Actor-training in Australia and the Indigenous student experience : traversing cultural and pedagogical domains

Abstract

There is a diverse range of formal, institutional training opportunities for Indigenous students who aspire to a career in acting. However, it is not only the technical aspects of training that differ from Aboriginal-identified and mainstream programs— indeed, in this respect, the similarities seem more striking than the differences. O f far greater importance, as I argue in this thesis, are the differences in cultural context from one institution to another. One question this thesis examines is whether there are critical differences between the experiences of Indigenous students at mainstream and Aboriginal-identified institutions. Whatever institution they attend, the way in which Indigenous acting students experience, and make sense of, their training does not depend so much on the specific content or structure of classroom and studio-based learning activities; rather, it is essentially defined by the much larger cultural and pedagogical frameworks within which these learning activities are embedded. In other words, the experience of actor training, for Indigenous students, involves a constant, subtle negotiation of differing expectations, or assumptions, around issues of identity, culture, family, professionalism, and so on. Further questions this thesis investigates include when, where and how do Indigenous students engage meaningfully or critically with these particular issues, especially culture, during the course of their vocational training. Also, how do institutions support students to navigate these issues? My approach to answering these questions is to describe and analyse the manner in which Indigenous students navigate these potentially fraught negotiations and to draw out some of the lessons to be learned—by teachers and administrators in training institutions, by theatre companies, funding bodies, and policy makers—from focusing more closely on these students’ experiences. My research is informed by in-depth interviews conducted with Indigenous graduates from a selection of different actor training programs, some of which are very strongly, and historically, “Aboriginal identified” programs and some of which are offered by “mainstream” institutions. In many cases, the Indigenous theatre makers I interviewed had experienced training in both Aboriginal-identified and mainstream settings, so they were able to offer very insightful cross-institutional perspectives. Acknowledging, however, that the student experience in any pedagogical encounter is never independent of the teacher experience, I also conducted several in-depth interviews with teachers, directors and other staff from the actor-training programs. At no point was the research seeking a single understanding of the “right” way of training Indigenous actors. Rather, the thesis sets out to illuminate multiple perspectives on the topic. It is an investigation of localised experiences, or local narratives about those who inhabit, in some cases only briefly, the often tightly bound, intense, “hidden worlds” of actor training. This thesis suggests that no matter how idiosyncratic or special the “culture” that has developed within any given institution, there are still multiple ways in which that small-c institutional culture is being reframed, reinterpreted, possibly even restructured, by the big-C “Cultural” frameworks within which students make sense of their lives.