Applied Theatre

“These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished” Theater of War / The Philoctetes Project

by Peter Meineck

Arion 17.2  Spring/Summer 2009

Arts-based approach and ABI, Gray et al

by Julia Gray

"Mary Robinson and the Dramatic Art of the Comeback." Co-written with Terry Robinson. Studies in Romanticism 48 (2009): 219-256.

by Michael Gamer

Winner of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Article Prize prize for Best Essay, 2010.

Young Voices - An Applied Theatre Method Aiming to Bridge the Gap Between Youth and Adults

by yiota demetriou

Thesis for MA by Research at SANM - University of Hull, 2010-2011

This dissertation focuses on an applied theatre project, Young Voices that has attempted to develop a method, which... more This dissertation focuses on an applied theatre project, Young Voices that has attempted to develop a method, which inquires how performance forms can facilitate youth inclusion. Issues related to young people have been discussed extensively throughout time and within many disciplines. Stanley Cohen (1972), J.J Arnett (1999), Sharon Nichols and Thomas Good (2004) and Monica Barry (2005), have examined the ‘anxieties’ that are often associated with the perceived image of young people in society and how these may often lead to their social exclusion. This method is to be used by youth workers with their role as ‘intercessors’ between young people and the adults that surround them (i.e. their parents, guardians, teachers); it adopts Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) ethos, uses elements of his Forum Theatre (FT) workshop techniques and the theory/technique of verbatim theatre. The project’s research process is in the form of applied and verbatim theatre workshops; performance presentation and a performance lecture addressed to youth workers. The method looks at increasing and facilitating communication between various isolated adolescent groups through applied theatre using various ‘Boalian’ workshop techniques and FT to identify the participants ‘oppressions’. It intends at facilitating communication through applied theatre and verbatim theatre between youth and youth workers, by capturing the participants ‘oppressions’ and presenting them to an audience of their peers and youth workers. And it aims at facilitating communication through the combination of applied theatre and verbatim theatre with the attempt of beginning to bridge the gap amongst young people and the adults around them, through a recommended step by suggesting the involvement of the participant’s surrounding adults. The Young Voices method has been developed from the collaboration of several youth groups from around Scarborough and its district. The complete process attempts to assist teenagers in discussing their concerns from their own perspectives towards empowering them and raising awareness about how their opinions should be required for matters that concern them.

Performing Orphanage Experience: Applied Theatre in a Refugee Camp in Jordan

by Fadi Skeiker

Published in Applied Theatre Researcher

This paper focuses on the role of applied theatre in empowering Palestinian youths who live in one of the biggest... more This paper focuses on the role of applied theatre in empowering Palestinian youths who live in one of the biggest refugee camps in the Middle East. An applied theatre workshop, using personal
stories of the participants, is analysed to examine the achievements and challenges that face the facilitator while leading the workshop. The facilitator’s journey in organising, leading and reflecting on his practice serves as a microcosm for the case of applied theatre in the Middle East,
a part of the world where applied theatre culture has not yet spread and/or is not yet fully recognised as a tool for addressing personal growth and the resulting social change.

Walking with Victor Turner: A Theater-Making Immersion Event

by Gerard (Jerry) Boland

Newspaper Theatre: Applying performance-based learning to journalism education

by Gerard (Jerry) Boland

Article No. 4 Conscientising Cultural Performance: Theatre-making Amongst Event-Specific Popular Audiences

by Gerard (Jerry) Boland

Article 3 Devising Original Entertainments for Popular Audiences:'New Lamps for Old!'

by Gerard (Jerry) Boland

Coming into Presence: Discovering the Ethics and Aesthetics of Performing Oral Histories within the Montreal Life Stories Project

by Nisha Sajnani

Published in Alt. Theatre: Cultural Diversity and the Stage, 2011.
Special Issue on Oral History & Performance

Witnessing Otherness: Shaping Ethical Visioning in Applied Theatre Research

by Tuck Leong Lee

Graduate studies academic exercise.

On the 9th September, 2010, Amrita Performing Arts performed ‘Breaking the Silence’ at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.... more On the 9th September, 2010, Amrita Performing Arts performed ‘Breaking the Silence’ at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. In this play, actors performed memories of life under the Khmer Rouge regime. The theme that carried through the play was a plea for reconciliation between the survivors, and the Khmer Rouge soldiers and their collaborators. In its ‘transplant’ to Singapore, presumably the dramaturgy remained much intact — some of the performance ‘language’ were lost on the audience. At a pivotal and stylized rape scene, some members of the audience laughed.  Watching the performance, a few questions that gave rise to this paper, surrounding the practice of ethics in Theatre for Development (TfD) — a subset of applied theatre. They are —
(1) Should the play be taken out of Cambodia in the first place?
(2) Was the performance in Singapore still an example of applied theatre, since it no longer serves an ethical function of social transformation?
(3) Was the leadership of ‘Western’ collaborators an example of colonial incursion into Cambodian culture?
This paper addresses these questions of ethics from the framework of Emmanuel Lévinas’ philosophy.

The council estate: representation, space and the potential for performance

by Katie Beswick

Performing liminal citizenship: using applied theatre techniques to civically engage international students

by Fadi Skeiker

Article 4 Theatrical Reflections of Health: Physically Impacting Health-Based Research

by Julia Gray

After the Crash: A play about brain injury

by Julia Gray