Rea Dennis

Bio: Rea Dennis is an academic researcher from Deakin University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Active listening & Refugee. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 25 publications receiving 137 citations. Previous affiliations of Rea Dennis include University of Queensland & University of South Wales.

Nonverbal Narratives: Listening to People with Severe Intellectual Disability:

Abstract: This article describes an exploratory study that examined the perspectives of practitioners who spend much of their working day listening to and in some ways interpreting for people with severe intellectual disabilities. On the basis of focus group interviews with 23 professional disability-sector workers, including speech therapists, psychologists, and human service workers, the article reports on the importance of a practitioner's values and experience in successful interactions with individuals who rely on self-developed nonsymbolic communication repertoires. The article includes a discussion of the likelihood of including individuals with severe intellectual disabilities in narrative research.

Refugee performance: aesthetic representation and accountability in playback theatre

Abstract: This essay seeks to unpack some of the issues concerning representation when performing refugee stories using playback theatre. It questions the reductive influence of narrative structure and, using the framework of artist as ethnographer, it argues that strong aesthetic production is required to overcome the dampening effect of empathy when performing personal stories in refugee/asylum contexts. The tension that emerges among the key imperatives of accountable, accurate and aesthetic representation in refugee performance is then explored as a dialogic space.

Art Meets Sport: What Can Actor Training Bring to Physical Literacy Programs?

Abstract: The aim of this communication is to highlight synergies and opportunities between the fields of education, sport and health and the performing arts for the promotion of physical literacy. First, physical literacy is introduced and then defined according to the definition used in this communication. Secondly, we highlight the gap in physical literacy interventions, in that they do not address learning based on a holistic comprehensive definition of physical literacy. Then we provide examples of interventions that do borrow from the arts, such as circus arts, and show how these approaches explicitly link to the discipline of arts. This is followed by program examples, which approach motor and language development from discipline-specific perspectives. Then we introduce actor training (within the discipline of arts) in terms of how this approach may be useful to our understanding of physical literacy and how to expand the conception of physical literacy to include affective meaning making, and tolerance for ambiguity and discomfort in not-knowing. Finally, we conclude with the next step for the bridging of disciplines in order to further our journey to understand and improve physical literacy.

Inclusive Democracy: A Consideration of Playback Theatre with Refugee and Asylum Seekers in Australia.

Abstract: Community-based performance often facilitates participation through story-based processes and in this way could be seen as enacting a form of inclusive democracy. This paper examines a playback theatre performance with a refugee and asylum seeker audience and questions whether inclusive, democratic participation can be fostered. It presents a snapshot of the political/social/cultural climate in Australia, as well as the refugee and asylum seeker sector in Brisbane, at the time of the performance by referencing discourses of multiculturalism and stranger danger in the wake of 9/11. Specific moments from the performance are analysed to reveal the way the momentum of ritual performance clashes with the tenuous status of the refugee participant and the structural power dynamics within the audience.

Improvised Performance: Nurturing Natural Leadership

Abstract: Leadership requires creativity and demands responsiveness, flexibility, and risk taking. Contemporary business operations acknowledge the need for this leadership capacity at all levels of the organisation. This article reports on an action research project conducted over four years in Brisbane, Australia in which improvisation was applied to training agendas in which the developmental goals included enhancing emerging leaders’ capacities in uncertainty throughout change processes. It gives account of the way in which technical aspects of improvised theatre practice have been applied to develop capacities such as self-confidence, autonomy, trust, and resilience, and responsiveness in collaborative and competitive environments. The improvisation method drew on highly structured physical theatre languages to facilitate participants’ emerging awareness of leadership capacities and competencies through the interrogation of their own habitual positions in relation to listening, leading and following, collabora...

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

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