문화연구로 영미드라마 가르치기 - 텍스트/공연, 고급/대중예술의 이분법을 넘어서

Teaching Drama as Cultural Studies: Beyond Binary Oppositions of Text/Performance, High/Low Culture

&nbsp;&nbsp;This article speculates a new approach to teaching drama that overcomes traditional binary oppositions of text/performance, high/low culture by employing cultural studies as an integral methodology and framework. In the academic circle of English literature, people tend to believe the "truth" of drama lies in the consistent, stable, and permanent form of dramatic text written by a sacred author. As a result, performance is considered as marginal and trivial to more serious work of textual studies, and popular culture is largely excluded from scholarly interest. From its origin and by its nature, however, drama has been a vital part of popular culture and drama as a written text cannot be separated from, or fully appreciated/understood apart from drama as a performance. From this premise, I propose a pedagogy of "practical aesthetics" that actively includes performance and popular culture as a way of teaching drama through cultural practice.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Practical aesthetics, like praxis, is a combined form of mind/theory/art and body/practice/life, which encourages dialectic interactions between the two, and ultimately enables students to make changes both in and out of drama through their own cultural practice. This approach can also let them learn the essence of recent critical theories of postmodernism, all underline the centrality of process and discourse in the concept of Truth and Meaning. For a small graduate seminar, students, instead of doing an actual performance, can conduct a research on the production history to see how the meaning of the play has been constantly challenged and negotiated, depending on the people, time, place, and culture. Either doing an actual performance or doing a research on the production, students move their focus from the author&quot;s original intention or correct interpretation of the play to its particular meaning to particular audience at a particular time. Grounded in a materialist rather than a romantic theory of art and aesthetics, and with emphasis on "participation," "democratization," and "popularization," teaching drama as cultural studies can ultimately restore drama&quot;s relevance to our students&quot; everyday life.