Experience in Tertiary Theatre Education: An Inquiry into the Intangible

Leigh Fitzpatrick

doi:10.60867/00000176

This thesis explores students’ experiences in tertiary theatre education. The research investigates the under-served intersection of theatre studies and education, calling attention to ways of learning that are particularly significant in that disciplinary overlap. Considering the question “in tertiary theatre education, what is the role of experience in student learning?”, the research explores theatre students’ lived experiences as they navigate ambiguous instructional territories of anatomy, imagination, and metaphor. This exploration illuminates new perspectives on student perception and offers pathways for educators to critically engage with experience and embodiment. Informed by sensory ethnography and analytical autoethnography, a phenomenological study was conducted with ten participants studying theatre units at a Western Australian university. Through participant observation and open-ended interviews, accounts were gathered of the experiences and activities students encountered during their learning. Those accounts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, supported by hermeneutic phenomenology and elements of narrative portraiture. Findings that illuminate how students encounter, recognise, and use particular experiences in their learning were revealed, resonating closely with established theories of transformational learning, embodied cognition, and technique. These findings underscore the importance of immediate experience as a site of change in learning and a referent in communication. This thesis opens up student sensoria as sites of learning worthy of critical engagement, drawing on a richly interdisciplinary range of scholarly influences to identify and explore multiple roles of experience in tertiary theatre education. Through discussion of those roles, student attention is highlighted as a defining factor of many student experiences, and terminological and conceptual contributions are offered that may assist teachers, practitioners, and researchers in critically examining the web of tacit knowledges and unspoken cultural norms that weaves throughout tertiary theatre education.

Experience in Tertiary Theatre Education: An Inquiry into the Intangible

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