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This paper reflects on the systematic interconnections between creative workers and higher education institutions (HEIs). Despite the latter representing key intermediaries in creative industries' development and creative workers' career trajectories, the relationship between the two has rarely been framed in a relational and systemic framework. To do so, we chose the UK theatre sector as the case study and adopted a mixed methodology: UK Higher Education Statistical Agency quantitative data, which informed us on the employment state of workers 6 months after graduation, were combined with 21 semi-structured interviews with actors and actresses to understand the complexity of their relationship with HEIs. HEIs emerge as the initial door to paid jobs and professional networks for graduates and as employers for those in the later stages of their careers: the lack of formal ways to access jobs and the precarious working conditions for performers make hence HEIs a crucial force in shaping workers' careers. Furthermore, HE remains throughout the career of theatre workers an important part of their portfolio, providing reliable income and more stable working patterns when needed. The paper concludes with the findings' policy implications and the future role of HEIs in creative and cultural ecosystems.

Co-authors Lee and Peters collaborated across 2019-2021 on a community-engaged project with Carclew's ExpressWay Arts. They ask, when your creative practice is premised on relationship building, belonging and care, how do you step away from projects responsibly, meaningfully and carefully? This article explores how establishing rituals of closure in every workshop, explicitly naming the ending, acknowledging how the creative relationship may change after the projects conclusion, and celebrating the work, are four approaches that can support facilitators to finish projects with care.

Case studies allow for in-depth exploration of multi-faceted issues found in real world information system development projects. The TheatreWorks of Southern Indiana case examines the requirements of a local community theatre group as it strives to incorporate and leverage database technology in a unique non-profit performing arts setting.

Creative arts programs have potential for promoting psychological well-being amongst young people. The present research used a mixed-methods approach to address the mechanisms involved in the well-being of marginalized young people engaged in creative arts participation, based on self-determination theory. A preliminary quantitative analysis investigated the levels of basic needs satisfaction (BNS) that 42 young people reported experiencing at home, at school, and at a youth theater organization. Young people reported the highest level of BNS at the theater, and there was a marginally significant trend suggesting this had a positive association with well-being, over and above the effects of BNS at home and school. Nonetheless, Bayesian factor indicated more data is required to confirm this observation. Subsequently, an in-depth qualitative analysis was undertaken with semi-structured interviews with three young people as well as with their parents and schoolteachers. Thematic analysis highlighted the ways satisfaction of autonomy (through empowerment), relatedness (through the establishment of group membership), and competence (through creating a safe space for young people to be heard) allowed the young people to develop positive future aspirations. Study implications and directions for further work are explored in relation to the way that creative arts participation enables young people to explore possible goals and give them an understanding of what they can achieve.

This paper describes the textual practices of kindergarten children as they co-created and participated in a movie theatre play context within their rural classroom. Data informing this paper were drawn from classroom videos of children (aged 3-5 years) as they engaged in activities associated with the movie theatre, field notes from action research meetings with the classroom teacher and early childhood educator, and the texts created by the children while participating in the initiative. In relation to our research questions, we coded and then identified patterns in the children's text-making activities and the texts they composed. Our analysis found that the children created texts in preparation for and while participating in the play initiative, revealing their emerging knowledge of the alphabetic principle and print genres. Through their creation of textual materials and during their enactment of roles within the play context, the children also demonstrated their understandings about the social functions of different texts. Insights from this analysis build on the literature regarding young children's early writing development through play and may encourage educators to co-create dramatic play initiatives with their students to extend literacy learning beyond the acquisition of literacy skills.

This article is the result of the experience as a teacher and historian, and especially of the doctoral thesis, defended in the year 2017, through the Graduate Program in Education and Contemporaneity at the State University of Bahia, construction of a 3D modeling solution for the São João da Bahia Theater, considered as a pole and reflection of the praxis of the Savior of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. The conception was developed from the problem of the inexistence of a modeling in the socio-constructivist perspective for the São João da Bahia Theater. In this way, the research aimed at possibilities for the subject, understood here as intellectual in the Gramscian perspective, to be a historian of oneself (subject subject), to build new knowledge (metacognition) through meaningful learning, mediated by the practice of visitation and interaction with the museum proposed.

