Representation and Reception

Representation and Reception: Brechtian Pedagogics of Theatre and Critical Thinking deploys German playwright Bertolt Brechts theory of drama and performance, what he calls "the pedagogics of theatre", to create modes of critical thinking in the classroom. Extrapolating on Brechts estranged forms of representationnarrative, story, montage, Verfremdngseffeckt or alienation, tableaux, ostension (showing), gestus, masks and musicBurney constructs an original "3-R Pedagogy" or "spiral of semiosis""Rethinking/Replaying/Re-cognition"that is designed to create critical thinking and "complex seeing". Her dramatic production of Brechts Lehrstck, or learning-play, The Exception and the Rule, for a non-literate, working-class audience in Hyderabad, India, critically analyses how audiences make meaning through image, word and ideology, gesture, memory, collective experience and personal (hi)stories.