The referendum in South Africa: A triumph of the spirit?

I can sing a hymn to the glory of my land, from the ashes something stirs, new voices are being heard. I can look with love at the harsh landscape pockmarked by ghettoes, in the dust and the dirt new voices sing new songs. (Achmat Dangor

Empathy and redemption in theatre for young people: Towards an epistemic theory of empathetic imagination

This paper comprises two inter-related parts. In the first section I discuss the development of the empathetic imagination in young people through the medium of drama. Referring to a selection of plays I have written, directed and published as e-books for theatre in education projects, I will examine how the narrative situation of such theatre-work, both facilitates and invokes the meaning structures through which a young person’s empathetic imagination can be epistemically and ethically schooled. Pre-given identity formations and socially endorsed ‘ways of seeing’ dictate the untutored imaginations of young people. This paper will argue for the value of generating an epistemically informed, empathetic imagination, as an ideal towards which theatre for young people should strive especially when its form is shaped into contemporary adaptations of the Shakespearean text or popular entertainment, which attract significant numbers of young viewers. The second section of the paper interrogates the design and representation decisions taken for an adaptation of Macbeth which imported Asian performance and visual arts traditions in an attempt to offer both student performers and audiences a thought-provoking perspective on traditional western interpretations of the play. Central to such an undertaking, I contend, is the ethical reconstruction through dramatic presentations of regimes of value reception. Cognitive respect for the young mind, together with a commitment to supporting the emerging autonomous judgement of the young viewer or performer requires the framing of the dramatic treatment in such a way as to present stage characters whose vulnerabilities resist marginalization through uninformed manoeuvres of exclusion. By questioning unreflexive, encultured identity formations, theatre for young people, I suggest, can enlarge the empathetic reach of the ‘youthful imagination’ and provide a justifiable ‘way of knowing’. Ideologically undistorted dramatized encounters - joyous and sad by turns – invite young actors and audiences to embrace differences with enlightened generosity

A team decision framework for quality decision outcomes

This paper outlines the Team Decision Framework which follows on from our previous work on optimising the quality of decision-making in groups. The TDF is proposed as a model of the skills and abilities which we have termed ?intelligences? that should ideally be present in order for groups making decisions to achieve their full potential. The paper describes the intelligences and outlines the development of the measuring instrument, using Structural Equation Modelling and exploratory factor analysis. The TDF is designed to profile groups? decision-making capabilities. It is anticipated that such profiling might be used for diagnostic, training and comparative research purposes

'The mirror shattered into tiny pieces': Reading gender and culture in the Japan Foundation Asia Centre's LEAR

The Japan Foundation Asia Centre's inter-cultural production of LEAR had its Australian premiere (and only performance in Australia) at the Festival of Perth in February, 1999..

Hooligans or Heroes? Imagining the subjects of empire during the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902

Book review: Steve Attridge. Nationalism, Imperialism, and Identity in Late Victorian Culture: Civil and Military Worlds. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ix + 229 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-333-80251-9

Interview with the actors in witness: David Moody and Martin Mhando

After the re-presentation of a version of Witness in the Murdoch TV Studio as part of the Dialogics II Conference, (2010), and with a view to incorporating the reflections of their performance by the Director, Serge Tampalini and the actors, David Moody and Martin Mhando in this issue, I asked them a series of questions which they answered in a variety of ways. Serge Tampalini provided a meta-commentary of the research-as-praxis that informed „the making of‟ Witness, and it is offered in full in Part 2 of this section. Part 1is a blend of the actors‟ responses to some of the questions I had regarding the interlinked processes that had resulted in their provocative postcolonial piece, Witness, first performed at The Blue Room Theatre, Perth 4-22 May 2010

de Reuck on Krebs, 'Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War'

Book Review: Paula M. Krebs. Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 220 pp. $54.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-65322-0

Scoping trauma

From the Editor

Risk factor studies of age-at-onset in a sample ascertained for Parkinson disease affected sibling pairs: a cautionary tale

An association between exposure to a risk factor and age-at-onset of disease may reflect an effect on the rate of disease occurrence or an acceleration of the disease process. The difference in age-at-onset arising from case-only studies, however, may also reflect secular trends in the prevalence of exposure to the risk factor. Comparisons of age-at-onset associated with risk factors are commonly performed in case series enrolled for genetic linkage analysis of late onset diseases. We describe how the results of age-at-onset studies of environmental risk factors reflect the underlying structure of the source population, rather than an association with age-at-onset, by contrasting the effects of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking on Parkinson disease age-at-onset with the effects on age-at-enrollment in a population based study sample. Despite earlier evidence to suggest a protective association of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking with Parkinson disease risk, the age-at-onset results are comparable to the patterns observed in the population sample, and thus a causal inference from the age-at-onset effect may not be justified. Protective effects of multivitamin use on PD age-at-onset are also shown to be subject to a bias from the relationship between age and multivitamin initiation. Case-only studies of age-at-onset must be performed with an appreciation for the association between risk factors and age and ageing in the source population