There are several, primarily carried out in the Western World, that have explored the reasons why parents' choice a school, which they consider best meets their children's needs and parental aspirations for their children. In order to contribute to the established knowledge it was essential to conduct an explore into parents' reasons for their selection private or public school in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Such an investigation had not been conducted previously. This article details determent a factors highly regarded as effecting parental decision making: school facilities factors and physical education and sport activities factor. Analysis and discussion along with the study's conclusions and recommendations will be cited. Randomly selected parents, whose children attend private or public schools in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia were invited to complete a standardised questionnaire after which to participate in a semi-structured interview to identify factors that influenced their preference for school. Two methodologies analysis of the reasons given highlighted demonstrating the frequency of cited range of reasons: school facilities, Such as computer services, the classrooms are a good environment and the school has a good theatre. Also the sport activities factor, For example, good outdoor games. And good indoor games those identified as the main elements that influenced their selection decision making.

This article aims to discuss the use of postage stamps in everyday teaching. The first part presents a brief clarification of the basic philatelic terms found in the text. The second part presents the ways in which philatelic collections can be used in the teaching of specific subject matters. Part 3 contains five teaching suggestions as small classroom projects using postage stamps as the main teaching material. Finally, the empirical part 4 presents a brief project about ancient Greek theatre which was implemented to a Greek primary school.

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 Americans and Hispanics. How the East Bay Center has survived and grown from a modest start in 1968 to a $15.4 million capital campaign and building renovation is a model of how multicultural community-based organizations can serve their constituents and grow and mature in cities that are not economically vibrant. Looking at the lessons learned, but more especially how the Center has managed to retain institutional integrity and quality of services, can assist other organizations to likewise thrive.

The purpose of this study was to find out if 3D stereoscopic presentation of information in a movie format changes a viewer's experience of the movie content. Four possible pathways from 3D presentation to memory and learning were considered: a direct connection based on cognitive neuroscience research; a connection through "immersion" in that 3D presentations could provide additional sensorial cues (e.g., depth cues) that lead to a higher sense of being surrounded by the stimulus; a connection through general interest such that 3D presentation increases a viewer's interest that leads to greater attention paid to the stimulus (e.g., "involvement"); and a connection through discomfort, with the 3D goggles causing discomfort that interferes with involvement and thus with memory. The memories of 396 participants who viewed two-dimensional (2D) or 3D movies at movie theaters in Southern California were tested. Within three days of viewing a movie, participants filled out an online anonymous questionnaire that queried them about their movie content memories, subjective movie-going experiences (including emotional reactions and "presence") and demographic backgrounds. The responses to the questionnaire were subjected to path analyses in which several different links between 3D presentation to memory (and other variables) were explored. The results showed there were no effects of 3D presentation, either directly or indirectly, upon memory. However, the largest effects of 3D presentation were on emotions and immersion, with 3D presentation leading to reduced positive emotions, increased negative emotions and lowered immersion, compared to 2D presentations. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)

The pedagogical principle of experiential learning embodied in the oral interpretation of literature through Readers' Theater provides an avenue to accomplish a seemingly daunting task. Students' participation in reading, interpreting, discussing, writing, assessing, and performing their own creative responses to a literary work promotes a learning activity that leaves an indelible mark on their educational process as they explore complex and abstract levels of thinking--in real time, no less. The activity entices students out of the virtual world of technology to explore a tangible sphere of performance. The thought processes that the activity demands cover the gamut of Bloom's taxonomy of skills, which defines levels of intellectual behavior important to learning. The synthesis and evaluation elements at the top of the taxonomy demand creative behavior. Anderson and Krathwohl's revision of the taxonomy--remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating--also places creativity at the top of the hierarchy of skills.

