The Othello Theatre in Education Project – Fostering creativity and wellbeing in the face of high levels of violence against women.
The first premise of wellbeing is being and staying alive. Without life, wellbeing is obsolete. This youth theatre in education project targets what has been called, in the wake of the most recent Australian family killings, ‘the most pressing issue of terrorism our society faces – where at least one woman is murdered each week’ (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019).
Seeking to promote healthy relationships for young people, especially young women, the project creatively challenges the gendered relations that underpin these homicides. It also aimed to equip early career educators with a strategy for engaging in issues of gender related violence.
During the pandemic lockdown in Melbourne, this project explored how theatre and creativity at home can help improve healthy relationships and wellbeing, especially during a global health crisis that optimised conditions for intimate partner violence. The project staged a play on Zoom and in a drama studio at the University of Melbourne, focusing on how creativity can enhance young women’s sense of safety and wellbeing and prompt conversations in educational settings about gender related violence in contemporary Australia. The aim was to understand the relationship between creativity and wellbeing and how it can be used to promote positive change.
Through what was learnt from these activities we devised new inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to the design of a performance-based educational research that provides opportunities for nurturing and optimising emotional wellbeing through creative practice.
Key Questions:
• What emerging research practices in creativity and wellbeing can support a pedagogical shift to enable early career educators to cultivate critical gender and race literacies in the classroom?
• How can early career educators use practice-led projects to support meaning-making across disciplines?
• How does the performative nature of a theatre-led STEAM arts integration allow young people to trouble ethical societal issues such as those related to gender and race? And with what effect?
This CAWRI funded project ran from March 2021 – December 2022. The project received further funding from The Victorian Women’s Trust in 2021 to extend it until December 2022. ‘Othello in Trail’ continues to develop at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in 2023.
Research team
Kathryn Coleman Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne
Academic, activist and educator interested in the intersection of art, digital spaces, practice, and culture and data.
Adrian Howe Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne
Academic, writer, campaigner against violence against women. Designer of Othello on Trial Theatre in Education project.
Sarah Healy Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne
Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow working with social listening tools and sentiment analysis to chart shifts in the affective dispositions toward children’s engagement with digital technologies.
Ana Ward-Davies Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne
Ceramicist, practitioner-researcher and teacher who is interested in the liminal spaces between art and science.
Scott Welsh College of Arts & Education, Victoria University, VIC
Academic, actor and theatre-based researcher utilising creative writing and theatre-making practice.
Richard Sallis Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne
Academic playwright, theatre director exploring ethnodrama, drama/theatre education, diversity and inclusion in education.
Acknowledgements
Othello on Trial is a SWISP (Speculative Wanderings in Space and Place) signature project. SWISP is led by Kathryn Coleman and Sarah Healy; interdisciplinary practitioners working in the fields of speculative a/r/tography, digital creativities, digital childhoods, digital methods, digital education, and digital scholarships in the humanities, arts and social sciences. SWISP seeks to speculate as activist a/r/tographers about reparative futures in the midst of climate collapse.
SWISP acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the stolen land on which we practice, research, teach and learn. We offer respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Elders, past and present. In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connections to land, sea, sky and community.
This project was funded by the Creativity and Wellbeing Hallmark Research Initiative of the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Women’s Trust.
