"Applied Theatre is the first study to assist practitioners and students to develop critical frameworks for planning and implementing their own theatrical projects. This reader-friendly text considers an international range of case studies in applied theatre through discussion questions, practical activities and detailed analysis of specific theatre projects globally."--Provided by the publisher.

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.

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.

Philip Taylor offers strategies for using theatre to raise awareness, propose alternatives, provide healing, and implement community change.

Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth argues that theatre artists must re-imagine how and why they facilitate performance practices with young people. Rapid globalization and advances in media and technology continue to change the ways that people engage with and understand the world around them. Drawing on pedagogical, aesthetic, and theoretical threads of applied theatre and media practices, this book presents practitioners, scholars, and educators with innovative approaches to devising and performing digital stories. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of digital storytelling as an applied theatre practice. Alrutz explores how participatory and mediated performance practices can engage the wisdom and experience of youth; build knowledge about self, others and society; and invite dialogue and deliberation with audiences. In doing so, she theorizes digital storytelling as a site of possibility for critical and relational practices, feminist performance pedagogies, and alliance building with young people.

The Applied Theatre Reader is the first book to bring together new case studies of practice by leading practitioners and academics in the field and beyond, with classic source texts from writers such as Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Mikhail Bakhtin, Augusto Boal, and Chantal Mouffe. This book divides the field into key themes, inviting critical interrogation of issues in applied theatre whilst also acknowledging the multi-disciplinary nature of its subject. It crosses fields such as: theatre in educational settings prison theatre community performance theatre in conflict resolution and reconciliation interventionist theatre theatre for development. This collection of critical thought and practice is essential to those studying or participating in the performing arts as a means for positive change.

This book analyses the work of applied theatre practitioners using a new framework of ‘responsivity’ to make visible their unique expertise. In-depth investigation of practice combines with theorisation to provide a fresh view of the work of artists and facilitators. Case studies are drawn from community contexts: with women, mental health service users, refugees, adults with a learning disability, older people in care, and young people in school. Common skills and qualities are given a vocabulary to help define applied theatre work, such as awareness, anticipation, adaptation, attunement, and responsiveness. The Applied Theatre Artist is of scholarly, practical, and educational interest. The book offers detailed analysis of how skilled theatre artists make in-action decisions within socially engaged participatory projects. Rich description of in-session activity reveals what workshop facilitators actually do and how they think, offering a rare focus in applied theatre.

Are you a drama student looking for other ways to practice in your field? Perhaps you teach drama students or as a teacher want to enliven your lessons. Are you an actor who wants to diversify your role repertoire? Are you a therapist who uses active approaches to promote your clients' creative potentials? Maybe you want to be involved in a meaningful form of social action? This is the book for you Thirty-two innovators share their approaches to interactive and improvisational drama, applied theatre, and performance, for education, therapy, recreation, community-building, and personal empowerment.You are holding the only book that covers the full range of dynamic methods that expand the theatre arts into new settings. There are approaches that don't require memorizing scripts or mounting expensive productions. Dramatic engagement should be recognized as addressing a far broader purpose. There are ways that are playful, and types of non-scripted drama in which the audience become co-actors. This present book is unique in offering ways for participants to become more spontaneous and involved.

This book analyzes and theorizes the efficacy of using applied theater as a tool to address refugee issues of displacement, trauma, adjustment, and psychological well-being, in addition to split community belonging. Fadi Skeiker connects refugee narratives to the themes of imagination, home, gender, and conservatism, among others. Each chapter outlines the author’s applied theater practice, as a Syrian, with and for Syrian refugees in the countries of Jordan, Germany, and the United States. This book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of applied theater studies and refugee studies.

Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing is the first volume in the field to address the role that theatre, drama and performance have in relation to promoting, developing and sustaining health and wellbeing in diverse communities. Challenging concepts and understanding of health, wellbeing and illness, it offers insight into different approaches to major health issues through applied performance. With a strong emphasis on the artistry involved in performance-based health responses, situated within a history of the field of practice, the volume is divided into two sections: Part One examines some of the key questions around research and practice in applied performance in health and wellbeing, specifically addressing the different regional challenges that dominate the provision of health care and influence wellbeing: how the ageing population of the global north creates pressure on lifetime healthcare provision, while the global south is dominated by a higher birth rate and a larger population under 15 years old. Part Two comprises case studies and interviews from international practitioners that reflect the diversity of practices across the world and in particular differences between work in the northern and southern hemispheres. These case studies include a sanitation project in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s, and the sanitation and rural development projects initiated by the travelling theatre troupes of a number of University theatre departments in Africa – Makerere in Kampala, Uganda; Botswana; Lesotho and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – which began in the 1960s. It considers the emergence of Theatre for Development's use as a health approach, considering the work of Laedza Batanani and the influences of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed.