Document Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Public Knowledge Project
School
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)
RAS ID
27214
Abstract
The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University contains vocational education training programmes including technical design courses with broad reach covering arts administration, stage management, stage lighting, sound design, set and costume design. In an unsettling problematic, teachers and students in the broadly themed Production and Design courses often find themselves isolated from the other creative disciplines or battle with the perception that their work is in fact not creative but entirely the technical implementation of ‘someone’s else’s vision’. This approach seems to dismiss the creative thinking required in the development and orchestration of the design and denies the complexity inherent in anything ‘technical’. This paper will address this disparity by drawing from the perceptions of a select number of current staff from Production and Design subjects. We understand that this is a very specific take on the subject from a small number of interested folk, in fact it is deliberately idiosyncratic and narrow in research scope, and in no way indicates the viewpoints of the Australian production and design community at large. Rather, we put forward a particular point of view, given at a particular time, in order to argue that there is merit in addressing what we see as a ‘hierarchy of value’ and seek further conversation about how we may find a way that the technical/mechanical and the creative are not considered as mutually exclusive. By doing so this would not only be a pedagogical shift, but a movement in cultural paradigm.
Creative Commons License
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Comments
Newman, R., & Phillips, M. (2017). “You are no longer creative when you give up”: Technical theatre’s creative sleight of hand. Behind the Scenes: Journal of Theatre Production Practice, 1(1).