The course is structured around six core sections:

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• Playfulness and the making of our selves: The opening section of the course looks at the role of playfulness in self-making. Starting with games that we play(ed), we look at our own relationships with playfulness and how it relates to our senses of self in different ways. The ‘self’ here is not simply an individual and its interiority. It is equally how we relate to each other, how we connect with, or form continuities with each other. In this context we will look at flirtation, and at pranks and, in a more theoretical sense, at ‘joking relations’ to open up the question of how playfulness constitutes relationality. Finally, we move to a notion of the self as always already collective, and conceptualise playfulness in the framework of Ubuntu.

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• Playfulness and the creative process: This section gives the participants the opportunity to explore their own creative processes through different methods that draw on playfulness. Here playfulness is understood as a release from consequence - to be able to play around with your medium without the imperative of meaning, of coherence, of sense-making or representation. Using this exercise we will look at some of the theorisation and conceptualisation around creativity in the arts, including in music, the fine arts, performance and literature. 

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• A Jester, a Joker, a Drag Queen and a Bahurupiya enter a bar…:In this section we look at a range of figures in popular culture, drawing on their histories in theatre and their cinematic presence in different genres. These are not simply different names for the same thing, but rather are quite distinct articulations of playfulness, subverting, or playing with different things, in different times and spaces. Studying these gives us insights into larger formations in cultural imagination and their evolution.

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• Playfulness, social and economic structure: Social structures and institutions themselves tend to allow a space for playfulness, and some argue that their ability to accommodate for playfulness (for instance, irreverence to rules) is not merely a facet, but a defining feature of their processes of reproduction. Thinking through ritually sanctioned spaces and times of playfulness (taking the carnaval/carnival, Holi and other festivals as instances) on the one hand, and examining structural spaces for play and playfulness (recreation zones in corporate offices, playgrounds and parks in cities) on the other, we ask what role playfulness plays in social and institutional structure, in urban landscapes and in the political economy more broadly. 

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• The Cockroach, the Clown and the Fascist Buffoon: Playfulness is a crucial element of political action, performance and subjectivity. In this section we look first at playfulness in politics - the irreverence in the ‘unruly politics’ of clowns, of memes in recent movements being collectively termed as ‘Gen Z protests’, politicians who quote satirical poetry on the floor of parliament. At the same time we look at the performance of playfulness by those in positions of power, demonstrating through buffoonery both a relatability and the ability to stand above the serious grammars of public office. Juxtaposing these we open up the second question, of the politics of playfulness, looking at the social differentiation in playfulness and the conditions under which playfulness (including whose playfulness) might manifest as political action.

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• Playfulness in Research Methods: In the final section of the course we draw on RAPT’s approach, and from arts-based methods of research more broadly to explore the power of playfulness in research methods. Traditional research methods tend to be structured around an imperative of bringing order to an essentially messy world. These are processes of ‘orientation’, i.e., methods for aligning articulations in relation to context, with scant place for playfulness. Arts-based methods, and especially theatre as a method of research, move away from this and embrace play as a process through which lifeworlds and experiences come to be expressed in rich, often unexpected ways. This allows us insight into the phenomena that we seek to understand, in their complexity, and in their own terms. This section weaves together the various insights into playfulness gained through the course, into a methodological approach.