Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 6.02 Arts
Presentation #1 Title
“The ground here sticks to your feet”: Community-based theater, narrative paradigms, and the reclamation of Appalachian identity
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This paper will consist of two sections. The first section will establish a theoretical framework, combining a slightly adapted version of Walter Fisher’s ‘narrative paradigm,’ Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘circulating reference,’ and the inclusive, democratic world-transformation taught by Brazilian pedagogue and activist Paolo Freire. I will argue that an individual’s understanding of her world can be interpreted as an accumulation of narratives, which she uses to process uncertainty, clarify contentious issues, and justify her opinions and beliefs. New information will either resonate or clash with a person’s accumulated narratives, causing that person either to reject the new information or to accommodate it by adapting the narratives she uses to explain the world. These narratives shape and partially constitute social dynamics and the physical landscape. The second section will address a case study, my ethnographic observation of the development of a story-play in the rural Cowan Creek community in Letcher County, Kentucky, between August and December 2014. The story-play is an example of community-based performance (CBP), a school of participatory theater with a lengthy history in Appalachia. I will contend that CBP is a creative way to examine and reflect upon the narratives we use to explain the world, and to respectfully consider the narratives of others. At its best, CBP sparks inclusive dialogue and allows participants and spectators to collectively reshape social narratives and consider contentious issues. In the case of the Cowan Creek story-play, these issues include coal, child abuse, drugs, and ultimately, what it means to be Appalachian.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Benjamin Barron is an M.Phil. candidate in Geography and the Environment at Oxford University (BA in Comparative Literature from Princeton University). His interests include sociocultural perceptions of environmental issues, more-than-human geography, science and technology studies, and participatory community-based art.
“The ground here sticks to your feet”: Community-based theater, narrative paradigms, and the reclamation of Appalachian identity
This paper will consist of two sections. The first section will establish a theoretical framework, combining a slightly adapted version of Walter Fisher’s ‘narrative paradigm,’ Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘circulating reference,’ and the inclusive, democratic world-transformation taught by Brazilian pedagogue and activist Paolo Freire. I will argue that an individual’s understanding of her world can be interpreted as an accumulation of narratives, which she uses to process uncertainty, clarify contentious issues, and justify her opinions and beliefs. New information will either resonate or clash with a person’s accumulated narratives, causing that person either to reject the new information or to accommodate it by adapting the narratives she uses to explain the world. These narratives shape and partially constitute social dynamics and the physical landscape. The second section will address a case study, my ethnographic observation of the development of a story-play in the rural Cowan Creek community in Letcher County, Kentucky, between August and December 2014. The story-play is an example of community-based performance (CBP), a school of participatory theater with a lengthy history in Appalachia. I will contend that CBP is a creative way to examine and reflect upon the narratives we use to explain the world, and to respectfully consider the narratives of others. At its best, CBP sparks inclusive dialogue and allows participants and spectators to collectively reshape social narratives and consider contentious issues. In the case of the Cowan Creek story-play, these issues include coal, child abuse, drugs, and ultimately, what it means to be Appalachian.