The authors report on two projects in which the role of documents as temporal boundary objects mediating information practices across multiple timelines was explored. It has been suggested that studying workplace documents will uncover the information practices of professionals beyond traditional information needs and uses studies. Two workplaces were studied: a professional theatre production and a midwifery clinic. Both settings are communities constructed partly through textual dynamics and both have a pre-production phase leading to an opening night. In the theatre setting, qualitative interviews with the cast and crew and document analysis of the prompt book were the means of data collection. The midwifery clinic setting was investigated by means of interviews and followups with 16 midwife-client pairs and document analysis of the antenatal record. Preliminary thematic analysis pertaining to time and information was conducted on interview transcripts and the relevant documents. It was possible to show several instances of both the prompt book and the antenatal record being treated as a timeline by the various professionals using them. The authors conclude with a discussion of the temporal aspects of professionals' information practices as revealed by these two projects and encourage further document-focused research.

In this paper, the authors argue for novel, less mimetic, ways to harness "the real" in drama practices. They study particular youth theatre-making practices in a Toronto secondary classroom, both successes and failures, to make the case for an untethering of "the real" from realism's representational aesthetics. They further track the more relational aesthetics at play for a group of young theatre-makers in their context of a multi-sited, global ethnography of youth civic engagement and theatre-making practices. Instead of mirroring reality, some of the devising work of the young people refracts, fragments, and multiplies it, making a strong case for the artistic, political, and educational value of an assemblage of reals in the drama classroom, in so-called post-truth times.

Following a unique practice and research laboratory entitled "Performance: Site/Self" that took place in 2013-2015, this article discusses the implementation of performance art at an academic site--the Tel Aviv University campus. This pedagogical and artistic initiative, characterised by the transgressive pedagogy of performance art applied to site-specific performance, broadens the site's primary educational function and reframes it as a relational and polemic space. As an alternative to the habitual organisation of disciplinary knowledge, the campus is recast as a "campusphere" through imaginative performative actions. Through the personal and critical situations created, the academic site functions as a surrounding for subjective experiences; as a social and economical structure; and as a space charged with local histories, identity politics, and collective memories.

Collaborating with "Project: Humanity," an acclaimed socially engaged theatre company, we mobilized, over 16 weeks, an applied theatre methodology of drama workshops and traditional qualitative research methods to explore issues of spatialized inequality and localized poverty with a youth shelter community in Toronto, Canada. Observations gleaned through drama activities provided graphic evidence of the multiple and overlapping socio-economic pressures and limited infrastructural and personal support experienced in their young lives. In this article, we use critical race theory to trouble majoritarian narratives of access, capacity, and success. In particular, Yosso's [2005. "Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth." "Race, Ethnicity, and Education" 8 (1): 69-91] typology of "community cultural wealth" has allowed us to reconsider the idea of "capital" as it is exploited by youth in creative engagement with the material precarity of their daily existence.

This dialogue contributes reflections on the "theatre laboratory" to the scholarly debate surrounding methodologies of drama education and applied performance. The co-authors suggest that the experimental and ensemble-led approach of the Samuel Beckett Laboratory, founded at Trinity College Dublin in 2013 as a space for research into Beckett in performance, may offer one response to a question that Kathleen Gallagher proposes in the twentieth Anniversary issue of "RiDE" (20.3), concerning "how drama educators might incorporate such practices of hope into their pedagogy" [2015. "Beckoning Hope and Care." "RIDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Drama Education" 20 (3): 423]. This work suggests that the hopeful practice of laboratory exploration de-hierarchises a scholarly endeavour and recasts the student as co-creator of knowledge, rather than consumer of cultural capital. The values and practices of such a laboratory may open one avenue of participatory pedagogy that scaffolds risk and re-values failure. In the dialogue that follows, we draw on Gallagher's "practices of hope" to develop our own interests in the subjunctivity of performance pedagogies in Beckettian contexts [cf. Heron, J., N. Johnson, B. Dinçel, G. Quinn, S. J. Scaife, and Á. Tyrrell, 2014. "The Samuel Beckett Laboratory 2013." "Journal of Beckett Studies" 23 (1): 73-94].

