As experts in both applied theatre and education, Au Yi-Man and John O’Toole outline how applied theatre techniques can be used to support workers in the human services to develop crucial skills such as resilience, imagination, critical thinking, and reflection. Highlighting under-emphasised skills and qualities in the human services professions, this book combines theory with context-specific practice to support capacity building across sectors. Drawing on a detailed study of NGO workers learning to use applied theatre techniques in professional development, the book offers insight into the learning and experiences of the participants and how these can be applied to future training programs. The book also provides a deeper understanding of how adult learners, from different backgrounds and levels of experience, approach their professional training. Rich with resources, the book features complete course examples, including theatre of the oppressed, process drama, and educational theatre, as core drama techniques. Opening up new opportunities for applied theatre practitioners and educators, this book is a must-read for teachers in any human services field intending to use drama or applied theatre in their training.

At once both guide book and provocation, this is an indispensable companion for students and practitioners of applied theatre. It addresses all key aspects: principles, origins, politics and aesthetics in a concise and accessible style designed to appeal both to those who have recently discovered this sub-discipline and to experienced practitioners and academics. Part 1 is divided into two chapters. The first introduces the sub-discipline of Theatre for Development, covering its origins, principles and history, and providing an overview of theatre for development in Western contexts as well as in Africa, Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and Latin America. The second focuses upon theoretical and philosophical issues confronting the discipline and its relationship to contemporary politics, as well as considering its future role. Part 2 consists of seven chapters contributed by leading figures and current practitioners from around the world and covering a diverse range of themes, methodologies and aesthetic approaches. One chapter offers a series of case studies concerned with sexual health education and HIV prevention, drawn from practitioners working in Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Southern Africa, and China. Other chapters include studies of intercultural theatre in the Peruvian Amazon; a programme of applied theatre conducted in schools in Canterbury, New Zealand, following the 2010 earthquake; an attempt to reinvigorate a community theatre group in South Brazil; and an exchange between a Guatemalan arts collective and a Dutch youth theatre company, besides others.

This volume offers researchers and practitioners new perspectives on applied theatre work, exploring the relationship between applied theatre and its intent, success and value. Applied theatre is a well-established field focused on the social application of the arts in a range of contexts including schools, prisons, residential aged care and community settings. The increased uptake of applied theatre in these contexts requires increased analysis and understanding of indications of success and value. This volume provides critical commentary and questions regarding issues associated with developing, delivering and evaluating applied theatre programs. Part 1 of the volume presents a discussion of the ways the concept of change is presented to and by funding bodies, practitioners, participants, researchers and policy makers to discover and analyse the relationships between applied theatre practice, transformative intent, and evaluation. Part 2 of the volume offers perspectives from key authors in the field which extend and contextualize the discussion by examining key themes and practice-based examples.

Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand, aims “to enhance the capacity of young people, theatre practitioners and their communities to take responsibility for the quality of their lives in the context of HIV and AIDS in Africa. We achieve this through participatory and experiential drama and theatre that is appropriate to current social realities but draws on the rich indigenous knowledge of African communities.” Collected here is a representative set of research essays written to facilitate dialogue across disciplines on the role of drama and theatre in HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and rehabilitation. Reflections are offered on present praxis and the media, as well as on innovative research approaches in an interdisciplinary paradigm, along with HIV/AIDS education via performance poetry and other experimental methods such as participant-led workshops. Topics include: the call for a move away from the binaries of much critical pedagogy; a project, undertaken in Ghana and Malawi with people living with AIDS, to create and present theatre; the contradictions between global and local expectations of applied drama and theatre methodology, in relation to folk media, participation, and syncretism. Three case studies report on mapping as a creative device for playmaking; the methodology of Themba Interactive Theatre; and applying drama with women living with HIV in the Zandspruit Informal Settlement. The essays validate the importance of play in both energizing those in positions of hopelessness and enabling the distancing essential to observe one’s situation and enable change. The book stimulates the ongoing investigation of current practice and extends an invitation to further develop innovative approaches. Hazel Barnes is a retired Head of Drama and Performance Studies at the University of KwaZulu–Natal, where she is a Senior Research Associate. Her research interests lie in the field of applied drama, including the contexts of interculturalism and post-traumatic stress.

Almost 200 years after public schools moved toward free education for all children, educators are still exploring the best approaches for promoting equitable student growth. In early 2020, Covid-19 operational changes and the challenge to confront America's most profound racial problems exposed many equity issues in schools. As a result, educators were called to reimagine the field of education as the curtain closed on the first quarter of the 21st century. The essays in this book challenge classroom instructors to consider new approaches to education theory, classroom praxis and teaching content. The chapters herein draw on mixed-methods and narrative form essays to provide practical tools and techniques for building equitable schools. Viewing schools as extensions of society-at-large, this book delivers innovative curricular approaches to STEM education, the Humanities and applied theater. The authors offer methods for empowering student voices, managing moments of crisis, increasing representation in computer science and implementing restorative justice disciplinary practices in learning institutions. Essays provide all educators with proven instructional models for curricular equity with the goal of moving America closer to a multicultural democracy.

