This article is based upon research into a participatory Theatre in Education (TiE) programme that toured the West Midlands in 2009, funded by the UK's PREVENT initiative intended to counter the radicalisation of young British nationals by extremist political groups. The article provides a summary of the TiE programme and then presents…

An artists' residency in a primary school in regional Victoria Australia staged a production of Shakespeare's "King Lear" in a local theatre. A qualitative, reflective practitioner research study into this project collected and analysed data from participating children and their community audience that gave some insight into their…

Culturally enriching field trips matter. They produce significant benefits for students on a variety of educational outcomes that schools and communities care about. This experiment on the effects of field trips to see live theater demonstrates that seeing plays is an effective way to teach academic content; increases student tolerance by…

In this article, we consider the aesthetic, political and pedagogical strengths of a verbatim theatre performance, "The Middle Place" by Project: Humanity, a play that explores the experiences of shelter youth in Toronto, Canada. This ethnographic study moved from drama classrooms into theatres and charted audience responses to the…

Julie Salverson, a Canadian scholar-practitioner, has long challenged the assumption that personal storytelling within Community-Based Theatre is necessarily therapeutic. Salverson critiques an "aesthetic of injury," arguing that theatre practitioners have foregrounded personal narratives in a way that reinscribes a "victim…

When the lights come up on College of Menominee Nation's theater productions they illuminate the stories that students want to tell. These stories have traveled from the campfires, to classrooms, and then to the stage. They are original in execution but build on a long tradition of Indigenous storytelling. The stories are specific to the students,…

In 2005-2009, the author researched the theatre-making practices of young people in selected black townships near Cape Town, South Africa. Township theatre groups comprised secondary school learners and out-of-school youth who join together to learn about and make theatre, perform and watch each other. These theatre practitioners do not describe…

This article highlights the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, California, which is one successful model of a community-based arts education organization whose central mission is to provide these deep art-rich experiences for students from low socio-economic status (SES) communities, who in this instance are predominately African…

Open Stages is Britain's biggest amateur theatre project, a hugely ambitious scheme to bring the professional and amateur theatre worlds together. It is a learning project but, as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Ian Wainwright tells this author, it is not only the amateurs who are learning. Wainwright states that the amateur and professional…

Within the last twenty years there have been a growing number of prospective students interested in pursuing musical theater (MT) training in colleges and universities throughout the United States. To meet this demand, the number of schools offering baccalaureate MT degrees has also grown. However, information on how to assess the music and…

With the economic collapse of 2008, there has been a dramatic increase in government emphasis on the value of science and technology-based study in the nation's high schools as a means for the United States to remain competitive in the world economic market. Financial, political and societal support for the hard sciences, coupled with…

This article revisits radical playgrounds of the past to offer a productive dialogue with recent debates on how child environments can foster citizenship and community. Joan Littlewood's playground projects are familiar examples of theatre techniques being applied to develop children's sense of belonging in a city. This essay considers the less…

Dallas artist Jon Flaming's deep love of Texas is evident in his paintings and sculpture. Although he has created one sculptural Texas theater, his work primarily showcases old Texas barbershops, vacant homes, and gas stations. In this article, the author describes how her students, inspired by Flaming's works, created three-dimensional historical…

Over the years that I have taken secondary school students to the theatre, the the digital revolution has moved through schools, classrooms, and even theatres, calling into question my goal of contributing positively to students' identity formation through exposure to live plays. Responding to calls to examine the ways in which young people's…

Contact Theatre is an Arts Council of England-funded theatre on the campus of the University of Manchester, in the north of England. From its re-opening in 1999 until the end of 2008, it was led by Artistic Director John McGrath who created a programme of theatre performances and projects specifically geared to young people (between the ages of 13…