Bree J. Hadley

Using information communication technologies to develop dynamic curriculum frameworks for diverse cohorts: a case study from event management

This article investigates the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) in establishing a well-aligned, authentic learning environment for a diverse cohort of non-cognate and cognate students studying event management in a higher education context. Based on a case study which examined the way ICTs assisted in accommodating diverse learning needs, styles and stages in an event management subject offered in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, the article uses an action research approach to generate grounded, empirical data on the effectiveness of the dynamic, individualised curriculum frameworks that the use of ICTs makes possible. The study provides insights into the way non-cognate and cognate students respond to different learning tools. It finds that whilst non-cognate and cognate students do respond to learning tools differently, due to a differing degree of emphasis on technical, task or theoretical competencies, the use of ICTs allows all students to improve their performance by providing multiple points of entry into the content. In this respect, whilst the article focuses on the way ICTs can be used to develop an authentic, well-aligned curriculum model that meets the needs of event management students in a higher education context, with findings relevant for event educators in Business, Hospitality, Tourism and Creative Industries, the strategies outlined may also be useful for educators in other fields who are faced with similar challenges when designing and developing curriculum for diverse cohorts.

Cheats, charity cases and inspirations: disrupting the circulation of disability-based memes online

Abstract With the increasing part online self-performance plays in day-to-day life in the twenty-first century, it is not surprising that critiques of the way the daily social drama of disability plays out in online spaces and places have begun to gain prominence. In this article, I consider memes as a highly specific style or strategy for representing disability via social media sites. I identify three commonly circulating categories of meme – the charity case, inspiration and cheat memes – all of which offer representations that people with disabilities find highly problematic. I then investigate the ways in which disabled people have begun to resist the representation and circulation of these commonly circulating categories of memes, via the production of counter or parodic memes. I focus, in particular, on the subversive potential of these counter memes, within disability communities online and within broader communities online.

Disability Theatre in Australia: A Survey and a Sector Ecology.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I use an ecologies approach to present reflections on the history of disability and deaf theatre in Australia, in light of the distinctive local policy, industry, and production frameworks that have supported or failed to support its development in particular directions. After tracing and categorising developments in the field to date, I signal specific policy changes in the local landscape and specific impacts these policy changes could have on the way we conceive, categorise, and fund different types of disability theatre in Australia in the years to come.

(Dia)logics of Difference Disability, performance and spectatorship in Liz Crow's Resistance on the Plinth

In this article I examine how artists with disabilities use public-space performance to encourage passersby to reflect on the construction of public discourses about disability – and, therefore, the construction of publics that are potentially inclusive of people with disabilities. I concentrate on British storyteller, artist, filmmaker and activist Liz Crows Resistance on the Plinth, one of four pieces Crow has produced over the past three years as part of the Resistance series, an examination of the Nazi regimes Aktion T4 programme, which resulted in the mass murder of a quarter of a million people with disabilities. Created in August 2009 as part of Antony Gormleys One & Other public art project, the piece featured Crow dressed in a Nazi uniform and seated in a wheelchair on the Fourth Plinth in Londons Trafalgar Square. For Crow – who creates work in a British context where public debate about the eugenics of genetic testing, euthanasia and assisted suicide is prevalent in the media – the Nazi atrocity is still rich in confronting imagery, resonant and relevant in a contemporary context. In this article, I consider the challenges that Gormleys extremely public One & Other presented for professional artists like Crow, who are committed to intervening in public perceptions of identity, community and culture. I describe the structural choices Crow made to provoke debate about the cultural logics embodied in the image she presented, and analyse some of the spectatorial responses from online forums such as the One & Other website, Facebook and Twitter immediately following the event.

Change the World?: Recent Writing on Theatre, the Environment, Ecology and Change

Book review on the three books: - Ecology Without Culture: Aesthetics for a Toxic World , by Christine L. Marran. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017 - Theatre, Performance, and Change , by Stephani Etheridge Woodson and Tamara Underiner, eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 - Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies , by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin eds. London: Open Humanities Press, 2015

Social Media as Critical Stage: Controversy, Debate and Democracy

This chapter reflects on the ways in which social media is transforming the practices of review, critique and commentary that are so critical to theatre makers’ relationships with their audiences, and thus to theatre’s position, power and legacy in the public sphere. As scholars such as Lynne Conner (2013), Christopher Balme (2014) and Toni Sant (2014, 2013, 2009, 2008) have suggested, social media technologies are providing new opportunities for the public to discuss, debate and play a role in determining the meanings of theatre works. A detailed analysis of online debates about controversial works such as Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B, Peta Brady’s Ugly Mugs and Rita Marcalo’s Involuntary Dances shows how spectators use these technologies to push for particular readings of marginalised people and communities depicted on stage. Though traditional criticism operates on a logic of authority, this new user-created criticism operates on a logic of authenticity, changing the way in which theatre practices shape, and are shaped by, the supposedly democratic public debate the draw their many spectators and stakeholders into.

Social Media: Platforms, Networks and Influences

This chapter presents a communication model that captures the distinctive characteristics of social media when this technology is used in the theatre industry, and the distinctive ways in which these characteristics drive the relationships between artists, audiences and the public at large that play out as a result. It provides central terms, concepts and theories that can be used to understand the way theatre makers use a range of social media platforms, applications, technologies and networks to create, critique, capture audiences for or assess the value of their work.

Social Media as Cultural Stage: Co-creation, Audience Collaboration and the Construction of Theatre Cultures

This chapter examines the uptake of social media as a tool for theatre audience engagement, development, assessment and evaluation. Examples of efforts to get a community invested in theatre works, theatre workers, and their personal, social and professional lives via social media in one local context in Brisbane, Australia, provide insights into what sparks or fails to spark meaningful debate about the industry and the industry’s impact in the public sphere. The role of well-meant advice from a range of experts in creating the conditions of possibility for such debates or, paradoxically, constraining such debates emerges as a central concern for those theatre makers looking to use the technology to invite the public into a co-creative position in their processes.

Social Media as Theatre Stage: Aesthetics, Affordances and Interactivities

This chapter considers the ways in which social media is being deployed to produce, document and disseminate mainstage and independent theatre works. It examines examples from the USA, the UK, Europe and Australia—streamed performances of Shakespeare by the National Theatre, streamed performances of contemporary plays such as The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning by the National Theatre of Wales, the use of networked, telematic, participatory, augmented and virtual reality themes and/or techniques in works such as Adam Cass’sILove You Bro, Liesel Zink’s Various Selves, The Builders Association’s Continuous City, Paul Sermon’s Telematic Dreaming, Blast Theory’s Desert Rain, Upton’s Ritual Circle, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Mudlark’s Such Tweet Sorrow, RSC and Google Creative Lab’s A Midsummer Night’s Dreaming, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, New Paradise Laboratories’ Fatebook: Avoiding Catastrophe One Party At A time, La Pocha Nostra’s Ethno-Cyberpunk Trading Post, Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tension , Brian Lobel’s Purge , Sarah Rodigari’s Reach Out Touch Faith, @Platea’s Co-Modify, Jeffrey Cranor’s tweet plays and Ai Wei Wei’s self-performances online, along with online theatre platforms and archives such as Upstage, Waterwheel, the Hemispherica archive, the Anarcha anti-archive and the AusStage database. The breadth of these practices, and of the relations between producers, performers and spectators that play out in them, provides the basis for an analysis of why so many mainstage companies still tend to use social media theatre as transmedia marketing for their core programmes rather than use it their core programmes in the waythat independent, activist and political artists do.

Putting Prejudices on the Spot and in the Spotlight: The Risks of Politically Motivated Public Space Performance Practices

For many, the fact that both performers and spectators contribute to the creation of participatory performance practice makes it a more democratic art form than most. What is interesting about much politicised participatory performance practice, of course, is the way it puts the spectator’s role as co-creator on the spot and in the spotlight via encounters in which this role is literal, explicit, and fundamental to the event. In this chapter, I examine the pleasures, perils, and ethical pitfalls of political performance practices in which a spectator suddenly, unwittingly, and sometimes even unwillingly finds his or her actions subject to public scrutiny, discussion, and debate. I focus particularly on a series of begging performances, asking why performers, spectators-cum-coperformers, and society might be willing to take the sorts of risks that characterise such personally, politically, and above all ethically chancy practices.