One of the ways in which ICAF has increasingly disseminated community performance practice is through the screening and archiving of film and video documentaries, as well as recording the processes of making, staging and presenting community performance practices. To gain a deeper understanding of the both the practical and ethical roles of such documentation processes, ICAF have invited Kerrie Schaefer to talk on her ongoing research surrounding the documentation of community performance processes, and the ethics of such documentation.
Over two sessions, on Thursday and Friday, Dr. Kerrie Schaefer will examine recent developments in transforming community performance processes into film and video documentaries. She will examine the documentary form itself, its history, the relevance of new technologies from film and radio to documentary theatre, as well as political and ethical debates relevant to documentary theatre, film and digital media. Whilst paying close attention to practical examples, questions such as how video and film documentaries narrate aesthetic and social processes, whose voices are or aren’t presented, and how power relations between social actors involved in collaborative making practices are or aren’t presented, will arise. Audiences will contemplate how film and video documentaries enable the evaluation of and reflection on community performance processes, aesthetics, and practical methods. What does the field learn about making community performance from watching these documentaries? Furthermore, how might broadcast documentaries influence social policy or create social change?
By the end of the two lecture sessions, participants will have an excellent understanding of the extension of documentary theatre making techniques in the making of documentary films that increase public awareness of community performance practice and, as aesthetic artefacts, engage publics in social practice, making the lectures vital programme items for all those interested in documentation and the recording of process in relation to community arts practices.