Learning how to transform an empty space into one alive with dramatic possibilities is one of the challenges facing students in several disciplines--for example, graphic design, filmmaking, gaming, architecture, interior design, visual arts, and designing and directing for the theatre. The author, a professor of directing for the theatre, investigated and compared two widely different approaches--one conventional, the other digital--in meeting a challenge particular to his discipline: creating the environments for theatrical productions. The conventional approach involves using paper models to represent scenic elements, and the digital approach involves using a digitized virtual space offered by software called Google SketchUp.

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 online and offline lives are interwoven, a one-year qualitative case study of student theatregoers suggests that online settings feature prominently in students' identity formation and that non-digital school experiences such as the theatre trip are often experienced in light of students' digital lives. Traditional events such as a trip to the theatre are influenced by and combined with online experiences to contribute to a new "iDentity" formation.

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 providing exposure to a broader, more diverse world; and improves the ability of students to recognize what other people are thinking or feeling. Going on enriching field trips to cultural institutions makes effective use of all of a community's resources for teaching children. This research helps demonstrate that schools produce important educational outcomes other than those captured by math and reading test scores, and that it is possible for researchers to collect measures of those other outcomes.

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 experience of the project. This article examines the processes used by teacher-artists to develop the children's understanding of the play and to create a hybrid performance text that engaged a large community audience. It interrogates key artistic decisions made by teacher-artists in adapting Shakespeare's play. It theorises this project in relation to the dramaturgical and pedagogic approaches underpinning the script adaptation and devising processes used to generate this Shakespearean performance. The role of dramaturg included the education of both actors and audience and bridging the gap between the roles of writer and director to weave words and dramatic action into a performance text. This practice constitutes what may be termed a "dramaturgical pedagogy" and has a wider potential application in drama education practice.

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 quantitative data to demonstrate its success in terms of its ability to both provoke and entertain the young audiences whom it engaged with. The article then goes on to examine qualitative data gathered from two contrasting schools in an attempt to theorise why and in what ways it was successful as both a social exchange and an aesthetic event. In this the authors draw heavily from a recent work by Richard Sennett and propose that the programme constitutes the kind of dialogic encounter and civil exchange that he suggests we need in order to foster forms of cooperation and dialogue within the social and cultural complexities of the modern world. At the heart of this dialogue, we suggest, is the playful charm of actor-teachers and the productively cool dynamic they can bring to bear when working with highly emotive and politically charged issues. (Contains 2 tables and 11 notes.)

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 production, its pre- and post-show programming and the company's curation of the theatre space. Using data from post-performance interviews with youth, we analyse how young people articulate the impact of socially engaged theatre. And pulling from ethnographic fieldnotes and researcher email correspondence, we further illustrate how the mere presence of youth and shelter youth at the theatre altered the ways in which audiences interacted with the play and the extended programming, disrupting the usual social contract of theatre-going. Project: Humanity's intentional mix of social classes and ages among the audience created encounters that have much to teach us about theatre's ability to unleash the "unruly" and to artistically re-create a world highly recognisable to those who inhabit it. (Contains 3 figures and 7 notes.)

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 their activities as "education", "teaching" or "learning". Nevertheless, the writer was continuously confronted with the practice's educational orientation and value. This is significant in a context in which the quality of formal education is profoundly wanting. This article endeavours to tease out the learning and teaching orientation and curricular processes embedded in the theatre activities of township groups. The overarching intention, rather than a detailed explication, is to notice the character and contribution of the inextricable interwoven-ness of the context, teaching style and curriculum, in township theatre-making practices, to the informal education of township youth. Prefaced by a brief description of those aspects of township living which most affect the theatre-makers, this article looks, firstly, at how theatre-makers are drawn to this pursuit and how they are skilled. Secondly, it examines the informal organisation of theatre groups with regard to the processes of leading, learning and teaching. Thirdly, it examines the theatre-making practices more closely, noticing how these are coloured by the township habitus and local performance-based culture, and also by theatre education as it is accessed by township theatre-makers. Overtly there appears to be little system, but an attempt is made to articulate trajectories of intention, skills building, learning and teaching within what appears to be a seamless gestalt of practice. (Contains 14 notes.)

