"Applied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing within international contexts and communities. This book offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so it is a timely analysis of the concepts that inform applied theatre and argues that a number of concepts that form cornerstones of the discipline, have become shibboleths in applied theatre thinking, practice and teaching. The book problematises some of these key concepts, specifically regarding change and transformation, safe spaces, impact, exit strategies, ethical practice, process versus product and the concept of the applied theatre practitioner tool kit. Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, Malta, New Zealand, the USA and the UK to consider her key question: is the 21st century the end for applied theatre as it was understood to function at the end of the previous century? Drawing on 20 years of practice in prisons, youth theatres and with street and slum-dwellers, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms a 'nebulous utopia'."--

Shortlisted for the 2022 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize Applied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing across global contexts and communities. However, this proliferation is not unproblematic. A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of some of the concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants. The book problematizes some key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: What might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20-years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia'.

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.

Shortlisted for the 2022 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants. The book problematizes key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: what might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20 years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia'.

Applied Theatre with Youth is a collection of essays that highlight the value and efficacy of applied theatre with young people in a broad range of settings, addressing challenges and offering concrete solutions. This book tackles the vital issues of our time—including, among others, racism, climate crisis, gun violence, immigration, and gender—fostering dialogue, promoting education, and inciting social change. The book is divided into thematic sections, each opening with an essay addressing a range of questions about the benefits, challenges, and learning opportunities of a particular type of applied theatre. These are followed by response essays from theatre practitioners, discussing how their own approach aligns with and/or diverges from that of the initial essay. Each section then ends with a moderated roundtable discussion between the essays’ authors, further exploring the themes, issues, and ideas that they have introduced. With its accessible format and clear language, Applied Theatre with Youth is a valuable resource for theatre practitioners and the growing number of theatre companies with education and community engagement programs. Additionally, it provides essential reading for teachers and students in a myriad of fields: education, theatre, civic engagement, criminal justice, sociology, women and gender studies, environmental studies, disability studies, ethnicity and race studies.

Urban theatre can be described as theatre made with or by those whose lives are marked by the urban landscape and its social limits and possibilities. At the heart of this text lies the question of how theatre can illuminate the urban and how theatre is illuminated by the urban. The city, like a play, is a space where everything adopts multiple meanings. It is an objective thought and a subjective experience, a charged and symbolic thing, as well as a real, material, lived reality. The chapters in this book illustrate the theatre’s uncanny ability to narrate and symbolize the physical and psychic space of the city. Running through all of the pieces presented are the themes of power and of young people’s sense of agency within the structures they dwell in and are shaped by. Through drama education and applied theatre practices, the affinity between the urban and its theatres is radically replaced by marginal spaces, boulevards and schools. As Guillermo Gómez-Peña suggests, the theatre has gone to the people to serve their local and immediate need for a means of holding the urban and the self so that both can be interrogated and re-imagined; so that the various dystopias of urban existence can be envisaged as places of urban solidarity and as utopias, at least, of the mind. This book was originally published as a special issue of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.