Research statement: Land and Home is an ethnodrama created by Mary-Rose McLaren with Victoria University students and Gillian Schroeter with Australian Catholic University students. Ethnodrama is a form of applied theatre devised and performed by the people whose stories it tells. The performance invites the audience to consider why they inhabit the space they do. For some of our actors this involved a journey into the past; for others it involved an uncovering of the present. But the question remains – what is it that makes you who you are? At what cost have you become yourself? Who has paid that price? These are questions for us as individuals and as a community. The actors in this piece were not ‘actors’ - they are future teachers becoming actors in the process of discovering and communicating their place in the world. Given the prompt, ‘Why here? Why now? Why me?’ they were challenged to explore ways of knowing that are not traditionally acknowledged in our classrooms. Our actors are inheritors of an unresolved and violent past; and agents of change in an unknown future. This play was research on several levels: it gathered and holds data about the reasons people seek education and their perceptions of knowledge as power; it explored individual and social understandings of self in relation to others; it experimented with the ways in which drama can be used as a vehicle for learning and expressing learning. The play generates new knowledge through exploring the social and personal hurdles that students overcome in order to become teachers. It provides evidence of the impact of arts teaching when used with students with previously poor educational outcomes. On a wider scale, it presents insight into what being Australian means, and the significance of reconciling the past in order to create a more socially cohesive future.
Creative work, associated with Elements 307741.  Original eprints ID 34233 deleted. Lyn 12/3/18