PROLIFIC STAGES: teatro e professores de língua inglesa em formação inicial na TE-ÇA dos deslocamentos

Abstract

Grounded in an Applied Linguistics (AL) approach that positions itself as UNdisciplinary (Moita Lopes, 2006), this research investigates the effects of Theatre Pedagogy on the processes of subjective displacements (Neves, 2008; Sól, 2014; Reis, 2018) among Pre-Service English Language Teachers (In Portuguese, PROfessores de Língua Inglesa em Formação IniCial — PROLIFIC), particularly regarding their involvement or non-involvement (subjective implication or nonimplication) with the profession for which they are being prepared. This investigation involves 18 PROLIFIC enactors from an undergraduate English Language Teaching program at a Brazilian Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, alongside the researcher-teacher educator. Within the scope of this program, the corpus was constructed through the implementation of an UNdisciplinary course titled Workshop on Theatre and English Language Teaching and Learning (In Portuguese, Oficina de Teatro e Ensino-Aprendizagem da Língua Inglesa — OTEALI). OTEALI, as an Arts UNdiscipline, emphasized artistic practice (Dewey, 1934/2010; Spolin, 2008; Boal, 2014; Desgranges, 2020) and positioned Theatre Pedagogy as a locus of experience (Dubatti, 2007; Larrosa, 2022) and subjective reinvention (Reis; Costa, 2017). The corpus comprises narratives, individual interviews, questionnaires, class recordings, and stage performances. Framed within an interpretive-analytical paradigm, the gestures of interpretation are informed by a proposition of Psychoanalytically Oriented Discourse Analysis (Parker, 2005; Dunker, Paulon & Milán-Ramos, 2016), in articulation with key constructs from the French-Brazilian tradition of Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 1983/1997; Orlandi, 1999; Serrani-Infante, 2001). As a further trace of an UNdisciplinary Applied Linguistics that blends knowledges from Freudo-Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Arts, the study also draws on contributions from Arts-Based Educational Research (Telles, 2006; Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018). This approach particularly informs the aesthetic trajectory and lends the presentation of results a distinct style (Lacan, 1955/1998; Dunker, 2016) — at times dramaturgical, at times essayistic — inviting the reader to a DIS-PLAY or, in Portuguese, to a TE-ÇA: a DISsertation (TEse) embodied by elements of a theatrical PLAY (peÇA). The analyses traverse the corpus, focusing on what recurs and what ruptures in the PROLIFIC’s discourse throughout the UNdisciplinay course. Special attention is thus given to Discursive Resonances (Serrani-Infante, 2001; Reis, 2007) and Freudian slips (Freud, 1901/2021; Parker, 2005) as analytical categories. Additionally, in order to expand the concept of “subjective displacement”, and to capture and give visual performative form to the enunciative positions (Bertoldo, 2011) at the beginning and end of the UNdiscipline, an analytical device titled The Yes-Game Arsenal (Arsenal do Jogo do Sim) is proposed. The results indicate that, through the OTEALI UNdisciplinary course, the future teachers were confronted with their subjectivities, the Lacanian Other, and the stranger within themselves. Drawing on the chain of signifiers, the investigation demonstrates how the PROLIFIC enactors shift from less to more implicated positions in relation to desire and its constitutive lack, to the profession for which they are preparing, and to the English language. Consequently, in movements of circulation, rupture, and re-inscription of the word, Theatre Pedagogy emerged as a locus of creation and recreation that fostered subjective displacements.