Effectiveness of Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre Workshop Method in Improving Intrinsic Motivation and Reducing Communication Barriers: An Empirical Analysis

Third Theatre, Intrinsic Motivation, Communication Barriers, Embodied Pedagogy, Experiential Learning, Badal Sircar

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre workshop method in improving the internal motivation and overcoming communication barriers among the participants of the workshops surveyed for this study. I have used here the feedback of postgraduate students of two organizations – Rishi Bankim Chandra College, and West Bengal State University situated at North 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Third Theatre and its workshop model have a lot of impact on social and political conscience of human life.  There has been very little empirical work on its pedagogic potential that is beneficial in the teaching-learning process. It has a broader influence in understanding human values of cooperation building of a society. This study analyzes the impact of a Third Theatre workshop method that was conducted with eighty-three postgraduate students of these institutes. This workshop is being conducted by the Satabdi Third Theatre group for the last seventeen years in these institutes, following the core principle ‘No Shame No Blame; No Competition, Only Cooperation’.I have conducted an empirical study to collect and study the data regarding the before and after impact of the workshop.

The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and paired-sample z-tests to examine differences between pre-workshop and post-workshop responses. After the workshop, all measured variables showed improvement that was statistically significant. The results suggest that the Third Theatre workshop method can reduce psychological communication barriers as well as has the potentiality to improve intrinsic motivation among the participants. This study has been done with the help of critical concepts of technical communication barriers, intrinsic motivation, and the theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner.

This paper provides an empirical evidence for the educational use of the Third Theatre workshop, and also suggests that there can be relevance for language teaching and communication skills through an interdisciplinary curriculum approach.