Using a performative approach to textual analysis

This paper will discuss a performative approach to teaching textual analysis on a Musical Theatre course. Students work in investigative teams analysing texts, exploring the context, and finally performing their work. The essence of this approach is the dialogical intra and inter-action between the teams and the tutor. This continuing dialogue stimulates exploration, learning and reflection. The nature of the interaction with the tutor evolves throughout the process as the tutor empowers the groups to work confidently and autonomously. This critical approach begins by focussing on the performative power of the text while examining the rhetorical context and textual features, driving the action towards a performable goal. These performatives are then contextualised within the greater context of the world today. In this approach, students first investigate their “accepted” context, before being tasked with creating their “new” context, aligning the text with the present, associating it with the realm in which they live. Through the dialogical process of discovery, they explore alternatives to casting, gender, society, and place. The approach then returns to the performative function of the text, focussing on the performability of their analysis. Students’ evidence their work by the staging and presentation of it as a performance