School of Performing Arts

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    Exploring everyday resilience in the creative industries through devised theatre: A case of performing arts students and recent graduates in Ghana
    (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023) Resario, R.; Steedman, R.; Langevang, T.
    The concept of resilience has become widely used to account for how people respond both to acute crises and, increasingly, to protracted precarity. Yet, cultural studies theorists have also vig orously critiqued resilience discourse as a tool of neoliberal governmentality. In this article, we turn from the discourse of resilience to the practice of resilience. We argue, through the case of theatre students and recent graduates in Ghana, that the practice of resilience can be both individual and collective. Moreover, we show that resilience practices involve the exercise of agency at various scales through the specific practices of coping, reworking, and resisting. Finally, we show the merits of using artistic research methods, such as devised theatre, to unveil the complex ways that creatives practice resilience in the everyday.
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    Care in creative work: exploring the ethics and aesthetics of care through arts-based methods
    (Cultural Trends, 2021) Langevang, T.; Resario, R.; Adjei, S.K.; et al.
    This article investigates creative work from an ex-centric perspective, bringing insights from work experiences in the Ghanaian creative industries to bear on the understanding of creative work as a relational labour of care and caring. We argue that the ethics and aesthetics of care in creative work can best be captured and appreciated through the use of innovative arts-based methodologies that afford researchers the opportunity to explore care-fully the relational aspects of creative work. Accordingly, we base our findings on insights generated from the organisation of and participation in an artistic research workshop in Ghana. We show that artistic workshops themselves constitute a caring and socially useful form of empirical research that upholds the principles of “creative justice” by fostering more respectful, attentive, and affective relationships among research participants and between researchers and participants.
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    ‘The show must go on!’: Hustling through the compounded precarity of Covid-19 in the creative industries
    (Geoforum, 2022) Langevang, T.; Resario, R.; Kilu, R.H.; et al.
    The article offers a qualitative examination of compounded precarity in creative work during COVID-19. pandemic. Drawing on repeated in-depth interviews with twelve creative workers operating in the creative industries in Ghana, we examine one of the most prevalent practices for navigating, coping with, and managing compounded precarity: that of hustling. We empirically identify and discuss three interrelated practices of hustling in creative work: digitalization, diversification, and social engagement. We present a new way of conceptualizing creative work in precarious geographies by theorizing hustling and the associated worker resourcefulness, improvisation, savviness, hopefulness, and caring, not merely as an individualized survival strategy, but rather as an agentic and ethical effort to turn the vicissitudes of life into situated advantages and opportunities, and even social change.
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    Doctoral Defense: Ibsen on the West African Stage-A Case of a Complicated Relationship
    (Ibsen Studies, 2022) Anku, S.S.; Asiedu, A.M.; Huq, S.
    At the brink of the collapse of colonial rule, literary and theatrical endeavors in sub-Saharan African colonies were most often political. The plays of Henrik Ibsen found their way into many British colonies because their subjects were relevant to local theater and literary enthusiasts. Additionally, changes in Ibsen’s literary reception in these colonies suggest a development in the attitudes of colonial subjects. In southeastern Asia, particularly In India, there is a thriving Ibsen performance tradition on its postcolonial theatre stages. In sub-Saharan Africa, the southern region has shown a sustained interest in Ibsen’s works, while very little can be said about the western region. This dissertation sets out to explain the low interest in Ibsen’s works on the theatre stages of western Africa by drawing on some markers from Ghana and Nigeria. The study finds its premise on the mapped travels of the play A Doll’s House on the IbsenStage database to piece together historical and political patterns of the reception of Ibsen in Ghana. In a broader context of female imaging in western In African literary traditions, the study situates an argument of reception linked to the traditions of performing and imaging maternity and women. This dissertation finds that colonial citizenship rules and nationalist sentiments of the early post-colonial period, governmental policies on culture, and some traditions offemale imaging in western African literature are liable for the state of Ibsen reception in this region.
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    Teaching Drama in Education in the University of Ghana: My perspectives about Ghanaian indigenous games
    (Youth Theatre Journal, 2023) Deh, T.H.
    This proposal reveals the significance of Applied Theatre in Ghana, with special interest in Drama in Education (DIE) as a teaching tool for teachers and learners. As a teaching tool, Drama in Education places tremendous emphasis on Process, Performance and Skill oriented activities to achieve its teaching and learning goals. The dramatic experiences derived from the improvisations; creative dramatics, mime, role-play and other Ghanaian indigenous art forms such as games, symbols, proverbs, storytelling, etc. in the learning explora tions expedite transformation in learners. In these dramatic develop ments, creativity helps to improve not only learners but society as a whole. This paper aims at exhibiting some of the games employed in various sessions with students in the University of Ghana.
