Communication and Education: Reflexive Dialogue Through Experiencing Theater as Play

Abstract

With communication and education being interwoven, this study sought to generate an abstract theoretical understanding of the communication processes emerging from an educational experience. Specifically, this constructivist grounded theory was guided by the question "How do participants experience the Bahay-bahayan theater as play?" in the context of the immersive play "Pailah: Ugat ng Lipi." Immersing in the performance space together with the research participants, and doing successive levels of comparative analysis, the following social processes emerged pagpapasigla (activating), pagtatauli (reacting), pagmamasid (observing), paggaya (imitating), pagsubok (testing), paglubog (immersing), pagtugon (responding), pagsasakatawan (embodying), pag-angkin (owning), and pagpapadayon (lingering). These processes are mutually supportive and constitutive. It was revealed that meaning-making is very much influenced by, and in turn, influences cultural contexts and behaviours, as the participants go back and forth these processes.

The Wari at Yari: Proseso ng Pakikipag-dayalogo (Discern and Design: Process of Reflexive Dialogue) is therefore forwarded as a middle range theory describing creative processes of making sense of communication contexts and transforming these through playing, replaying, and re-playing possibilities, actions, and reflections. Permeating the entire play experience are pakikiramdam (sensing) and pagbabanyuhay (transforming). How each process is placed in the infinity model represents the processual and intuitive nature of theater as play.

The model has important implications for the design of learning experiences anchored not only on outcomes, but also on playful dialogic interactions. Further research may look into the experiences of the audience-players since this study privileged the voices of the actor-players.