Download From drama text to stage text – transitions of text understanding in

From drama text to stage text – transitions of text understanding in theatrical
communication
PhD candidate: Martin Göthberg
Supervisors: professor Åsa Mäkitalo and PhD Cecilia Björck
Theatre is often described as an ensemble art form. A theatre performance requires the mastering
of advanced forms of mutual text understanding, on the part of actors. In rehearsals, the actors
strive to develop such understandings of each situation that is going to be performed on stage
with an audience present, an event called stage text. In theatre education, students engage in
similar learning processes characterized of co-creativity and dramatic interaction inside and
outside imagined worlds – and often in spaces somewhere between. In-role and out-of-role
activities become intertwined. This setting is of interest in my study. Data was generated in a
year-long ethnographic study of a theatre production in an upper secondary school. The aim of
my study is to throw light on how transitions of text understanding evolve related to interaction
in theatrical communication. Other kinds of studies, like meta studies on the relation between
language skills and drama/theatre education have shown transfer effects of enhanced text
understanding of other texts then the enacted ones. Still, our knowledge about how text
understanding develops in theatrical communication is limited. Studies of theatre productions
where students encounter a drama text for the first time and collectively work all the way to a
stage text are rare. I apply a sociocultural lens in the analysis of interaction in a process where
students’ experiences from inside collectively created imagined worlds are used to form explicit
agreements on how to perform in the upcoming stage text. To sum up; my PhD project is a
study of transitions of text understanding in theatrical communication when an ensemble of
students go from drama text to stage text.