worlds to an identity that resists an essentialized construct of gender. The fictional, constructed worlds of drama offer a parallel for those contradictory expressions of gender to take shape in the possibilities of new language and cultural texts performed in the drama classroom. How- ever, these tensions and contradictions are quite complex as Dave indicated that the experience did have value for him despite its pitfalls. Immediately interesting is that he felt drama might be a way to inspire young people to take an active part in raising funds. Issues of imperialism and colonization arise as we discuss "helping" the other. Noddings raises red flags to unconscious pitying or gratuitous helping, citing Berlin (1996): "I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know themselves" (9). When placed in tandem with critical children's literature it remains possible, however, to discuss drama as performative spaces in ways for people to imagine being a glolcal citizen. If we focus our efforts not on fostering superficial actions per se, but rather upon initiating dialogue and inventions of new performances around what it means to be a global and local citizen, then perhaps, as Nancy shared, we will be able to "really engage my whole being, not just the cognitive and the physical self, but also the spiritual and emotional part of me that allows me to appreciate the material in a deeper realm," moving ourselves and our world closer to becoming an equitable and socially just planet.

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Youth Theatre Journal The Scholarly Journal of the A~nerican Alliance for Theatre & Education

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EDITOR Manon van de Water, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Youth Theatre Journal Volume 21,2007 ISSN 0892-9092

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Documents

Critical Literacies and Glo/Cal Citizenry: Constructing Reflective Spaces Through Critical Performative Pedagogies