Provocative Pedagogies: Performative Teaching & Learning in the Arts

Saturday 14th October, 2017

‘All these little parts of yourself’: Kristine Landon Smith’s intra-cultural practice

Dr Lisa Peck introduces Kristine Lando-Smith intracultural's practice as part of performative pedagogies

Elyse Pineau (2002) positions Critical Performative Pedagogy (CPP) in the field of Performance Studies and reinforces the binary between actor training and performance when she states that acting is concerned with mimesis as opposed to kinesis. This reduces notions of acting to a style and misses the opportunity to mine acting pedagogy for its productive and transformative potential. Mia Perry and Carmen Medina (2011) point to the ways that acting is a holistic learning experience which is simultaneously performative and embodied. The actor develops awareness of the social body (outer action) whilst simultaneously attending to the life body (inner action). From this position, I propose a Critical Acting Pedagogy (CAP) where acting knowledge is potentially emancipatory. In this way, the actor can be recognised as a cultural agent. Feminist interventions into acting pedagogies reveal CAP in practice. Kristine Landon-Smith’s intra-cultural practice enables the actor to recognise the possibilities of working through their multiple self to enable what Rosi Braidotti refers to as ‘the positivity of difference’ (1994). Landon- Smith explains the foundational features of her pedagogy with filmed footage of workshop practice and reflects on the triangulated research methodology where researcher, practitioner and participants consider to the pedagogical experience. Her approach offers educators at all levels ways to maximize the liberatory possibilities of the intra-cultural classroom, enabling an individual to draw upon ‘All these little parts of yourself” (Harris, 2013).