Theatre and Learning

For millenia, human beings have used arts, theatre dance and other aesthetics as a vehicle for conveying meaning to each other. Theatre is education, from the Vox perspective has a brechtian overtone. Becht believed that if we invite people into a theatre to experience "a show" it should have meaning and it should enrich understanding among the audience.

This is not to say that theatre should become a vehicle for opinion or ideology. The challenge is far more subtle and poignant. Vox believes indeed that theatre in education should ask more questions than it answers. If it should answer any at all. There can be no justification for didacticism. To use the magic, unforgetable eventfulness, mystery and wonder of theatre to merely convey information is waste. To turn the stage into an animated "book" fails to use the cognition enahncement possible.

Counter point characters

A means of prompting thought and providing opportunities to "till out the story" themselves is the use of the counterpoint character. A character perhaps so obviouysly over the top as to allow audience mebers to say "that's not me" which is thoroughoy different to being presented with a "way to be", of lectured from the stage..

Wan Smal Bag - Inspired Vox Bandicoot

Or "one small bag" is a Polynesian theatre company involved in community and cultural theatre. At around the same time as Vox Bandicoot was setting up, 1988, the Wan Smal Bag story of bringing art, music, dance and drama to communities, to foster an atmosphere and sense of empowerment of self determination. The local biodivesity protection and conservation accomplishments, created and owned by local people, on the baisis of an arts based learning and decision making journey is, patently, more efficacious and way more enjoyable than "being told what to do".

In the great TIE tradition Vox Bandicoot theatre works are curriculum backed, participatory and non-didactic. Especially non-didactic!! To create an information heavy, animated wall of text is a waste of the magic of the stage. The eventfulness of the stage can unlock so much more. Our work aims to ask questions rather "spoonfeeding" answers. It is not about positing a right way or a wrong way but about inviting students to make up their own minds. n In the words of great educator and aesthete, Anotole France ...

"... do not satisfy your vanity by trying to teach everything you know. Put there just a spark! If there is good flammable stuff - it will catch!"