The ignorant facilitator: education, politics and theatre in co-communities

This article discusses the book The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation by the French philosopher, Jacques Rancière. Its intention is to study the potential contribution of this text to the discourse of applied theatre (theatre in co-communities) in general and the role of the facilitator in particular. It begins with a performative analysis of the book, presenting Rancière as a kind of gifted storyteller, captivating the attention of his audience/readers. This is followed by an examination of the pedagogical model offered by the book and the thought-provoking material it presents for the thinking facilitator. The author does not contend that this model is wholly and directly applicable to theatre in co-communities, nor can it practically be appropriated by the facilitator as an entire new working system. Rather, it is suggested that the ‘ignorant schoolmaster’ encourages ways of seeing how the theatre facilitator might be, from time to time, an ignorant facilitator as well.