The Stage Life was a participatory arts programme for people attending a day services provision in Nottinghamshire. The uniqueness of this programme was that it was provided in a local disused cinema acquired by the local authority for community-based activities amongst disadvantaged groups. The Stage Life aimed to build the community arts capacity for young adults with learning disabilities by introducing approximately fifty people to participatory arts activities over a period of 2 years. The research evaluation reported in this article was conducted by external academic researchers over this period. A multimethod ethnographic approach was used to phenomenologically capture the impact of the Stage Life upon individuals' lives, as well as capturing people's opinions and ideas regarding taking part in the activities. The research attempts to describe, both at the individual level and at group level, the effects upon people who are engaged with the programme. Very positive benefits are reported both on a personal and on a social level. (Contains 1 table.)

Every year the author and his colleagues take their grade 12 English students to see four plays at one of Canada's major theaters. Chatting about the series on the last day of class, his students asked him if he had seen "the blue glow from the back row." Laughing at his bewilderment, they told him that during the performances so many students were texting and surfing the Web on handheld devices, the entire back row had radiated an eerie blue light. The author found his students' comments intriguing. Two questions occurred to him, and a study began to take shape. First, how do students raised in the world of instant access to information, entertainment, and communication experience live, literary theater? Second, what is the best way for an English teacher to prepare these young people for a trip to the theater? This article describes this study and discusses its implications for educators. By teaching students to appreciate live theater on its own terms, the author's goal is to "build bridges" between students' digital mindsets and the stage. He hopes that his students will come to see that theater invites them to watch real people moving in real space, and that more than two thousand years of theatrical tradition await their discovery and enjoyment. (Contains 3 figures.)

"Why do I need to know this if I don't want to be a scientist?" is a question middle school teachers probably hear on a regular basis. In an effort to answer it, the authors have tried to appeal to students' varied interests, and thus developed myriad ways to show students how science is a part of their everyday lives. What is described in this article is an example of one of those efforts. It is a guided inquiry lesson (part of a larger unit on light) that is designed to help students develop conceptual understanding of the primary colors of light and differentiate between additive and subtractive color mixing. The lesson takes two class sessions of approximately 50 minutes each, plus a trip to a theater to demonstrate theater lighting equipment in context of the stage. This lesson demonstrates one way to integrate other disciplines, and connections to the arts appeal to groups of students who may not otherwise be excited about science. Being able to do this successfully will provide an irresistible invitation to those students who think science is not for them. (Contains 2 figures, 1 resource and 1 online resource.)

During a teaching methods field experience, we initiated several processes to facilitate pre-service teachers' reflection, empowerment, and performance as they learned to teach students. Through an ethno-theater presentation and subsequent revisions to an ethno-theater script, we turned the reflective lens on ourselves as we discovered instances of our teaching within this field experience that required us to look at our data and ourselves as contributing actors in a series of scenes. Our analysis of the data (as captured through the performance text) led us to new understandings of "reflection," "empowerment," and "performance" through the constructed roles and relationships within this field experience work. We discuss the process of creating an ethno-theater script and the methodological impact it had on us as teacher educators and researchers. We conclude with a proposal for dramatic solutions to accelerating reflexivity within teacher education contexts. (Contains 3 notes.)

