| This dissertation is a qualitative interpretative case study designed to investigate what occurs during the process of preparing, rehearsing and performing a theater piece over a period of 15 weeks in the context of foreign language learning. It specifically addresses the following questions: (1) How do students learn to play their roles; what happens to them in the process; and what is the nature of the learning environment?; and (2) What particular challenges and problems does the teacher face in ensuring that a theater project is as rich a foreign language learning environment as possible; and what particular challenges and problems do the students face while involved in such a project? My analysis of video-taped rehearsals, audio-taped interviews, and the participants' journal entries---which provided the major data for this study---revealed a series of themes which linked the various responses to the questions above. The most salient themes were: (1) how theater as a dialogue-rich and semiotic-rich environment can help students develop metaknowledge about a specific language/culture and learn to use it more effectively; (2) the immediacy and power of the students' struggle to make their character's role, i.e., an embodiment of the language/culture, their own; and (3) how the students' motive for participating in the project, as well as their personal background, determined or affected their orientation to learning. Particularly noteworthy was the manner in which students spontaneously combined certain aspects of their role with their personal resources, and thereby created a hybrid voice. This hybrid voice, which was in evidence in rehearsals and improvisations, was often an intelligent, humorous expression of their developing competence and their newly organized way of looking at the world and is examined in detail in the body of this dissertation. Finally, how to make the most of a theater project like the object of the current study is discussed. |
