Scenario Summer School Berlin

The first edition of the Scenario Summer School Berlin, in collaboration with Freie Universität Berlin (FU) and the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, took place in the first week of August 2025. Alongside organising, I helped to design the overall program and facilitated specific sessions. The Scenario Summer School Berlin was designed as a learning site and maker lab, and a shared space for creative thinking and doing.

 

The main focus of the sessions was on exploring performative pedagogy as a means of transformation, and as a way of developing performative agency. The sessions were offered as a series of practice-based workshops, focusing on language learning and teaching, self-awareness, and performative presence. Alongside, the school offered an opportunity for young researchers to present engaging projects with an explicit focus on aspects of performative pedagogy.

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The Scenario Summer School Berlin was aimed at anyone who functions in the role of a teacher at school or university, a workshop facilitator or community leader, and who already uses or would like to use performative pedagogy in their work. Participants were encouraged to think about the application of performative pedagogy to their specific context. The School attracted participants from varied cultural backgrounds, offering opportunity to engage with and learn from other culture-specific drama/theatre traditions.

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Divided into two strands, the Scenario Summer School was facilitated by international practitioners and scholars with a wide range of experience in the field of performative pedagogy.

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Strand 1, led by Alexandra Hensel and Sukhesh Arora, introduces participants to a range of dramatic techniques and conventions, offering an immersive exploration of how embodied learning can inspire personal and collective transformation and nurture agency. Through interactive activities, participants will discover how to adapt these methods to their unique context - whether that is in the field of performative language learning and teaching, working with children or adults, small groups or large classrooms, or in the context of specific educational or communal goals. Blending theory with hands-on practice, the sessions aim at reflecting on and evaluating the growth of agency through creative frameworks. Key themes include navigating power dynamics, embracing multiple perspectives, and strengthening one’s sense of self and voice. By the end, participants will hopefully gain experience in using dramatic tools to design inclusive, transformative experiences while enhancing the ability to critically assess the impact of performative pedagogy.

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Strand 2, led by Bernadette Cronin and John Crutchfield, is concerned with practices one might engage in for larger groups, and practices which are more facilitator-led. Participants will collaborate on the creation of an original theatrical work, to be presented at the end of the week. In the course of the week-long work-sessions, participants will explore their creative potential to generate and develop materials, make a selection and shape these into a piece of theatre for a live performance event. We will use a wide variety of theatre-making tools, including play, improvisation, work with text, object, movement, voice, sound and music.

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Throughout the work, the focus will lie on collaborative practice and process, on strengthening performative competencies, and on building participants’ confidence in their own creative potential and skills as theatre-makers and workshop facilitators.

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Organisation Team

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Scenario: Sukhesh Arora, Bernadette Cronin, John Crutchfield, Manfred Schewe  

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Frei University Berlin (FU): Alexandra Hensel & Francesco Manelli

University of Neuchâtel: Laure Kloetzer

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