A diverse group of student teachers in an alternative certification program participated in seminars integrating Boal's "Theater of the Oppressed" (TO) activities. Participants created images and enacted scenes that recreated interactions with their students and also rehearsed ideas for taking action in the classroom. The research, analyzing video and photo-elicitation interviews, showed student teachers engaging in empathic reflection and perspective-taking as they engaged in the theatrical activities. The study illuminated the potential of TO activities for supporting bilingual immigrant teachers, teachers of color, and white, middle class teachers in making sense of difference in the context of multicultural classrooms. (Contains 2 figures.)

Objective: To compare knowledge gains and knowledge retention of healthful eating and active living behaviors in elementary school children participating in Educational Theatre Programs (ETP). Methods: The study sample included 47 schools (2,915 third- or fourth-grade students) in 8 Kaiser Permanente regions. Children's knowledge of 4 healthful behaviors was measured using a brief survey before and immediately after performances, followed by a post-delay survey 3 weeks later. Results: Statistically significant increases in knowledge pre/post for individual topics (P less than 0.01). The percentage of children who answered all 4 questions correctly increased from 17% to 63% immediately after ETP performances (P less than 0.01). Knowledge was retained over the short term; the proportion of students who correctly identified recommended healthful eating/active living practices had declined only slightly 3 weeks later. Conclusions and Implications: The ETP significantly improved participating students' knowledge of healthful eating and active living concepts. Theater programs should be considered for inclusion in elementary school health curricula. (Contains 3 tables.)

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 discourse" and a sense of powerlessness. In his 2009 book "Performance Affects," James Thompson extends Salverson's scholarship by advocating that Applied Theatre practitioners focus their ensembles' attention more on the beauty they seek than on the pain in which they live. Moreover, Thompson suggests that the therapeutic value of painful personal storytelling is culturally situated within post-Vietnam War USA, and that "Western" theatre practitioners export this therapeutic notion across the globe in a well-intentioned but misguided act of neocolonialism. In Thompson's view, as "Western" practitioners promote this dramaturgy of personal testimony, they undermine indigenous aesthetics, supplant local therapeutic practices, and potentially exacerbate the psychological harm of the original incidents. In this article the author re-examines and complicates, in light of his experiences with a project, Thompson's and Salverson's assertions. He considers two stories from the devising process that lead him to concur with Salverson's concerns about the "aesthetic of injury" and Thompson's embrace of a "theatre of beauty." But the author then returns to his interactions with Denise, one of his South African colleagues, to question Thompson's assertions about the historical trajectory privileging personal storytelling. The emphasis on testimony may indeed have Western origins, but if it migrated to South Africa several centuries ago, it may be unhelpful to regard it as a foreign influence. Thus, privileging local knowledge in South Africa potentially legitimises the testimonials under question. The author proposes that in challenging local assumptions about the value of testimony it is necessary to simultaneously allow those assumptions to challenge scholarly convictions. (Contains 2 notes.)

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 theatre worlds have grown apart over quite a long period of time. This project is about changing that course and bringing people back together. Open Stages represents an unprecedented collaboration, involving the RSC and Voluntary Arts, regional and national theatres, national amateur theatre umbrella bodies and amateur theatre groups from across the UK. As the Royal Shakespeare Company marks its fiftieth birthday, amateur companies from every corner of the country are preparing their own Shakespeare-themed productions, in community centres, village halls, disused swimming pools, and ruined castles, with almost 300 taking place in 2011 and 2012 under the Open Stages banner. One of the key ideas that Wainwright wants to impress through this project is that theatre belongs to everyone.

The author shares his experiences teaching a unit based on the Broadway musical "In the Heights" as a way of engaging the cultural identity of his students, mainly Dominican Americans. The unit he created around the musical was initially built in an effort to make Dominican culture overt in the classroom, fulfilling pedagogical ideas about multiculturalism and the need for students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. In the end, the unit had as much of an impact on him as a teacher as it did on them as students. He learned much about his students as a result, enabling him to "connect with them as people but also to encourage their specific needs as students, thinkers, and writers." (Contains 2 notes.)

