This article concerns how the normative matter of body hair is playfully encountered within a theatre practice for teenage girls. By working with Deleuzian-inspired theories, playfulness is understood as embodied doings, interwoven with the local context. The article explores how playfulness is enacted in relation to the everyday, in particular…

Guided by the following questions: (1) What are the experiences of immigrant children attending schools in communities experiencing police brutality and anti-immigrant sentiments? (2) How do middle school children of immigrants visually represent their experiences with legal violence? and (3) What are children's visions of freedom and community…

Intercultural studies have underexplored the issue of children's theatre as a tool for symbolic representations of (new, hybrid) identities. In this paper, I analyze two theatrical productions addressing both Spanish society and Romanian diaspora (first/second generation) to answer these questions: how are diasporic identities re-constructed in…

As youth media creation programmes proliferate, educators and practitioners are learning how to develop stories that interrupt hegemony and point to new ways of being. This research, carried out in an ethnically diverse middle school, highlights the way digital storytelling as an applied theatre praxis brought complexity to student work. The role…

This study draws on ethnographic research from three co-ethnic community-based, arts programs serving immigrant youth to examine the ways in which immigrant educators serve as "curriculum texts" for youth. It illustrates the curricular nature of the experiences, being and interactions of immigrant educators who share with youth the same…

Despite rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and inequitable access to education and services, few studies have addressed the unique sex education needs of newcomer youth in Canada and other increasingly demographically diverse Western countries. This study involved the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel and…

This paper draws upon learning from three action research projects conducted as part of a Europe-wide project exploring young people's social and political participation. Challenging dominant discourses about what 'counts' as participation and what does not, the paper explores how, through the action research projects, young people engaged in…

Background/Context: Community-based youth theater programs afford youth opportunities to explore and "author" new identities by "performing writing." Yet, we know much less about the ways in which immigrant youth are exploring struggles and changes within their families and ethnic community. We particularly lack research about…

This article draws on ethnographic research of a youth theatre program within a Hmong arts organization to explore the ways in which a culturally responsive program nurtured critical consciousness among Hmong immigrant youth. Hmong youth "named" struggles with stereotypes and acculturation expectations, and constructed positive ethnic…

This issue of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series" seeks to grapple with the complexity of patriotism, particularly in relation to its workings in the lives of teachers and students in schools. Like it or not, schools teach (about) patriotism implicitly if not explicitly. Therefore, much consideration needs to go into what schools…

This study is centered on a youth center in Berlin, Germany, that serves migrant females. It draws on the anthropology of performance and the concept of "friction" to argue for an understanding of performances of belonging, where migrant girls stage acts of inclusion through creative encounters with the forces of integration to negotiate…

This paper analyses the cultural practices that were introduced in a radio improv class on the first day of Youth Radio Arts for immigrant students, and how these practices served as resources to mediate students' understanding of, and realisation of 'voice' over time. The theory-method combines insights from interactional ethnography and…

Feminist action research interrogates gendered dynamics in the development of a collective consciousness. A group of immigrant Latina women (Latinas) from the Caribbean and Central America employed community-based theater as an instrument to mobilize diverse audiences against discriminatory practices and policies. Based on their theater work, I…

A diverse group of student teachers in an alternative certification program participated in seminars integrating Boal's "Theater of the Oppressed" (TO) activities. Participants created images and enacted scenes that recreated interactions with their students and also rehearsed ideas for taking action in the classroom. The research,…

This paper examines a community theatre project in Kaohsiung County, Taiwan that aimed to tackle domestic violence through a collaboration between local community female elders and the facilitator. The paper investigates how an outside facilitator could unfix the assumed community identities which tend to exclude outsiders or sub-groups, in this…