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In this article, we consider the relationship between education and applied theatre, the growth of applied theatre curricula within Canada, the issues that presently we identify as ‘productive tensions,’ and political and social concerns that now frame the ways in which we shape and conduct our practice. Our thoughts and suggestions, while limited by those constraints we offered above, may serve to open a space for discussion on what is and what might be. In our view—looking back over two decades of development in the field of applied theatre programs in Canada—there are a number of tensions that have come into clearer focus as applied theatre has been finding its feet. We see these tensions as productive and offer them not as criticisms but as opportunities to reconsider methodologies in light of a post-dramatic world. Applied theatre programs tend to operate in theatre departments that mostly focus on training for independent careers in text-based mainstream theatre. Such an intention may make it difficult for some who see theatre as a path to careers different from performance and/or production. Certainly, the recent addition of applied theatre to university curricula has revealed some interesting pressures. The division between the hierarchical traditions of theatremaking, with the top-down approach of director-designer-actor-audience, may be beginning to shift with the advent of new thinking. The ways of working that are integral approaches to applied theatremaking require a broader interdisciplinarity of courses than those traditionally offered in departments of theatre.

As we prepare for the 9th IDIERI in New Zealand, this paper revisits the issues foregrounded at the 2015 Institute and offers possible prompts for considering the state of our art today. A meditati...

What events, patterns, or people have shaped the field or marked its milestones since Youth Theatre Journal’s (YTJ’s) first issue in 1986? We put the call out to YTJ readers, this rich array of ent...

A number of years ago, there was an article in our local newspaper about a pregnant woman who had just been diagnosed with late stage metastatic melanoma. Her history was not unlike that of many ot...

Distancing at close range: investigating the significance of distancing in drama education, by Stig Eriksson, Vasa, Norway, ABO, 2009, 302 pp., ISBN 978-952-12-2314-3 Performing as Mother Courage i...

As editors, our intention for this section was to provide a multifaceted lens on to Dorothy Heathcote's enormous influence on our field. We were anxious that the contributions did not take the form...

In this paper we look at current brain research in an attempt to bring about a rebalancing of the traditional, or measured, curriculum to include the arts as imperative pedagogy. As drama teachers, the art of teaching (and our pedagogy) is allied to Anderson, Ewing and Gibson's (2007) discussion which draws attention to the components that quality teaching embraces. Teaching is more than the delivery of content and must be responsive to the social and cultural contexts of the classroom. Pedagogy attends to the emotional and intellectual needs of each student and involves a partnership between learners and teachers, of skills, knowledges and understandings. Brain research enables us to understand the significance of such things as: variety; movement social relationships context low-risk environments; pleasure and how these are most effectively embedded in the arts (e.g., Damasio, 1999, 2010; Goleman, 2006; Jensen, 2008 Iacoboni, 2008 Ratey, 2008 Willis, 2007). While any of the arts (music, dance, l...

This short paper considers the question: what of the future of drama in education? It suggests that perhaps, because we are artists, the future is already in play. If that is so, then we need to address those questions of value, advocacy and marginalisation more rigorously while, at the same time, addressing the impact of technology on empathic development.

The post-modern curriculum, drawing on chaos and complexity theory, recognises the realities of a world in flux and posits that the teacher and the class are always teetering in the midst of chaos, ‘not linked by chains of causality but [by] layers of meaning, recursive dynamics, non-linear effects and chance’ (Osberg 2008, viii). The phenomenon of such (paradoxically) ‘constant’ change is a living part of the realisation of Everyday Theatre company performances that are, in turn, specifically designed to effect shifts or changes in understanding for their audience participants. It is this changing, changeful, changeable, change-ringing context that we investigate in this article as we look at the layering of the experiences of Everyday Theatre through the lens of a post-modern curriculum of complexity. For us, the work of Everyday Theatre exemplifies the post-modern curriculum at its best, confirming what we as drama educators have intuited: a rich pedagogy unfolds in the midst of chaos as students meet ...

This paper describes the results of a five-year project to develop an effective structure of delivery that engenders confidence in teachers new to drama.

(1985). Working with drama: A different order of experience. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 24, Educating Through Drama, pp. 211-218.