ABSTRACT Threatened with ever-increasing levels of surveillance and confinement, this special issue attempts to extend the discussion of Prison Theatre to consider ‘carcerality’ as a pervasive neoliberal strategy. The issue aims to steer the discussion away from considerations of utility and the aesthetics of redemption, towards understandings of the arts in carceral spaces as a fundamental human right

ABSTRACT In this article I reflect on my experiences as a previously incarcerated individual being involved in theatre performance for the first time. I reflect on how my involvement in arts and education programmes in prison made me aware of the larger structures of Whiteness that were embedded in the educational and arts contexts that I found myself in later in life. I argue that much of the arts

ABSTRACT I began my life as a prison theatre artist 25 years ago. Over the years, through first-hand experience with prisoners, their families, and others, I came to understand some of the more oppressive elements of the state prison system, and the relation of that system to the larger prison-industrial complex. This essay is a reflection on the key events and relationships that provoked me into critical

ABSTRACT This article positions theatre as a site for victims and activists to action their resistance against Gukurahundi related incarceration and human rights abuse perpetrated in the 1980s. Through case studying Talitha Koum and 1983, we examine resistance strategies deployed through theatre performance to expose Gukurahundi violence, invigorate debate and hold public officials accountable. We

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on The Maroon Project, a series of poetry and performance workshops at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum with a group of previously-incarcerated ‘Coloured’ men. The project facilitated a process of Spillerian interior intersubjectivity toward a self-authorship that could ‘speak flesh’ by placing the carceral system under scrutiny against the legacies of slavery, positioning

ABSTRACT The Phoenix Players Theatre Group (PPTG) was founded in 2009 by incarcerated men at the Auburn Correctional Facility in Upstate New York. This article explores PPTG’s work using Nicholas Mirzoeff’s (2011) theory of the ‘right to look’ in order to understand how prison theatre functions within and against the visual regime of carcerality. This article describes how PPTG employs non-traditional

ABSTRACT Shakespeare’s elite cultural status bolsters the sense of achievement and empowerment experienced by participants in prison performance programmes; and yet, such engagements paradoxically risk further marginalising participants by reinforcing a colonial mentality in which Shakespeare represents an offering from a morally superior white culture. Taking the Detroit Public Theatre’s Shakespeare

ABSTRACT Ngā Pātū Kōrero: Walls That Talk (2019) is a documentary theatre production staged by incarcerated men at Unit 8 Te Piriti at Auckland Prison in Aotearoa New Zealand. The performance was built around Te Whare Tapa Whā (The House of Four Sides) – a model of Māori health that participants engaged with as part of their therapy for being convicted of sex offences. This article discusses the use

ABSTRACT This study draws on the experiences of eleven individuals working for six organisations in Northern California to identify ways White supremacist ideals operate in performance-related programmes in correctional facilities. The inquiry examines the experience of teaching artist/facilitators (TAFs) of colour; White TAF’s (in)ability to reflect on the impact of their racial identity in the classroom/workshop;

ABSTRACT This article investigates the impact of arts-based therapies on incarcerated individuals within the Presidency Correctional Home in Kolkata with specific reference to Alokananda Roy’s project ‘Culture Therapy’. This programme for the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals through the arts is arguably the first of its kind in the Indian context. By employing personal observations, non-structured

ABSTRACT This article presents two key findings from a case study on the impact of a theatre laboratory programme implemented at ‘C. Beccaria’ youth detention centre in Milan. First, the opening of a permanent theatre inside the prison, with the involvement of the broader community, has helped fulfil detained minors’ rights to culture and rehabilitation, as well as remodel the relationship between

ABSTRACT Improbable Players (IP) has been creating applied theatre for substance use disorder prevention since 1984, training more than 200 sober actor/teaching artists to perform plays and facilitate workshops addressing addiction, alcoholism, and the opioid crisis. The company operates, for its actors, as a long-term arts- integrated peer recovery support service and mutual support group for recovery

ABSTRACT This paper relays the findings of the evaluation of an applied theatre project for children in hospital as perceived by hospital teachers. A mixed qualitative approach was used. Data were analysed using thematic analysis to explore the teachers’ views on children’s engagement with learning and the improvement of the hospital experience as a whole through applied theatre. The article presents

