Learning Politics Through Theatre: What the Performance Workshop Can Offer Political Science Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper describes teaching a course called “Politics and Theatre.” This interdisciplinary seminar combined discussion of the history and politics of twentieth-century Europe with an examination of the subjective experiences and works of four renowned political playwrights: Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Peter Weiss. One of the main elements of the course was a performance workshop in which students served as actors and spectators in an ongoing performance of Brecht’s The Measures Taken. The workshop allowed students to learn not only what politics looks like, but also what it feels like to act politically.