Theatre Education and Democracy: Learning Theatre Production Class as Performing Democracy

These days, we witness the crisis in education, especially in the fields of liberal arts and fine arts. Threatening conditions such as neoliberalist and capitalist ideas and realities make schools and universities into market places. At the end of one polar, democracy is getting weak, and at the other polar, populist movements getting stronger than ever before.As a teacher, I always have been considering the ways of democratic decision making as the basis of education. Nonetheless, in reality, I was not sure about how I could make a horizontal relationship with students in class. I thought the liberalist idea of minimal involvement as the best education principle for the spontaneity and creativity of the students. But, Jacques Ranci re gave me insights to solve my problem, suggesting è the human’s equal intelligence as the common ground for the horizontal relationship with the students in class.Another philosopher Hannah Arendt postulated the idea of ‘natality’ as the meaning of education, and I adopted her idea of birth as teacher’s call and responsibility. Based on the philosophical thoughts of Rancière and Arendt on education, democracy, and democratic community, I designed a theatre production class, Antigone’s Claim, 2022 project as a learning democracy by doing. We experimented the possibility of the democratic art community in class. I and the students of the class shared references as common ground for our learning such as Michael Sandel’s book 『What is Justic』, his 12 seminar sessions about the issue of justice, and Judith Butler’s 『Atigone’s Claim』, etc.We created the democratic device for communication in decision making, opening the public sites for dialogues and discussions. Through the democratic ways of life and art, toward the end of the project, we felt becoming united as the democratic ‘Antigone community.’ Through the performance of democratic ways of life and art, we achieved the goal of the theatre production class: the rehearsal of democracy.