ABSTRACT Unlike the usual academic path in their training through theoretical subjects, in Body Expression students have the opportunity to have a meaningful and embodied experience The objective of this research was to analyse the representations that the Social Education degree students from the University of the Basque Country had on the subject Body and motor expressiveness: proposals, techniques

ABSTRACT As youth media creation programmes proliferate, educators and practitioners are learning how to develop stories that interrupt hegemony and point to new ways of being. This research, carried out in an ethnically diverse middle school, highlights the way digital storytelling as an applied theatre praxis brought complexity to student work. The role of a Media Wish List and students' propositional

ABSTRACT Role-play was a popular educational strategy within the American civil rights movement. Many civil rights activists performed the movement in private before performing it again in public. Compared to the scholarship on the role of music in the civil rights movement, the importance of drama has been understudied. The history of role-play as an educational strategy provides new insights into

(2021). Editorial. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 203-204.

ABSTRACT This article explores how whiteness is enacted and negotiated from the perspective of a conductor in a Playback Theatre performance (PT). The article addresses how PT provides a stage for exercising opportunities for doing white differently in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that Doing white differently takes place by recognising a distinction between the subjectivity of white individuals

ABSTRACT The dramaturgical method has been used to analyse teaching and didactic contexts, but the method is not adequately described or established in such contexts. In this article we use dramaturgy as a lens for describing and analysing teaching. The teaching examples are taken from a professional workshop where student teachers and their instructors teach Norwegian 7th grade pupils. The article

ABSTRACT In this article I examine the potential of including embodied teaching and learning through drama in teacher training in Switzerland, a concept which is novel in that context. In particular, I focus on two student teachers at the University of Teacher Education Zug, who volunteered to explore drama as a tool for teaching and learning across the primary curriculum. After working with drama

ABSTRACT This article considers research as inquiry and social intervention through the lens of building theatre audiences. Detailing a research and creative collaboration with a Toronto-based theatre company, and their verbatim play Towards Youth: a play on radical hope created from the data of a global ethnographic research project, we extend Schechner's (1988, 2003. Performance Theory. London: Routledge

ABSTRACT Many youth struggle to determine their role and cope with overwhelming emotions and imaginative dystopias around combatting climate catastrophe and capitalist greed. In this time when many marginalised youth feel assured of immediate and distant threat, it is vital for applied theatre practitioners and educators to nurture critical hope as a means to stymy helplessness. The author offers ‘ethnodrama

ABSTRACT In this article, I pose a series of questions for ethical consideration in socially engaged practices. I framed the practitioner-focused questions using what I termed, ethical questioning. Ethical questioning is the process of asking questions both in the process of writing and doing ethics in socially engaged and community-based creative practice and research.

ABSTRACT Nurses and actors both require the ability to demonstrate empathy in their practice. Mastering communication skills and techniques can inform an empathetic response. This skill is particularly important for nurses working in paediatric palliative and end of life care but there is lack of consensus whether empathy can be taught. The process an actor follows when getting into character incorporates

(2021). Drama research methods: provocations of practice. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 379-384.

Abstract This paper begins with a literature review on participation in the field of community artistic practices. The aim is to identify which is the significant dimensions acting within artistic creation involving professional and non-professional artists from the communities. These elements are then compared with the experience of three Brazilian theatre collectives. Using interviews and focus groups

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study explored how college student writers perceive the utility of drama-based pedagogy in their development of information literacy (i.e. their skills in locating, evaluating, and ultimately transferring information). The qualitative analysis of the study data showed that the students were interested in the entertaining platform provided by drama-based pedagogy. The

ABSTRACT This article examines the tensions and possibilities of audio drama in applied theatre and qualitative inquiry. Drawing on our experiences of making participatory audio drama, we argue that applied audio drama provides rich ground for generating new knowledge and approaches to applied theatre research and practice as informed by the cultural turn towards listening, sound, and sonic agency

ABSTRACT This article considers youth co-production in the context of Global Challenges Research funded project, Changing the Story. The participatory project conceives of ‘voice' as research data, turn of phrase, and character by engaging with the work produced by South African co-creator collective Ilizwi Lenyaniso Lomhlaba, who contribute to voicing issues related to land, stewardship and futures

ABSTRACT In this article, I pose a series of questions for ethical consideration in socially engaged practices. I framed the practitioner-focused questions using what I termed, ethical questioning. Ethical questioning is the process of asking questions both in the process of writing and doing ethics in socially engaged and community-based creative practice and research.

