Teaching Spectatorship: Essays and Poems on Audience in Performance
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Rooted in the ideal of what philosopher Cornel West (2000) calls an “active critical citizenry” (p. 183), I posit a counterperforming AIP curriculum theory of active, participatory spectatorship in both education and society.

To begin, I offer three found poems created from the works of cultural theorist Raymond Williams (1975) and performance theorist Baz Kershaw (2003), which serve to express some of the deep questions and concerns we face in our present-day culture and society. They are the underpinnings to what follows.

Raymond Williams—Two Found Poems

defining the problem

    i. we have never
    as a society
    acted so much
    or
    watched so many
    watching
    (of course)
    carries its own problems
    watching
    itself
    is problematic
    ii. drama is built
    into the rhythms
    of everyday life
    (drama as habitual experience)
    more in a week
    than most previous
    lifetimes
    at once
    a dramatic
    and a social
    fact