Managed hearts? Emotional labour and the applied theatre facilitator in urban settings

Abstract

This paper reflects on Arlie Hochschild's concept of Emotional Labour to investigate the emotion work undertaken by artists facilitating participatory arts in urban community settings. The discussion seeks to capture the emotional cost of ‘managing’ feelings to understand the resilient practitioner in wider political economies. This entails understanding the dilemmas of practice which include the practitioner's performativity, expressed through a complex negotiation of human responsiveness and the ‘professional’ role, in relationship with feeling rules. Influenced by findings from community development, nursing and education; the discussion reflects on and interprets vignettes by practitioners facilitating drama in inner city schools and pupil referral units. A pedagogical framework emerges as necessary to enable the Applied Theatre practitioner to negotiate, work resiliently and resourcefully with the emotion rules and feelings produced in dilemmatic spaces.