Becoming a
Theatrical Doctor 2010 – 2016
After working on socially engaged theatre projects in the UK and Southeast Asia for almost 15 years, I wanted to think more concertedly, and objectively, about this way of using theatre in the world.
I was introduced to the Theatre Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore and in 2010 I went there, on a scholarship, to write a PhD. During the first two years of my doctoral studies I taught theatre to undergraduates and took classes on theatre, anthropology and the social sciences.
I learnt about detailed methods for conducting academic research, how to write about the experiences I had had, and through consultation, how to translate the experiences of other theatre people in the region, too.
Special recognition must therefore go to The Makhampom Foundation, Thailand, Gitameit (Music and Friends), Yangon, Thukhuma Khayeethe (Arts Traveller) Theatre, also in Yangon, and SETA – Shan Educational Theatre Association, whose work was at the very heart of my research.
One of the unique things that arose out of my PhD was an interest and method in paying attention to different types of silence, or what I came to call “discerning silences”.
I used this method to help me tell a bigger story about socially engaged theatre-making in Burma/Myanmar and Thailand. To do this I had to think carefully about history and the changing social and political situations affecting the lives and work of the people I researched with.
My eventual thesis title was: Making Theatre, Discerning Silences: Engagements with Social Change in Burma/Myanmar and Thailand. I’m currently turning this thesis into a book, as featured on the Home page of the website.
University life can indeed feel very removed from the lives and situations that my earlier work tried to address. However, if we use ‘academic storytelling’ effectively, we can help bridge that gap, between ‘the university’ and the ‘outside world’.
Part of cultural diplomacy, and academic diplomacy for that matter, should be that we try to find ways to reach out, across one group of people’s experiences, to another, and start a dialogue. For this reason, I’m exploring ways to write my book so that it can function within the university setting, and also be accessible and meaningful to other theatre interested people.
I would dearly love to see more time given for all theatre people to come together, and work together, on providing theatre and storytelling space across society, whoever we are, or where ever we come from.
Theatre and storytelling can be an excellent way to bring a variety of people into contact with one another, so that we can have conversations about our different experiences, and also reflect on some of the common ground we share: what we suffer and abhor, what we love, and that which gives us the most joy.