Prison Theatre and an Embodied Aesthetics of Liberation: Exploring the Potentials and Limits

Prison theatre practitioners and scholars often describe the sense of imaginative freedom or “escape” that theatre and drama can facilitate for incarcerated actors, in contrast to the strict regimes of the institution. Despite this, the concept of freedom or liberation is rarely interrogated, being presented instead as a given—a natural by-product of creative practice. Drawing from John Dewey’s (1934) pragmatist aesthetics and the liberatory pedagogies of Bell Hooks (2000) and Paulo Freire (1996), I propose an embodied aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre that adds depth and complexity to claims for freedom through creativity. Reflecting on over twenty years of prison theatre practice and research, I propose that the initial “acts of escape” performed through engaging the imagination are merely the first threshold toward more meaningful forms of freedom. I frame these as the following three intersecting domains: “Acts of unbinding”, which represents the personal liberation afforded by experiences with theatre in prison; “acts of love”, which expresses how the theatre ensemble might represent a “beloved community” (hooks); and “acts of liberation”, which articulates how these experiences of self-and-world creation may ripple out to impact audiences and communities. An aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre can, therefore, be conceived as an embodied movement towards personal and social renewal; an approach that deepens our understanding of its oft-cited humanising potential, and its limits.

Aesthetics of Dance

How does the brain see and experience dance? Performing arts have captured the attention of empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. In this chapter, the author reviews studies from cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology that have contributed to our understanding of the brain mechanisms for dance perception. The author introduces the concept of sensorimotor aesthetics, the process whereby the observer evokes an internal simulation of the perceived action of a dance performance, during its emotional and aesthetic experience. The author proposes an embodied aesthetics framework, in which the perception of the dancer’s body, the dance movement, and the expressed emotion are significantly influenced by an observer’s prior experience. Finally, the author discusses potential avenues for enhancing interactions between the science and artistic communities in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the aesthetics of dance.

Embodied Aesthetics

Although great art frequently revers the body, bodily experience itself is traditionally excluded from the aesthetic realm. This tradition, however, is in tension with the experience of expert dancers who find intense aesthetic pleasure in the experience of their own bodily movements. How to resolve this tension is the goal of this chapter. More specifically, in contrast to the traditional view that denigrates the bodily even while elevating the body, I aim to make sense of dancers’ embodied aesthetic experience of their own movements, as well as observers’ embodied aesthetic experience of seeing bodies move.