Cooperation and Narrative Sharing - Building a Co-Creative Teaching and Learning Situation through Quasi-Theatrical Teamwork

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa

Cooperation and narrative sharing are proposed as a way to form co-creative teaching and learning through quasi-theatrical teamwork in the course “Introduction to Theater Design.” Theater-making is framed as a collaborative process involving artists, dramaturgists, designers, technicians, and directors, whose hierarchies can limit interdisciplinary autonomy. By shifting from unidirectional instruction to “learning by doing,” students observe everyday reality, integrate living scenarios with theatrical theory, and cultivate habits of group discussion and cooperation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research Motives

Cooperation and Narrative Sharing: Building a Co-Creative Teaching and Learning Situation through Quasi-Theatrical Teamwork By Ching-pin Tseng􀀍 Works of theater arts are produced by associating with artists, dramaturgists, designers and technicians from various professions. Multiple layers of idea exchanging and complex processes of coordination are embedded in the mechanism of teamworking. This paper argues that the concepts and the generation of theatrical works are closely related to everyday lives. The course of ‘Introduction to Theater Design’ is set to start from shaping an appropriate relationship among participants. Students can also initiate their learning from the observation of everyday reality, and further to develop a narrative sharing and collaborative relationship among team members in a quasi-theatrical teamwork. Theater arts is both a practical profession and a discipline full of historical and theoretical knowledge. Due to the classification of teaching expertise in the academy, courses of theater arts are often divided into practice and theory, which results in difficulty motivating a mutually beneficial mechanism in creating theatrical works. Moreover, the director is often regarded as the most important role in theatrical education, as well as being authorized to have a dominant power in the decision-making of theatrical production, therefore other professionals become secondary or functional roles. From questioning the unidirectional teaching and learning method, this paper intends to explore how an interdisciplinary team can build up co-creative theatrical works. By sharing narratives in a teamwork, the paper expects that students can incubate their habits of group discussion and cooperation through paying respects to others. The content and implementation of the course are intended to break down the border of classrooms from the notion of ‘the city as theater’: by associating with theatrical theories and the idea of ‘learning by doing’, living scenarios can be integrated with theatrical settings, and students with varied tendencies can thus forge compatible, symbiotic and co-creative learning situations. Keywords: cooperation, narrative sharing, practice, quasi-theatrical teamwork, interdisciplinary Introduction Research Motives Works of theater arts are produced collectively by associating with many professions, i.e., it is a process of cooperation and co-creation by joining together dramaturgists, directors, performing artists, designers and technicians, etc. It focuses on the methods of communication, sharing, co-creation and performance presentation of ideas and creative concepts that come from text and script interpretations. Due 􀀍Associate Professor, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. to the classification of teaching expertise in the faculty, the teaching curricula of theater arts are often divided into practical and theoretical, and there are some differences between the two branches regarding the content of courses and teaching places. The reason may be that those with theoretical expertise may lack practical experience or have fewer opportunities to prove theories through practice. Practical professionals, on the other hand, are less interested in theatrical history and theoretical discourse. As a result, the various experts may stick to their professional positions, and thus a mutually beneficial mechanism for a team to co-create theater productions will be difficult to shape. Moreover, in terms of the direction for artistic creation and conceptual development, the opinions of directors are often dominant in the field of theater teaching and practice in Taiwan, while those in other professional fields become secondary or only play functional roles, resulting in a general lack of autonomy in professional discourse. The first reason for this phenomenon is that students have either regarded the director as a determinant role in shaping creative concepts, or have a biased co

FAQs

What problem does the paper identify in theater arts teaching?

The paper argues that theater arts curricula are often split into practice and theory, and that directors’ dominant authority can marginalize other professionals, weakening mutual cooperation and autonomy in discourse.

How does the course “Introduction to Theater Design” support co-creative learning?

It uses a “learning by doing” approach, with practical exercises that verify theories, reducing the gap between learning and practice while linking theatrical settings to everyday lived scenarios.

What role does narrative sharing play in the teamwork model?

Narrative sharing helps students build collaborative relationships and encourages habits of group discussion and cooperation, while stimulating each other’s creative potential through shared spatial and visual perceptions.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa