Teaching Performance Art Reflections from Arts Education Conference (AEC) 2018
As an educator who teaches both drama and art, I have always been
interested to see how drama techniques can be used to inform art teaching
and learning. It was through the sessions at NAEA that I was inspired to begin
this project and research into how drama techniques, such as movement and
improv, could be used in the art classroom. To me, there was no better way to
start than the visual art form that is closest to drama: performance art. My CI Project journey culminated in a sharing at AEC 2018. Preparation for
the sharing allowed me, in my role as a teacher-researcher, to look even
more carefully at the data I had gathered, as well as to reflect on how I could
improve on using drama techniques to teach visual art.
One of the questions I frequently asked myself from the moment I embarked
on this project was: How might drama techniques help students with idea-
generation in art-making, and the Study of Visual Arts (SOVA)? This larger
question led me to start exploring how students can conceptualise and
execute a performance art piece using movement and improv.
One of the feedback received was how I could ensure an authentic audience
for my students when doing their performance art piece. As audience
engagement is an important aspect of performance art, this is definitely
something I can consider, while at the same time maintaining students’ safety
and the chance to engage their peers.
As I was implementing this project and gathering data, I gained new insight.
My role as a teacher-researcher became more pronounced. It was important
for me to be open to new insights, and I had to find a balance between
gathering hard, observable data, and being open to the unknown.
During the course of data collection, I observed that my students became
more confident. They were able to articulate their thoughts using appropriate
art vocabulary, and applied their understanding of movement to their
own performance. Perhaps what struck my students most was the reaction
they received from other students who were unintended audience to their
performances.
Students’ written reviews
of their peers’ works.
Afterthoughts
So, why is it important for the arts to be a catalyst for change? Moreover,
how can art educators be the change agents that are so needed in arts
education today? Why is this role important?
Left: Students re-enacting Tang Da Wu’s “They
Poach the Rhino and Chop Off His Horn to Make
this Drink”.
Right: Performance by Ning Xuan, CG01/18, Unti-
tled (Hugging).
48
In my CI Project journey, I have learnt that the arts allow for dialogue,
exploration, questioning, and curiosity. As change agents, we are responsible
for guiding our students to view the world with empathy, to find meaning
in the things they observe, and to make their own meaning through their
artmaking. As performance art directly engages the mind and body through
doing, it is a good entry point to start the winds of positive change we hope
to see in the world.
Through this project, I have seen my students become something different than
who they usually are, much like the definition for change at the beginning of
this reflection. My hope is for my students to be able to develop a disposition
of empathy and understanding, use these as lenses to see art and the world,
create meaningful dialogue, and incite the change that we need to see.
49