ABSTRACT Nurses and actors both require the ability to demonstrate empathy in their practice. Mastering communication skills and techniques can inform an empathetic response. This skill is particularly important for nurses working in paediatric palliative and end of life care but there is lack of consensus whether empathy can be taught. The process an actor follows when getting into character incorporates

ABSTRACT Applied theatre and performance practice offers persuasive illustrations of the ways in which dominant conceptions of resilience and resourcefulness – frequently aligned with neoliberal values – may be critiqued, challenged and displaced. As the contributions within this issue illustrate, such potential resides in a complex ecology of embodied knowledges and contested value, unfolding within

ABSTRACT Reflecting on a prototype event, A Recovery Arts Café, this article examines how recovery communities can be staged through collaborative performance events that directly engage with what it means to be in recovery from addiction. I theorise recovery and performance practice as particular forms of affective ecology, or processes of relation between the human and nonhuman, and challenge neoliberal

ABSTRACT This article considers Bolton based community drama group, Melodramatics, and the ways in which their practice helps illuminate forms of relational activity that confront the nihilism of the resilient subject. If we accept resilience as a normative force that restricts the ability of the political subject to ‘become otherwise’, we are invited to turn towards methods of political discourse

ABSTRACT In 2019 a pilot project called ‘Homeless Monopoly’ evolved in Coventry to investigate how arts methodologies, dramatic scenarios and gamification could be used to raise awareness in young people regarding homelessness. This article investigates the origins and collaborative development of this project, but specifically focuses on how piloting the game in schools, colleges and universities

ABSTRACT This provocation discusses two post-2008 cases of resilience discourse in applied performance contexts. The discussion of the first case focuses on how a variant of resilience discourse legitimises the restructuring of local public services and welfare by naturalising this process. This first discourse will be contrasted to an instance of resilience discourse produced by artists aligned to

ABSTRACT In Singapore, resilience lies at the heart of the nation’s efforts at building a strong civic culture. For those experiencing urban poverty, resilience holds little weight against the national rhetoric of self-reliance and meritocracy as keys to success. This paper presents a three-way conversation between the researcher, applied theatre facilitator, and youth participant, centring on the

ABSTRACT When financial resources are scarce and uncertain, youth performance organisations find ways to ‘hold it together’: to carry on no matter what. Engaging critically with theories of organisational resilience, this article examines how two youth performance companies in Auckland experience and respond to a precarious funding environment. The local policy and funding context compels organisations

ABSTRACT This article argues that making dance performance is a resourceful means of self-production that is an aspect of resilience, through interrelationship, and that making dance is an act of resilience in the context of the social, cultural, and historical struggle that continues in the lives of people with learning disabilities. The argument is made by developing dance scholar Randy Martin’s

ABSTRACT This article focuses on resilience and chronic pain in the context of choreography and performance. Through critically-creatively reflecting on my practice-as-research project, Ecologies of Pain, I explore practices of resilience that emerge from turning towards and working creatively with chronic pain. I draw from two strands of the performance research – collaborating with disabled artist

ABSTRACT This article considers how intergenerational arts can help support the resilience of people living with dementia. Theorising a moment of process from Magic Me’s Reflections of Stepney, it analyses how art facilitators help a child and care home resident to overcome the challenge of relating and create a performance together. It particularly considers the possibilities offered by touch as a

ABSTRACT This article problematises the concept of ‘resilience’, and the globalised power dynamics which lie behind a narrative of overcoming adversity in the context of Palestinian Theatre. By exploring the work of ASHTAR, specifically focusing on the artist Iman Aoun, this paper examines the lack of political and practical solidarity revealed in languages and agendas of resilience. This analysis

ABSTRACT Brighton People’s Theatre and Slung Low are at the forefront of the contemporary people’s theatre movement in the United Kingdom. I examine these companies and the broader utility of a people’s theatre, historically concerned with working class representation and/or performances of civic unity, in the context of economic austerity and inequality. I assert that ideologies and practices of people’s

ABSTRACT Performing City Resilience is a collaborative research project that investigates interrelations between theories, practices and strategies of city resilience, and those of performance. In this essay, the authors explore ways performance might conceive of and contribute to practices of hazard mitigation strategy to better understand how these might lead to a resilient city. They focus on their

(2020). Editorial. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 481-483.

