This paper reports a cross-cultural drama encounter between Czech and Bangladeshi teachers.

The encounter took place through a three day intensive workshop exploring uses of art-based research in Prague. Although the majority of the participants were Czech and either teachers of drama  or doctoral students, three Bangladeshi teachers joined the group. The Bangladeshi teachers spoke English and no Czech; few of the Czechs spoke English, and I, the facilitator, spoke Czech and English. The need to work across languages and cultures prompted us to begin the workshop with a session where we worked without language, developing physical imagery and finding ways to negotiate and refine work without words.  This developed into a focus for the methodological study and we looked at ways the study of such a cultural encounter might serve each of three primary research proposes:

using art to research social issues,

researching art-making,

researching teaching through drama.

Within each of these major orientations we focused our exploration on  the phenomenon of a group of people, with broadly common interests, trying to work together without a shared language.

We developed a small body of data based on the first wordless session and a further body of work exploring the theme of “ma vlast” (my heritage/identity), again really on visual and dramatic images rather than language. We also developed a spectrum of analytic possibilities that aligned with the range of different and sometimes overlapping investigative purposes that we saw were arising out of our encounter.  

This paper reports the cross-cultural encounter, highlighting the strategies various participants used to bridge the language gaps, the differences in drama and image making strategies they brought to the encounter, the times when there appeared to be real dialogic encounter, and the times when various participants appeared to be ‘talking past’ each other.

It also maps some of the different ways the data might be analysed to address a range of research questions within each of the three broad research purposes identified above.

In terms of using art to research a social issue a number of related, but different, research questions emerged through the work. These included: How can we talk with each other? How can we negotiate meaning? Ideas? What assumptions do we make in this negotiation? What power dynamics are operating? What concepts of identity do we bring?  Individual? Group? Collective? How do we percieve the ‘other’? Whose needs  should we meet? And how?

When we turned our intention to researching the art marking a different web of questions took focus. These included: What semiotics do the various participants bring  to the work? What traditions do they draw on? How do they adapt them? What do the makers intend? How do viewers read it? What emotional resonances does the work have? How is the work developing? What comes next?

When we looked at the process of teaching through the art forms a further network of questions arose. These included:   What understandings/skills  have the students gained?

What has the teacher learned about the students?  What further work is needed? How can the process be improved? How is power held/ exercised/  shared? What changes in group dynamics have occured?

Each of these questions might itself generate a project and each called for different elements of the data to be considered and different lens for analysis. The paper examines these and develops them into a conceptual model.

The two areas of investigation interact. The cross-language and cross-cultural investigation provides a platform for examining ABR. The approaches to data and analysis of ABR provide new and rich insights into the language and physical transactions of the participants.

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