Abstract
This essay investigates how audio walks function as a paratheatrical learning activity, by exploring how undergraduate participants at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) responded to audio walks in a large, introductory theatre course. It opens by examining the critical reception of And While London Burns, of a popular aesthetic audio walk, to explore how audio walks might stimulate learning. Responses to And While London Burns suggest that audio walks stimulate engagement across multiple learning domains, provoking not only cognition and feeling, but also psychomotor engagement and the capacity to respond through meaningful action. Viewed from an indigenous (Māori) perspective, these critical responses also suggest that the audio walk produces a sense of tūrangawaewae, or personal belonging in the environment represented and encountered in the performance. The discussion then shifts to our experiment at Victoria University, where first-year students in a large, introductory theatre course, trialed two audio walks as part of a learning activity designed to help them acclimatize to their new physical and academic environment. The analysis investigates how the audio walks help participants assimilate new knowledge about theatre and their post-secondary environment, reinforcing their sense of belonging, both in their discipline and at university.
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Notes
- 1.
Exercise is increasingly recognized as one of the most effective treatments for depression, for example (Carek et al. 2011).
- 2.
The 2016 Pokemon GO phenomenon also demonstrates how handheld digital technology provokes new and unique engagements with the environment around them. However, Pokemon GO renders users notoriously unaware of the actual world, by provoking an obsession with the virtual Pokemon so powerful that they walk into traffic and even off cliffs (Hernandez 2017; Tsukayama 2016).
- 3.
Preparation for the activity did not include discussion of learning domains or tūrangawaewae .
- 4.
Unfortunately, this random encounter unwittingly foreshadows the extent to which the ever-present construction at VUW has exposed female students to sexual harassment—particularly theatre, film, and media studies students who must frequently pass the construction sites.
- 5.
We considered more intensive data collection processes, but we decided to keep things simple, due to our limited resources and the absence of existing theories about the audio walk as a learning activity.
- 6.
Following procedures approved by the University’s Human Ethics Committee, students were informed of this research project after formal assessment of their responses was completed. They had the option to withhold permission for us to use their responses as research data.
- 7.
The wording of the THEA 101 question may have triggered this kind of “either/or” response in students habituated to being tested with questions that have only one correct answer.
- 8.
The Hub is not actually a “student” building (e.g. in the way that the adjacent Student Union building is), so this student’s description of “the student Hub” may suggest an implicit sense of belonging.
- 9.
The vuvuzela is a notoriously loud plastic horn brandished by spectators at sporting events. They gained worldwide infamy at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
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McKinnon, J. (2018). “I Had Never Danced in a Bathroom Before”: Using Audio Walks to Engage Theatre Students in the World Outside the Classroom. In: Fliotsos, A., Medford, G. (eds) New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89767-7_4
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