This research examined whether professional mentoring could have a positive effect on the occupational self-efficacy of autistic performing arts professionals. We compared the outcomes of one group who received mentoring to a waitlist control group. 26 participants took part in this study: 15 autistic mentees and 11 mentors, three of whom were…

In 2011, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) began a series of collaborations with established amateur theatre groups from across the UK. The initiative now known as Open Stages became one of the most ambitious educational outreach programmes ever run by the RSC, engaging hundreds of amateur theatre practitioners in a process of skills sharing and…

This paper discusses a project that used comedy workshops to explore the humour of autistic teenagers, focusing the discussion around three traits often -- and negatively -- associated with autism. The paper will then point to ways of rethinking these traits, and argue that doing so opens up a space for considering the aesthetics of comedy on the…

For over ten years, London's National Theatre, under the banner of "Connections", has been commissioning ten professional playwrights per year, each to write a play for young people. The plays are workshopped and performed by secondary schools, colleges and youth theatres across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and are presented in a…

This article focuses on aspects of devising and staging a play written for a group of women prisoners. The project raised issues concerning the nature of community theatre in secure institutions. Arts work in a community context is often predicated on notions of intervention and transformation. A central question underpinning the project concerned…

Explains that criminal justice agencies have acknowledged that imaginative and engaging styles of education are crucial to rehabilitative work with offenders. Investigates the ways in which a drama-based cognitive-behavioral program in the United Kingdom for violent offenders can construct and review its theoretical approach through practice.…