Drama is unique in providing an (inter)active context wherein participants can comprehend and stretch the limits of their day-to-day realities through the embodiment of critical reflection and both rehearsed and improvised action. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence from the authors' work as teachers, drama facilitators, and researchers that drama affords a generative nexus between the students' own identities and more expansive understandings of school-based literacy practices. They examine data from two separate multilingual fifth-grade classroom studies to show how drama can open critical spaces within which students negotiate diverse perspectives and generate knowledge that may serve their own educational and social empowerment. The authors have identified two dynamic features of drama that have been instrumental in orienting their respective teaching and research communities--both ethnically and linguistically diverse fifth-grade classrooms in the United States--towards consciousness raising and social action. The first feature is drama's ability to provide, from a critical literacy perspective, a space to expose power relationships and adjudicate between competing beliefs and values, which become alive and tangible through role-play. A second closely related feature is drama's potential as a vehicle for children to mobilize their cultural/social identities and engage issues and audiences relevant to their immediate lives. The authors conclude by suggesting ways in drama to develop similar experiences in different learning contexts. (Contains 2 figures.)