Integrating memory, historical remembrance and drama in Colombian schooling: Pedagogical and psychosocial implications

Abstract

This is a research study that explores the kind of pedagogical and psychosocial possibilities that collective remembrance, mediated by practices of drama in education, might offer to the work of memory. Under study is a drama-remembrance project that explores individual and historical memory in conjunction with critical remembrance through the classroom drama praxis. Assuming the school as a terrain within which a community of memory is possible, this research is concerned with educational experiences that facilitate the understanding of the ‘work of memory’. I am also situating drama praxis as an alternative performative form of remembrance. The hypothesis is that through drama framed as a performative practice of remembering, students can productively explore the work of memory; its functioning, implications and structures. I call this approach “Drama-Remembrance Praxis”, as it constitutes a particular application of theatre to the memory and remembrance framework.