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    Ruptures, Junctures, and Difference: The Role of Music and Ritual Performance in Framing “Tradition” in Contemporary Royal Ceremonies, Ghana
    (Musicological Annual, 2022) Avorgbedor, D.
    Royal rituals and festivities are vibrant sites of cultural continuity among the Ewe of Ghana. The rituals exhibit elements of hyperreal, sonic, and sacred/secular sensibilities that frame performance and embodied affectivity. The royal event complex engages the multisensory, the carnivalesque and interstices of the sacred/secular in Ewe spirituality and religious outlook.
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    Indigenisation of orchestral music in Ghana: the Pan-African Orchestra in perspective
    (Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, 2022) Osei-Owusu, E.
    This article investigates the indigenisation of Western orchestral music in Ghana by focusing on the Pan-African Orchestra (PAO), founded by Nana Danso Abiam in 1988. The factors that influenced the establishment of the PAO and its approaches to indigenisation are examined. Primary research data consist of interview sessions with Abiam, members of the PAO, its patrons, as well as selected cultural officers of the orchestra. Secondary sources consulted include published and unpublished documents, recordings of performances and relevant sheet music. It is concluded that the PAO’s purposeful attempts to combine different indigenous African elements and/or approaches have strengthened notions of the indigenisation of orchestral music in Ghana, which may be linked to the cultural reengineering efforts of Kwame Nkrumah, political revolutionary and former president of Ghana.
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    Teaching Traditional Ghanaian Dance Forms in Higher Education in the Diaspora
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2022) Ayi, B.T.
    Learning a dance form from a culture outside of one’s own, in my observation, can be quite daunting for students, especially those who do not have any dancing experience or those who have experienced dance but not in African forms. This was indicated each year in an assignment in which students were required to share their experiences in a West African dance class that I taught for 6 years in the Department of Dance at the Texas Woman’s University. In their responses, the students shared their fears, misconceptions, uncertainties and concerns, which can be put into two categories. The first category — from students with and without dancing experience — includes fears and misconceptions about difficulty in performing African dance forms resulting in concerns about their ability to dance. The second category — from dance students — includes concerns and uncertainties about the level of challenge that the class might offer to them as an elective class open to students from all disciplines. The students, however, indicated in their responses that the structure of the class and the way in which pedagogy occurred helped alleviate their fears, misconceptions and concerns. In this article, ideas undergirding the structure created to support pedagogy of West African dance forms as a university core curriculum course are presented. The structure focused on five ideas — the five C’s — which are the need to create a comfortable environment that will provide a support base for students to build confidence in their movement capabilities, encourage them to get involved in teaching and learning through the creation of community, and provide feedback in the form of comments and compliments to the entire class. The article concludes with a few suggestions for teachers who are engaged with the pedagogy of Ghanaian dance forms at the tertiary level.
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    When being obese is a good thing: voices of Ghanaian participants in a dance reality TV show
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2022) Darkwah, A.K.; Resario, R.
    The discussion on (mis)representations of black women’s bodies often focuses on their hyper-corporeality and hyper-sexualisation, with little attention paid to the women thus represented and their views. Reality shows are roundly criticised for objectifying women, being unAfrican and offering little to Africans. This paper contests this perspective by drawing on interviews with 19 contestants in a dance reality show in Ghana. We demonstrate that African participants in this show have a much more affirming view of the show. For them, the show offers benefits including celebrity status, training and employment opportunities. These benefits were not lost on family and friends who supported the candidates in various ways. Given the economic conditions in Ghana, this reality show offers obese women an opportunity to turn their condition into an asset and to do so largely with the backing of friends and family.
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    Imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in the creative industries: techno-optimism and subversion in Ghanaian filmmaking
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2022) Steedman, R.; Alacovska, A.; Langevang, T.; Resario, R.
    This article examines imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in film industries in Ghana. To understand how these imaginaries are spatially shaped and locally defined, we carried out in-depth qualitative research with fifty filmmakers in four regions of Ghana. Digital and platform technologies have long been optimistically celebrated as a way for marginalized creative entrepreneurs, particularly in Africa, to break into global markets and reach unprecedented levels of business success. However, far from being universally adopted by African creative entrepreneurs, these global techno-optimistic imaginaries are continually reworked, contested and subverted in practice. In this article, we show how Ghanaian filmmakers mobilized, deployed and resisted imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in their efforts to make sense of their situated entrepreneurial practices and to imagine the future of their creative businesses. We found that rather than naïvely adhering to techno-optimist imaginaries, through their practices, Ghanaian filmmaking entrepreneurs challenged the power geometry of the current platform ecosystem dominated by major Silicon Valley players. We contribute empirically rich data on how filmmaking entrepreneurs use and imagine platform technologies, as is necessary when African digital entrepreneurs are surrounded by hype but inadequate data. We also contribute to the literature about how individual platforms and platform types have unique affordances and how these affordances are shaped by the location and socio-economic position of the entrepreneur.