The ideal female, as portrayed in the media, has a perfect body, owns many trendy and costly possessions, and is submissive and sexy. Young girls are easily influenced by the media's portrayal of teens and women, therefore, they may begin to form unrealistic ideas about beauty and begin to judge themselves and each other based on these unattainable standards. By the middle elementary grades, the self-esteem of many girls depends on particular ways of looking and acting, and more and more girls are unkind to peers who do not look or act a certain way. This way of thinking can lead to relational aggression, a covert form of bullying and ostracizing, among girls. Young girls may express relational aggression because they have lost their "voice." Voice is expressed "physically" with breath and sound, "psychologically" with emotions, and "culturally" with gendered ideals. Having friends means everything to many young girls, so they may hide their true feelings, or lose their voice, to make or keep friends. Fortunately, it does not have to be this way--and literacy can help. Teachers can use book characters and important women in history to help girls hear strong female voices through activities like Readers Theater. Readers Theater--cooperative dramatic reading from a text--gives children an opportunity to step into a strong character's shoes and hear and speak like that character. Reading and reflecting on narratives helps girls understand the challenges they face in making their own voices strong. As with other academic or social interventions, this literacy teaching strategy is most effective when implemented early in girls' development. (Contains 6 online resources.)

This study used a mixed-method approach to investigate the effectiveness of Readers Theater (RT) in promoting English as a foreign language children's reading and writing proficiency after a participation period of one semester. In addition, the researcher recorded and analyzed children's learning motivation and feedback toward RT. The quantitative results of the study indicate that the RT group outperformed the control group in reading accuracy and fluency but not in reading comprehension. In writing performance, the researcher found significant differences for most aspects of writing proficiency, except for sentence structure. The qualitative results, on the other hand, support the idea that with RT, students have a purpose to interact in class, to work with others, to read and write for an audience, and, at the same time, enjoy their learning. (Contains 2 notes, 1 figure and 12 tables.)

In the twenty-first century the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. While the numbers of incarcerated males far outnumber incarcerated women, there are still great concerns about the growing female prison population. This fixation with incarceration and building prisons has trickled down to America's children as well. Among those who have been strategically extracted from childhood and adolescence and catapulted into the category of "adults" are teen girls and more specifically girls of color. This postcard from the resistance seeks to examine the ways in which playwriting and performance serve as mediating tools for formerly incarcerated black girls seeking reentry to their schools, communities, and families. More specifically this postcard extends the notion of performance ethnography and formerly incarcerated girls' "performance of possibilities" that serve as a bridge between incarcerated and liberated lives. (Contains 1 figure.)

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 familiar history of the Natural Theatre Company's Adventure Playground in Bath, an ambivalent site of chaotic transgression and community formation. Referencing the theories of Henri Lefebvre and Guy Debord, the essay explores how theatre techniques of subversive role playing, carnivalesque abandon and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) (de)construction can refigure notions of citizenship and community. With this article, I hope to trouble contemporary notions of safety by highlighting the restrictions placed on today's playgrounds and questioning whether forms of childhood development once valued can exist within the limitations of our modern "risk society". (Contains 1 note.)

Medical Readers' Theater (MRT) is an innovative and simple way of helping medical students to reflect on difficult-to-discuss topics in geriatrics medical education, such as aging stereotypes, disability and loss of independence, sexuality, assisted living, relationships with adult children, and end-of-life issues. The authors describe a required MRT experience involving third-year medical students on their Family Medicine clerkship and volunteer residents from a nearby continuing care retirement community. Evaluation of the program shows positive benefits to student and senior participants in terms of greater awareness of each other's perspectives and improved communication. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)

The widespread turn towards "collaboration" in qualitative research methodologies warrants careful and continuous critique. This paper addresses the possibilities and the challenges of collaborative methodology, and in particular what happens when the line between pedagogy and methodology is blurred in classroom-based ethnographic research. Troubling the prized notion of collaboration, and decoupling the easy relationship drawn between collaborative, participatory methods and empowering, democratic research experiences, we draw upon empirical data from one site in a multi-site, international ethnographic project: Urban School Performances: The Interplay Through Live and Digital Drama, of Local-Global Knowledge About Student Engagement. In underscoring some tensions and conflict in the creation of a Verbatim Theatre unit, we analyse significant affective encounters that surfaced in the course of our research work. Mobilising feminist post-structuralism and current theories of affect, we question the privileging of voice as an unmediated and authentic phenomenon, while ultimately arguing for the importance of affect and emotion in ethnographic analysis and for persistent reflexivity in the negotiation of collaborative metho-pedagogical work. (Contains 6 notes.)

