Our Corner of the Triangle

Abstract

The equilateral triangle; a triangle in which each of its three angles is exactly sixty degrees. Used by many social organisations as both a symbol and catalyst for conceptual intersection, two high school drama teachers allow their fatigue to drive their use of the equilateral triangle as space, setting and object of the pedagogical spaces they inhabit. New to the Research-based Theatre world, these two teachers draw on the experience of George Belliveau’s workshop at the second Research-based Theatre Symposium at the University of Melbourne (2024) to present a piece of collaborative, dramatised autoethnography that catalyses around objects/artefacts from our teaching. The first object of their inquiry? The Triangle from Belliveau’s workshop: its corners represent a shared tension between our identities as teachers, beginning researchers, and artists; their movement in the Triangle brings awareness to their hexis in these roles.

As thoughts and emotions are navigated in dialogue, this conversational piece helps them to reach out to each other to navigate these complex experiences and talk them through to find a deeper understanding of what they experience in the classroom. Acknowledging their voices and reflecting on their similar and contrasting experiences, they come together within the Triangle to offer these artefacts as a challenge to the constant imposition of representative teacher experiences. Their first object of the Triangle holds them to account: seeing things as if from above; to test via a tension; to destabilise their certainty with the most stable shape there is…