In this essay, we critically reflect upon the ephemeral nature of theatre. Such a reflection becomes particularly important in participatory refugee theatre, since the process of participants' bearing witness to experiences of trauma and violence is emphasised as the core impetus. To this end, we investigate the experiences of Syrian young adults…

Drawing from six-months of action research with spectacle theatre-makers in Chicago, this study explores multimodal, expeditionary practice of teaching artists who apprenticed girls through Redmoon Theatre's Dramagirls program. Concepts of new literacy design and aesthetic experience illustrate teaching in socio-semiotic and material worldcraft,…

Despite opposition to 'queering the text' by established Shakespeare critics, this essay sets out to ponder the possibility of teaching Shakespeare in a queer context. The essay begins by examining the social and sexual conditions of the early modern period, making the observation that there were a wide variety of sexualities, moral attitudes, and…

This ethnodrama communicates the lived experience of an outstanding teacher of English who worked in the Chicago Public Schools for more than 20 years. Excerpts from three semi-structured interviews have been constructed into a one-woman show that uses music, dance, and the art of theater to convey the spiritual beauty of ambitious, urban teaching…

This article explores the use of poetic inquiry in a transnational competence-building Shadow Play Project. Based on journals from four Nepalese preschool teacher educators, I present and interpret examples of data poems that portray the teachers' experiences of ownership in the project. My discussion intends to make explicit some aspects of the…

Incorporating the arts into the classroom through the study of poetry and writing can improve literacy with the connection to the lyrical movement of dance, music, and art. Through the arts, teachers can guide students in exploring figurative language, tone, rhythm, and imagery as it pertains to the arts and its relationship to the voice and…

Building upon a First Nations circle metaphor this paper explores how employing the interrelated concepts of pedagogy, poiesis, politics, and public positioning can provide a more holistic approach in designing and assessing arts-based projects be they for instructional and/or research purposes. It takes a "postmodern" stance (Giroux, 1991),…

This paper will critique the values embedded in the Western classical tradition from a Foucauldian perspective. It will identify issues of power as a central problem for Western culture which is developing into a monoculture in which many people are disempowered. It identifies the role of the dialogic imagination in challenging the dominant…

The Global Writes (GW) model is a well-designed performing arts integrated literacy program that builds local and global support among students, teachers, and arts partners through the use of innovative technologies. Through local partnerships between schools and arts organizations forged by GW, classroom teachers and local teaching artists build…

This qualitative study of sixth graders in a language arts classroom explores how interpreting poems for choral reading deepened, enriched, and expanded their interpretations of poetry. Key factors in the process included students' sense of freedom to interpret poetry in multiple ways, listening to their own and others' voices speaking the lines…

The world of contemporary poetry can be extremely polarised, most obviously between the so-called page poets, who are often academically trained in creative writing programmes, and the so-called stage poets, who are performers as well as poets and, even if they were so inclined, would be hard pressed to find a college or university where they…

The Arts Partners program, run collaboratively by the New York City Public Schools and other city offices and agencies, was designed to help community school districts initiate or enrich arts education experiences in the basic curriculum. In its pilot phase (from March to June, 1984), the project linked 13 school districts with 13 arts agencies to…

This study evaluated the Artists in the Schools (AIS) program of the Tampa-Hillsborough County schools, Florida. Over 100 artists and 3000 teachers who participated in the AIS program taught architecture, dance, fiction writing, filmmaking, music, photography, poetry, and theatre to over 100,000 elementary and secondary students. The program…