This book analyses the partnership between applied theatre and sexual health communication in a theatre-making project in Nyanga, a township in South Africa. By examining the bridges and schisms between the two fields as they come together in the project, an alternative way of approaching sexual health communication is advocated. This alternative considers what it is that applied theatre does, and could become, in this context. Moments of value which lie around the margins of the practice emerge as opportunities that can be overlooked. These somewhat ephemeral, intangible moments, which appear on the edges, are described as ‘apertures of possibility’ and occur when one takes a step back and realises something unnoticed in the moment. This book offers an invitation to pause and notice the seemingly insignificant moments that often occurs tangentially to the practice. The book also calls for more outcry about sexual health and sexual violence, arguing for theatre-making as a route to multitudes of voices, nuanced understandings, and diverse spaces in which discussions of sexuality and sexual health are shared, felt, and experienced.

Applied Theatre: Research is the first book to consolidate thinking about applied theatre as research through a thorough investigation of ATAR as a research methodology. It will be an indispensable resource for teachers and researchers in the area. The first section of the book details the history of the relationship between applied theatre and research, especially in the area of evaluation and impact assessment, and offering an examination of the literature surrounding applied theatre and research. The book then explores how applied theatre as research (ATAR) works as a democratic and pro-social adjunct to community based research and explains its complex relationship to arts informed inquiry, Indigenous research methods and other research epistemologies. The book provides a rationale for this approach focusing on its capacity for reciprocity within communities. The second part of the book provides a series of international case studies of effective practice which detail some of the key approaches in the method and based on work conducted in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the South Pacific. The case studies provide a range of cultural contexts for the playing out of various forms of ATAR, and a concluding chapter considers the tensions and the possibilities inherent in ATAR. This is a groundbreaking book for all researchers who are working with communities who require a method that moves beyond current research practice.

The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance provides an in-depth, far-reaching and provocative consideration of how scholars and artists negotiate the theoretical, historical and practical politics of applied performance, both in the academy and beyond. These volumes offer insights from within and beyond the sphere of English-speaking scholarship, curated by regional experts in applied performance. The reader will gain an understanding of some of the dominant preoccupations of performance in specified regions, enhanced by contextual framing. From the dis(h)arming of the human body through dance in Colombia to clowning with dementia in Australia, via challenges to violent nationalism in the Balkans, transgender performance in Pakistan and resistance rap in Kashmir, the essays, interviews and scripts are eloquent testimony to the courage and hope of people who believe in the power of art to renew the human spirit. Students, academics, practitioners, policy-makers, cultural anthropologists and activists will benefit from the opportunities to forge new networks and develop in-depth comparative research offered by this bold, global project.

Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System offers unprecedented access to international theatre and performance practice in carceral contexts and the material and political conditions that shape this work. Each of the twelve essays and interviews by international practitioners and scholars reveal a panoply of practice: from cross-arts projects shaped by autobiographical narratives through to fantasy-informed cabaret; from radio plays to film; from popular participatory performance to work staged in commercial theatres. Extracts of performance texts, developed with Clean Break theatre company, are interwoven through the collection. Television and film images of women in prison are repeatedly painted from a limited palette of stereotypes – 'bad girls', 'monsters', 'babes behind bars'. To attend to theatre with and about women with experience of the criminal justice system is to attend to intersectional injustices that shape women's criminalization and the personal and political implications of this. The theatre and performance practices in this collection disrupt, expand and reframe representational vocabularies of criminalized women for audiences within and beyond prison walls. They expose the role of incarceration as a mechanism of state punishment, the impact of neoliberalism on ideologies of punishment and the inequalities and violence that shape the lives of many incarcerated women. In a context where criminalized women are often dismissed as unreliable or untrustworthy, the collection engages with theatre practices which facilitate an economy of credibility, where women with experience of the criminal justice system are represented as expert witnesses.

Theatre for Youth Third Space is a practical yet philosophically grounded handbook for people working in theatre and performance with children and youth in community or educational settings. Presenting asset development approaches, deliberative dialogue techniques and frames for building strong community relationships, Stephani Etheridge Woodson shares multiple project models that are firmly grounded in the latest community cultural development practices. Guiding readers step by step through project planning, creating safe environments and using evaluation protocols, Theatre for Youth Third Space will be an invaluable resource for both teaching and practice.