Week 2 Discussion: Immersive Tourism and Creative Drama

In reading Magelssen's acount of "Caminata Noctura," the underground railroad simulation, and other immersive tourism projects, my mind was immediately drawn to the work being done with elementary and middle school students in the creative drama classroom. To quickly summarize, creative drama is a non-performative, process-based way of teaching and learning drama, and is basically a smaller-scale, educationally-focused version of the tourist attractions Magelssen describes.

For example, I observed a 4th grade class last year that was playing out a drama of immigration to the United States in the 19th century, and the students all got down on their bellies and sneaked under fences and into corners, and huddled up in hiding spaces on an imaginary boat, holding hands and shivering for fear of the guard (played by their drama teacher), who was on the lookout for fugitives. While all this plays out in a standard classroom, with mostly imaginary props etc., the reality of it for students can be as intense as the reality Magelssen describes in his first experience with the underground railroad simulation.

In a speech he gave at the 2009 Conference of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner pointed to research that showed that middle school students who took drama classes improved on tests of empathy between 6th and 8th grade, while students' scores during these years, on average, decreased. I think this research can, in a sense, be considered in terms of the immersion tourism industry, and that we can assume that simulations of poverty and hardship also do good for a person's sense of empathy.

But I also think that many of us (especially those of us that were weirded out by the idea of the Caminata Nocturna) would instinctively feel that there's a difference between simulating hardship with a group of fourth graders as an educational exercise and doing the same thing with a group of paying adult vacationers as a tourist attraction.

So my questions, then, are:

1. How do the demographics (race, age, class, nationality, etc.) of the participatory audience of an immersive performance piece like the Caminata Nocturna affect the meaning and effect of the piece?

2. Do the intention and purpose of this kind of work change its meaning and effect?

3. Do we feel like the potential for projects like the Caminata Nocturna to raise empathy for oppressed people is enough to override the uneasiness some of us feel (see Tracey and Amanda's posts, especially) about the authenticity (or lack of authenticity) of the experience of the participatory audience?

Actual Questions for this week

1. As we are a theatre class and are attempting to define this hot political and trans-national issue in terms of theatre, I found it fascinating that there is an acutal theme park in Mexico dedicated to reenacting and simulating the border crossing. Does that count as "participant" or "invisible" theatre? Taking into account the concept of the border as theatre and the differences and similarities between theatre, spectacle, and politics, does a theme park count as a theatrical experience?

2. In what way is the concept of "citizen" theatrical? Chavez cites Bosniak in explaining four different concepts of citizen: citizen as legal status, as rights, as political activity, and collective identity. How do these concepts require us to play a role or be a member of a specific cast, so to speak? How does this contribute to ideas of "other" and "us vs. them" mentality?

Media Influence & Digital Zapatista Reach

A couple of questions I had while reading this week's pieces...

1. Media Influence: Through reading Leo Chavez's excerpts on the Minuteman Project and the role media spectacle plays in society, I began to wonder whether people's stances on immigration largely come organically (through self reflection and examination of the issues at hand) or from the media's poking and prodding, seeming to insist every person have a strong view, one way or the other. I think perhaps groups and people like the Minuteman Project activists and supporters probably develop their beliefs, feed them to the media (the stage for performance), then sit back and watch as the rest of society joins the spectacle as a player on either side, provoked by activists' strong urgings (however diluted by the mode of communication). The video "Frijolero" we watched prior to last week's class is one such example of media spectacle creating heightened drama around the border.

2. Digital Zapatista Reach: I wondered, toward the end of reading Jill Lane's "Digital Zapatistas," about the performative reach of such electronic disturbances software like FloodNet creates. I understand that in the NYU example, the disturbance would have caused NYU's entire website to go down. But what about when FloodNet requested nonexistent pages from the Mexican government's website and got back "404 error-reply" time and time again, saying things like "justice not found on this site"? Perhaps I don't fully understand what function this performs in terms of website function, etc., but I wonder who exactly is their audience for this? Just the site's digital memory? If the only audience is a website's memory, is it performance for the sake of the performers? Or is there another audience I don't understand is there?

Another thing I noted that isn't really a question is that in the Caminata Nocturna tourist border-crossing adventure, the "border" performs for tourists in the way Dana suggested last class it performs for immigrants (rather than immigrants necessarily performing, as Nield suggests). The crossers are the audience, and the border and its inhabitants are the players, creating a new experience for each audience.

One more thing...I wonder when the term "illegal" began to carry such a negative connotation. In terms of definition, it is the opposite of being legal. But the same word can describe running through a stop sign AND smuggling drugs into a foreign country. I just wonder when the word sort of tip-toed over to the negative end of the spectrum and became a noun used to describe a group widely despised by those who use the word "illegal" in such a way.

Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

Well, this is breaking news, and nothing is clear yet as to the motive behind it. But I thought it extrmely ironic that as I was sitting down to watch the movie for this week's discussion, my roommate told me to come in and watch the coverage in Tuscon, AZ, regarding the shooting of Congresswoman Gabbrielle Giffords. I did a little research, and I know this doesn't necessarily have to deal with the readings that we're doing this week, but she is a moderate in a district VERY close to the Mexican border and initial thoughts are that the shooter was a right-wing extremist. Just goes to say that these issues that we're talking about safely in our classroom in Evanston are the same issues that people are dying over in Arizona in broad daylight.

Week 2 Discussion Question Instructions

Hello all. Here is our forum for posting weekly discussion questions. If you do not know how to post, you can go to www.blogger.com, and you should be able to access this blog by registering/signing in with your email address and password. Then you can post, and at the bottom-right corner, opposite "post options," is a box that says "Labels." You can write in a label for your post: i would suggest either "Week X" (depending on which week's question this is) or "cultural outing," if this week's post is about your cultural outing.

If you have more questions, read the 'help' section of blogger.com or ask me. Good luck!
Best, Katie