The purpose of this article is to analyze the importance of the culture
of institutionalized theatre scholarship among a select group of Canadian
women theatre practitioners. Based on qualitative ethnographic interviews,
the paper will reflect on the contributors' (and my own) experiences as
women studying theatre and drama in a formal, post secondary setting. By
looking at education via the lives of the participants, this paper will
analyze how a group of individuals operates within pre-existing pedagogical
and institutional practice, and will discuss how women learn the "institutional
ideologies" of theatre scholarship, or the methods by which students analyze
experiences located in the work processes of the academic institution.
The analysis will focus on theorizing difference among the participants
and highlighting the contrast between the informed contexts in which they
study and the engendered practices they encounter. The paper will conclude
with an analysis of how women learn to apply the institutional ideologies
that they are taught in university and will briefly examine the ways in
which professional academic training teaches women to recycle the actualities
of their experiences into recognizable forms by the institution.
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