In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author shares insights and memories from a career devoted to drama and performance studies. He enthusiastically recounts events, initiatives, and collaborations that have helped sustain his lifelong passion for performance.

Efforts to define creativity have started in the 20th century, with the emergence and spread of psychology as a modern discipline. The relationship between creativity and art education is frequently researched globally in the last twenty years, but studies on the relationship between creativity and performing arts education are few in number.…

The theatre classroom is necessarily a space in dialogue with myths about the marginalisation of theatre as an art and theatre audiences as a public. It is precisely "because" theatre is a marginalised discipline that curricula should incorporate the processes by which the labour of theatre artists changes value and joins the mainstream;…

People who do not know theatre may think the only creative artist in the field is the playwright--with actors, directors, and designers mere "interpreters" of the dramatist's vision. Historically, however, creative mastery and power have passed through different hands. Sometimes, the playwright did the staging. In other periods, leading…

My privileged opportunity to work with renowned Drama theorist, Dorothy Heathcote, in Melbourne in the 1970s, set a foundation for what I now call Theatre as Education research. Formerly a teacher of Secondary Drama, I became very experienced at creating plays with my students, based on their own ideas, or inspired by the stories of the community.…

This article discusses the successes and vulnerabilities associated with combining the pedagogical methods of Theater, Composition, and Community Literacy in the Composition classroom. It examines how the ideas of Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" and Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" can be combined to support…

The application of drama strategies which focus more on meaning than on form can provide an impetus for ESL learners to be more confident about speaking, thereby increasing the quantity of their spoken English. This paper discusses existing research and the author's own experiences in an attempt to highlight the positive effects of improvisations,…

This study attempted to determine whether students participating in a summer camp learn more about a fifth grade history concept of social studies, the Reconstruction Era, via a theater arts production. Data collected for this qualitative study included pre- and post-test drawings, scripted comments, student interviews, teacher interviews, daily…

This article examines relationships among process, product, and playmaking in a southeastern playwriting and performance program for teen girls, Playmaking for Girls (PFG). The authors have chosen to focus on tensions between process and product. Such tensions are present in the challenges teachers experience when privileging student-centered…

Describes a fifth grade teacher's approach to producing plays with her class. The script for a Christmas play about Santa and the metric system is included. (JMB)

The Young Playwrights' Festival is a project of the Dramatists Guild, New York City, for young writers aged 8-18. This article discusses the Festival of 10 plays written by children and presented professionally at New York City's Circle Rep Theatre and the playwriting workshops for children taught by project director Gerald Chapman. (PD)

With the current education climate so focused on accountability, teachers need to ensure that their teaching practices are supported by today's content-specific standards. To meet this need, "A Comprehensive Guide to Readers Theatre" shows not only how to implement Readers Theatre in the classroom but also how to use it to meet current literacy…

Intended for classroom teachers, parents, theater people, and the general public, this book is an account of teaching a fifth grade class to write, direct, and perform their own plays as staged readings, videotapes, radio plays, and full stage productions. It can be read as a story or it can be used as a step-by-step guide for teachers. Each…

Describes Ellen Norman Melamed's Playwriting Project, a 15-session classroom program that requires each participating student to write and design a play, to do at least one revision of each stage of his/her work, and to submit a critical assessment of the experience at the end of the term. (PRA)

Presents a sample of college and university screenwriting programs for writers and directors. Includes opinions of faculty and professionals in the field of writing on the specific objectives of screenwriting courses, as well as methods of teaching. (JMF)