This essay considers the performance context and aesthetics of "Journey Woman", a play devised to initiate a week-long rehabilitative groupwork programme for female prisoners. Although Geese Theatre UK are one of the country's longest-established companies specialising in drama work within the criminal justice sector, this 2006 piece is…

In the autumn of 2007 and spring of 2008 the author performed an adapted version of Dario Fo and Franca Rame's one-woman play "Peace Mom" (retitled for Canadian audiences as "Peace Mum") about American mother and peace activist Cindy Sheehan. The play was performed for University of Victoria Applied Theatre students and also in a number of…

In July 1999, the Wedding Community Play was performed in Belfast. A much-celebrated event at the time, the Wedding Play took audiences into private houses inside Loyalist and Republican estates, then on to a public venue for the performance of a cross-community wedding. Gerri Moriarty has already written about some of the difficulties encountered…

This essay explores how viewing a single Theatre for Young Audiences production might affect the attitudes, values, and/or beliefs of adolescent spectators. Data is drawn from a mixed-methods case study performed with middle school students who viewed a professional performance for young people, and is considered through the lens of cognitive…

One of the rhetorical dimensions on which theatre exists is the rhetoric of production. This implies that the production, through examples, takes and urges an attitude toward the text. This argument provides a foundation for both the nature and the implications of interpreters theatre productions that advocate social issues. Theatrical…

The artistic quality of creativity is not unique to artists but is carried out more skillfully by those who are artists than by those who are not. The artist participates with the rest of humanity in the essential part of creativity, communication, and develops a consonance--a resonance--between the work of art and the audience. The ritual of…

Argues that an audience is real rather than abstract and is necessary to the art of the theater. Demonstrates that audiences are too diverse to be described by an abstraction; audiences affect performances; and interchange occurs between actors and audiences. (See CS 705 537.) (PD)

Refutes several of Campbell's arguments that the audience is abstract rather than real. (JMF)

Defends the notion of the abstract audience. Questions Gillespie's concept of audience adaptation and the relationship among play, actor, and audience. (JMF)

Examines style in children's theatre, focusing on pantomime, vaudeville, and theatre of the absurd. Traces shifts in the appeal of these styles from adult to children's theatre and then possibly to extinction. (PD)

Discusses the author's life experiences that led her to synthesize a statement supporting Theatre in Our Schools Month. (RS)

This article explores the use of ironic performance in education, particularly around issues of human rights. I examine my own efforts to engage audiences with the history of domestic espionage and sabotage by the intelligence agencies of the United States. This is a history well known to some marginalized counterpublics (see Fraser, 1997), but…

Develops the argument that considering theatrical performances to be rhetorical transactions between actors and audiences is both inappropriate and critically unprofitable. (See EJ 240 170-173.) (PD)

Examines Federal Theatre productions of Pinocchio (1935-1939) as examples of children's theater presented with a high degree of professionalism and concern for the child audience. Discusses the philosophy of director Yasha Frank, the visual elements of the productions, and audience reaction. (PD)

Argues that theater is aimed at and presented to an ideal or abstract audience. Discusses the implications of performing for an actual audience, adaptation to various audiences, and the concept of the audience as an evaluative device. (See CS 705 536.) (JMF)