Death of the Student: Repositioning student-performer as artist within creative practice

A good teacher will typically insist that their methods are founded upon a ‘student-centred’ or ‘student-oriented’ approach to teaching and learning. But what does this mean exactly? Is it a way of putting the student at the heart of their creative/learning process? Do we focus on supporting the student in relation to their individual needs? Or is ‘student-centred’ a platitude, in which we guide students through a learning experience predicated upon unquestioned ideologies and assumptions inherent in our teaching practices?

This chapter confronts existing ideas of spaces, expectations and relationships in creative practice, drawing on concepts of queerness and disruption as outlined by Jack Halberstam. Here we put forward the ‘death of the student’ as a means of repositioning student as artist, rather than seeing the student as a blank canvas to project our own expectations for making what we (trainers? The industry? Institutions?) deem as ‘good’, ‘well-crafted’ art.

By killing ‘the student’, where student refers to an amateur, (non)artist waiting to acquire the skills to practice their art in their own right, we remove the hierarchal trainer/trainee dynamic, creating space for collaboration, generosity and independent practice. Our approach to performative pedagogy, (playfully titled undisciplined discipline), begins by questioning who or what we privilege in the learning spaces for creative practice; it invites uncertainty, individuality and the unknown as stimuli for exploring drama and performance in higher education.