(2021). Teachers and teaching on stage and on screen: dramatic depictions. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 376-377.

(2021). Living through extremes in process drama. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 377-379.

ABSTRACT The goal was to assess the effects of a Theatrical Improvisation programme on students’ motor creativity. 163 Secondary Education students participated: the experimental group, who experienced a Theatrical Improvisation unit, and the comparison group, who experienced a Drama in Education unit (based on the current Spanish educational law). A pretest, posttest, quasi-experimental, comparison

ABSTRACT This paper presents the findings of aesthetic qualitative research conducted in Israel for the purpose of increasing the understanding of the reception process among kindergarten children (aged 5–6). The paper focuses on the link between Theatrical Communication, personal ‘Cargo’ young audiences ‘carry’ upon attending a theatrical event and Theatrical Competence. We argue that the encounter

ABSTRACT This article theorises how Akira Takayama with his theatre company Port B facilitates large-scale multi-sited performance works in cities across the globe, which expand the physical architecture of the theatre and utilise digital communications technology. To probe the relation between theatre and the contemporary city, the article interrogates what Takayama calls ‘theatre 2.0’. Drawing on

ABSTRACT Since 1994, the London-based queer performance collective Duckie has produced thousands of events, from its regular Saturday club night to larger-scale immersive themed productions and, more recently, long-running projects working with specific underserved groups. In this edited interview, Duckie’s three full-time employees, Simon Casson, Dicky Eton and Emmy Minton, discuss various forms of

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on my experience of using personal stories to create a Pot Gan performance exploring the complexity of how lives are lived, how the experience of climate change is shaped by poverty and struggle, but also strength in facing adversity. Bringing real stories to the stage had more meaning, emotion and personal connection for audiences, while also challenging them to work through

Philip Michael Taylor, internationally renowned scholar in drama education and applied theatre, died in his New York home on 19 June 2020 aged 60. He leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of schola...

Prison Cultures: Performance, Resistance, Desire by Aylwyn Walsh offers a fascinating interdisciplinary analysis of prison cultures that draws on a range of performance and cultural production in a...

As someone whose own research and practical interests lie in both applied performance and contemporary circus, I was keen to engage with how Contemporary circus by Katie Lavers, Louis Patrick Lerou...

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown both authors were experimenting with facilitating longer complex process dramas on online platforms. We offered participants the opportunity to reflect on the situation we were facing as individuals, as a society and as humanity. We worked with different levels of university students in two different languages and in two different countries. In this article, we

ABSTRACT This article engages with the sudden pivot to online learning and research in a Toronto high school drama classroom during the COVID pandemic, revealing a complex portrait of youth, connection, and the digital world at a time of physical distancing. In light of these shifting ‘personal geographies’, we reflect on what drama practices might be mobilised to invite intimacy into online learning

ABSTRACT In this article the authors reflect on their work together on ‘Sharing Stories’, a project involving British and Ugandan partners using theatre to explore issues around mental ill health. They argue that while working through theatre in this intercultural project created spaces of equality, wider factors limited the extent to which an equal partnership could be built.

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a re-examination of the histographies of theatre for development (TfD) which takes into account the background influences, cultures and agendas of complex networks of actors, organizations, governments, and higher education institutions in which the practice and praxis of TfD revolve. The article introduces and reflects on my ongoing research, in which I argue for a new

ABSTRACT This photo essay reflects on Rafiki Theatre’s recent work exploring Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) issues in refugee camps in Northern Uganda. The images portray the context, challenges and ways in which Rafiki responded to the aims set by the project donor.