Opera is music, art, theater, and storytelling. It resembles many musical, visual, theatrical, and literary forms children have already experienced whether they realize it or not. It is an art form that can reach virtually every child on some level because of its emotional power. It can speak to all types of learners because there are many different ways to take ownership of it. Opera can also enrich students with far more than an appreciation of music and theater. But many classroom and even music teachers do not feel comfortable working with opera because they have not had opportunities to learn about it or experience its educational possibilities. The author offers classroom-tested tips on how to help develop curriculum skills through exposure to opera.

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 their first created specifically for female audiences. The essay explores the rationale behind Geese's key aesthetic choices for the piece--including the performers' use of full face masks and the essentially Aristotelian, "tragic" structure of the narrative. These choices distinguish "Journey Woman" from much of the company's other work, and function to establish a quiet, contemplative mode of spectatorial engagement. With reference to critical sources ranging from Ranciere to criminological desistance literature, "Silent Partners" argues that "Journey Woman's" unorthodox aesthetic approach is well-tailored to its target audience. In so doing, the essay also raises wider questions about the ways in which, and degrees to which, applied theatre practitioners seek to render their audiences as "active" participants in the performance process. (Contains 8 notes.)

This study examines the ways in which playwriting and performance provide tools for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated girls to prepare for their lives beyond detention centers and probation. In a three-year multi-sited ethnography journeying through regional youth detention centers (RYDCs), a multi-service center serving formerly incarcerated youth, and a public theatre housing a women-focused theatre company in the urban southeast, this study raises questions about the gendering of the school/prison nexus and interrogates the role of programs. Ultimately this study urges scholars, activists, and youth advocates to combine efforts in coalition building to meet the needs of girls in under-served and under-resourced communities and schools. (Contains 2 notes.)

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 and 30). The company is independent of the University but has developed a dialogue with staff and students over many years. While this used to consist of regular performance projects by undergraduate drama students, this is now a more complex set of interactions between student artists, students from a range of disciplines and academic researchers/practitioners. The young people that participate at all levels of the theatre, however, are by no means only linked to the university and are more likely to come from the diverse communities across the city. Traditionally in applied or community-based performance there has been interest in working outside theatre buildings and perhaps even a suspicion of the institutional restrictions assumed to be inherent in theatre venues. McGrath's stewardship of Contact Theatre provides an important challenge to this suspicion and suggests, in fact, that it signals a failure to realise the potential of "bricks and mortar". He asks--both through his programming and in the interview presented in this article--how young people can be at the centre of a theatre and performance-making process in a way that benefits from the physical space offered by a venue. He has sought out processes that engage artists with all elements of the Contact Theatre building, all its users and the different spaces within it. This article presents edited sections of an interview with McGrath conducted as part of a seminar held at the University of Manchester in 2008. The interview was arranged to mark McGrath's departure from Contact and offer him an opportunity to reflect on his time in post. The first section explains the origin of Contact Theatre and how their new model of young people's involvement in a building-based company was developed.

In this paper we demonstrate how universal design theory and the research available on museum-based touch tours can be used to develop a touch tour for blind and low-vision theatregoers. We discuss these theoretical and practical approaches with reference to data collected and experience gained from the creation and execution of a touch tour for Hart House Theatre's production of "Hamlet" at the University of Toronto. Finally, we offer up the possibility of using universal design theory to create a touch tour that would be attractive to all theatregoers.