Integrating Theatre and Geography to Develop Spatial Thinking in Youth

Abstract

Integrating Theatre and Geography to Develop Spatial Thinking in Youth Becky Becker (bio), Amanda Rees (bio), Andrea Dawn Frazier (bio), and Camille L. Bryant (bio) Theatre for Youth enjoys a strong following in many communities across the country, particularly via elementary and middle school visits to local theatres and touring productions geared toward school-age children. Children are often introduced to a play, story, or theme by their classroom teachers, and then given the opportunity to reinforce its educational value by seeing the theatre production. Yet how often are theatre strategies used to explore and enhance diverse subject areas like math, geography, or science in a more integrated manner? Occasionally, schools may integrate theatre exercises into the curriculum to enhance a lesson, but the inherent qualities of theatre as an embodied art form are rarely used to draw upon spatial skills gained from theatrical practice. One of our inspirations for joining theatre with geography to access spatial thinking is the inherent body-centric nature of theatrical practice. In the following article, we hope to provide insight into a process, the intent of which was to do just that: integrate theatre and geography exercises to develop spatial reasoning skills among elementary and middle school children. The project, Shaping OurSpace, is both experimental and broad in scope, involving community planning, Lego scale models, theatre games and exercises, oral history interviews, and the eventual production of an original play. It can serve as a model for others who may wish to integrate theatre as a means of developing children’s spatial reasoning and social skills that may not be elicited in a traditional classroom setting. Shaping OurSpace was a yearlong interdisciplinary project (2012–2013) that brought individuals from the fields of geography, theatre, and education together to work with two groups of children in reimagining a three-block area in the community.1 The city and local housing agency had designated the area as a potential target for HUD funding to establish a mix of subsidized and full market rate apartments. Faculty from three different [End Page 67] departments, history and geography, theatre, and education, all from Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, developed a program to engage elementary children to assess and reshape a three-block area using geography concepts and theatre exercises. During the process, the children learned and practiced cardinal directions, participated in a variety of theatre games and exercises, learned to read and notate Google Earth images, and eventually reimagined the neighborhood using Legos to create a scale model of a three-block area. The culminating activity was a short documentary play, created using interviews with family members and the local housing authority, and collected by the children. Through a process-oriented discussion of the project and its implications, we provide details concerning four facets of our work—the theoretical underpinnings of geography and theatre that led to the project’s inception, a definition of spatial thinking, an overview of our process, and, finally, a description of what we learned and why it is a useful way of thinking about theatre for youth. Our goal in sharing is threefold. First, because spatial thinking is an area of struggle for certain populations, specifically girls,2 we theorize that theatre and its kinesthetic engagement can improve this perceived deficiency. Second, our contention is that although interdisciplinary pedagogy may be advocated as an engaging way to involve students in learning new skills, it has a social impact on the children involved that extends to the wider community. More specifically, we observed a unique attention to power dynamics that was fostered in the children. Third, we hope Shaping OurSpace might inspire similar interdisciplinary projects that intertwine theatre pedagogy with that of other disciplines, such as geography, since theatre has a unique capacity for facilitating social growth and embodied learning. Theoretical Underpinnings of Geography and Theatre In joining the disparate disciplines of geography and theatre, it may be somewhat surprising that both fields share a similar path toward developing a social conscience. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the experiences of disenfranchised peoples began to make their way into the academy, practitioners in geography included them in their research. William Bunge, a theoretical geographer...