Dream Freely/Freedom Dream:International Students in the USAmerican Academic nation

論文發表人: 林茵 (亞利桑那州立大學劇場研究所博士班)

 

http://theatre.umn.edu/ptoconference/index.htm

http://www.ptoweb.org/

 

本研究是以夢境來呈現台灣學生在美國求學與生活的經驗。以劇場中常用的說故事手法來呈現國際學生內心的掙扎與反省。 長久以來，許許多多的國際學生來到美國追尋一個自我實現的夢想。他們渴望在不分國度的學術界裡被接納成為成功的學術界公民。然而，在許多的多元文化教室裡，國際學生常因為文化差異、語言隔和、權力分配不均等等因素在激烈的學術競爭中面對不公平的競爭。夢境常是真實生活的寫照。人們往往藉由夢境反映、反思、反抗在現實生活中的點點滴滴。夢的形式是片段、破碎、與不連貫的，這些特質是反抗者對抗權力與壓迫時常使用的手段。這個表演式的民族誌研究訪談了在亞歷桑那州立大學就讀的台灣留學生，以戲劇特有的專業技法蒐集個人的故事、感受、表情、肢體語言等等具表演力的非平面文字資料，並以戲劇演出呈現研究成果。主要應用的戲劇理論與實務方法是巴西劇場大師波瓦的"被壓迫者劇場"中的影像劇場、論壇劇場等等方法。研究成果與發表是一個單人的演出，以不同的夢境呈現國際學生如何在挫折中追求成功之道。演出是由六個夢境組成。分別呈現留學生與家鄉、與食物的關連性。更呈現留學生涯中在文化間、土地間不斷轉換的心境。這個演出更是希望帶出對話。將發表會場轉成一個多元文化的課堂，使觀眾皆可暢談自身的多元文化學習經驗。以演出刺激大家的思考，藉以實踐一個理想的多元學習空間。

 

     Dreams are a space for people to meet themselves.  Through dreams, people re-imagine/replay/reformat their lives.  Dreams trouble the definitions of citizenship, (i.e. locality, privileges, rights) through fragmentation, instability, and nonlinearity.  In a dream, one owns the agency to create a safe zone to confront the oppressor as well as subvert the situation s/he encounters in real life.  For many decades, international students have come to the "Land of the Dream,"  the United States, to pursue their dreams of success as citizens in the academic nation. However, without sharing the ownership in such a multicultural classroom, international students often lose their voices by being at the bottom of the power hierarchy in academic society, due to language barriers, cultural differences, etc.

     In my project, I apply dreams as a tool to approach my research about international students' lives in the U.S. As an international student from Taiwan, I constantly experience a feeling of displacement and off-balance in my daily and academic life.  In this Performance Ethnography, I employ dreams as a metaphor for the negotiation between international students and power plays that occur within Western academia.  The negotiation takes place in the conversation between the dreamtexts and monologue I created based on my research data.  I also employ Theatre of the Oppressed and Creative Drama techniques to gather research data in workshops with international students at ASU. The dreamtexts reveal the relationships between international students and their hometowns/ families/ foods.  It also presents the class dynamics of an internationalized classroom.  By sharing their dreams about gaining ownership in the classroom through theatre, I aim to redefine citizenship in the academic nation.  I also perform my research as an "art-based civic-dialogue" by using the performative dreamtexts to dialogue with the audience as participants in the USAmerican academic nation.