Framework Design: A Curatorial Approach to Teaching Participatory Performance

Abstract

Participatory performance makers frequently seek to offer creative agency to audiences, inviting them to become active co-creators of the performance. Similarly, as educators develop new tools for teaching methods of participatory performance, the co-creative agency of learners is an important consideration. Through discussions of a creative learning project which focused on potential overlaps of theatre, games, and live action role-play, this essay proposes that teachers of participatory performance can offer frameworks for learners to co-create their experience. This can be understood as a curatorial approach to learning in which the pedagogue operates as a context provider for the creation of new knowledge, as opposed to the conventional curator who presents knowledge to nominally inferior spectators.