Setting the stage : the pedagogy of theatrical forms and the theatricality of pedagogical forms

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Frimberger, Katja and Kenklies, Karsten; (2026) Setting the stage : the pedagogy of theatrical forms and the theatricality of pedagogical forms. In: The Theatricality of Pedagogy. Paedagogica . Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. (In Press)

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Abstract

Beware the pedagogue ‘The dogmatic teacher, one could say, forces his concepts upon us.; the Socratic teacher teases them out; the orator and poet give us the opportunity to create them, in apparent freedom, out of ourselves [our translation]’. (Schiller 2000/1795: 175) Theatre/the arts and pedagogy are no easy bedfellows. Ever since Friedrich Schiller’s (2000/1795) influential Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen /Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, ‘education’ has been under suspicion by the artist. The figure of the pedagogue, like Schiller’s dogmatic teacher (or Bertolt Brecht’s out-of-touch university professor, as we will see in chapter 2), enters the scene as a highly self—interested, boring, perhaps even violently didactic purveyor of (likely) irrelevant content that ‘is forced’ upon a not only deeply patronised, but rather tortured and non-agentic student. For this imagined dogmatist, art is merely a means to an end to a preconceived social outcome. The vitality of the open-ended creative process of making a piece of art – or attending to its presentation – is accordingly flattened. Perversely committed to the brutal necessity for an abstract outcome, which is – by its nature - disconnected from the students’ own experience, the educator is also under Ideologieverdacht (suspected of ideological bias). Teaching pre-conceived notions and pre-set social-moral behaviour – the pedagogue insensitively forces art to fit social and rational categories that can be evaluated against an ‘impact’ that supplies to the ideology of the state, neoliberal politics and capital. The artist is weary of the educationalist’s petty intrusions and ideological earnestness. The autonomous sphere of art, the artist (inspired by Schiller) exclaims, thrives on personal liberty, freedom from institutional and ideological guardianship. S/he defends the arts, including the theatrical arts, against the narrow-mindedness of the pedagogue who can only think of instruction, whilst disregarding the open-ended exploration, free play and movement of mind and heart that mark a truly human(e) art and theatre. On the other side of this (admittedly rather curated) dichotomy of freedom-loving art and ideology-driven pedagogy stands the pedagogue – shaking their head at the artistic enchanter. Equally suspicious of the artist’s grand talk of freedom and autonomy, the pedagogue labels it a smokescreen that obscures the artist’s will to wield power over the human psyche. The artist is blamed for using their art not to liberate, but to secretly enchant and enslave the human mind - by arousing unreflective emotions for control by another. The playful is unveiled as a hidden code for a deceptive mind game that uses the non-rational gestalt of the arts, especially in the false imitations of the theatre, to lead astray the human soul and the search for rational truth - in the name of pleasure and entertainment. The artist’s refusal of the pedagogical, and their embrace of the playful and the pleasurable is, to the pedagogue, a clear rejection of a key moral value – authenticity - which must guide the good, adult life. The theatre artist’s affinity for the inauthentic appearance reveals a dark disinterest in the human, social and, with that, moral sphere. Where the pedagogue seeks to support the student to live a moral and authentic life of truthfulness towards themselves and others, the theatrical introduces (moral) confusion via the stubbornly independent sphere of art. Luring their audiences into believing in mere appearances over genuine content, to embrace the lie over the truth, and worse, of emulating and living by false images about human affairs, the theatre artist’s deceiving role play is masqueraded as a good that however disguises a deeply anti-educational stance. This stark contrast between the artistic and theatrical versus the pedagogical is of course a pedagogical construction of our own making. With the aim to tease out broad sentiments in the discourse that has surrounded the arts, theatre and education since the late 18th century, we curated a rather exaggerated picture of mutual suspicion, blame and misunderstanding between artist and pedagogue. This broad sketch serves to introduce our book’s key terminology, which does in fact not present the theatrical and the pedagogical as opposites on an imagined dualistic spectrum of playful and serious, dynamic and static, authentic and deceptive – perhaps even ‘good and bad’ or ‘true and false’. Instead, the theatrical and the pedagogical are put forward as importantly related and mutually enlightening metaphors. Our contributing authors will show that we indeed need both to remind us that the aesthetic forms that make up our cultural lifeworld, and structure our human relationships, are neither solely ‘natural’, nor merely descriptive, i.e. (value) neutral phenomena.

ORCID iDs

Frimberger, Katja ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2542-4040 and Kenklies, Karsten;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)