Applied Theatre Research - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2015

This article examines audience response data from a young people’s community music-theatre performance in Victoria, Australia in 2013. The performance was created by groups of culturally diverse emerging artists and community members working with professional participatory artists. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodology, the article considers what the data do and do not reveal about who this audience was, how its members responded to the performance and what can be concluded from this information regarding what culturally diverse audience members who do not normally attend arts events want from the performing arts. This data analysis is considered in relation to audience reception theory and the literature concerning the term ‘artistic vibrancy’. The article considers barriers to engagement in the arts faced by community audiences, and looks at whether the community arts sector has anything to offer the mainstream performing arts industry in the light of research showing that the audience for this industry has declined in Victoria over the last five years and is now an ageing demographic.

In Mansheyet Nasser, one of the world’s biggest slums located on the outskirts of Cairo, a modest theatre project formed to engage children and youth of the garbagepicking trade, El-Zabaleen, in a process of celebrating their livelihood. The theatre work was able to challenge the stigma associated with being a Zabaleen, and fostered a renewed sense of self-worth in the young participants. When the project was discontinued in vague circumstances, the author set out to better understand the ethical implications of working with impoverished and marginalized communities. This article describes the history of El-Zabaleen and of Theatre for Development in the slums of Cairo, as well as the context and process of the theatre work. It points to some measures that might be taken in order for funding bodies, facilitators and participants to fully appreciate the impact of this work on a community’s hope for sustainability, self-development and social change.

This article explores and interprets how a Playback Theatre performance with the topic ‘Humanity and the Universe’ works as aesthetic pedagogical design in a project where art and science are combined in explorative learning for secondary school students. We analyse what Playback Theatre contributes to the research and development project SPACE ME, a project about humanity in the universe, which includes several different elements. Using the concepts ‘communication’ and ‘reception’ as analytical lenses, we interpret what this design can contribute to the learning processes of the students. As a conclusion regarding the pedagogical design, we suggest that in their responses, most of the students showed that the culture, the context, the social situation and the artistic communication in the Playback Theatre form had been meaningful to them.

There are many reasons why people lose their confidence, including social discrimination and/or lack of love. As a result of the social practice and value system, some people also experience deprivation within society (like people incarcerated in prison), leading to loss of personal identity and power. The theory of empowerment has been used by many scholars to deal with the issues of the powerlessness of ethnic minority groups who experience denigration (Collins 1990). This article focuses on four workshops that took place in a prison in Hampshire, England, where I explored drumming as an empowering activity using the dùndún (the ‘talking drums’), a set of a double-headed hourglass drums used by the Yorùbá, an ethnic group in Nigeria. The workshops gave participants the opportunity to express themselves freely within the British prison system. The names of the people have been anonymized. I introduce a theory called ‘Nonsense Theory’, which I coined and explored with the workshop participants. The main theme is empowerment, with a focus also on control, self-esteem, tradition and identity. The article analyses the concept of empowerment within the dùndún drumming tradition, and explores why it might have resonance in a prison.

This article provides a summary of the current literature (1975–2015) on the subject of effective ‘simulated patient’ training, with a focus on developing best practice for actor preparation for simulated patient work. There has been a great deal written about the efficacy of simulation in health care, and the importance of training for actors in simulation learning is acknowledged by a range of academics. This article discusses the theatrical and performative contexts of simulated patients and the training needs for actors. It concludes that actors must be acutely aware of the educational needs of the students, and the importance of maintaining a controlled and equitable learning environment. Understandings from this literature review are currently informing the project Acting 4 Health, in which drama students are trained as simulated patients for learning events in nursing at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

By focusing on the use of body and ensemble in performance practice, this article aims to draw links between site-specific theatre, the neutral mask, sustainability and the work of the Johannesburg-based Well Worn theatre company, established in 2008. Using performance and play as an activist tool to examine, interpret and discuss the most pressing eco-social themes of our time, Well Worn creates the space and conditions necessary for critical thinking and open dialogue. The company devises physical and visual theatre work for crafting a poetic and meaningful connection between audience, subject-matter and play. Essentially, the company is committed to acting imaginatively to address and reflect on issues of eco-socialism, climate justice and earth-consciousness, thus placing more emphasis on that ancestral act of monitoring ourselves and our communities. As a case-study, Well Worn theatre company – particularly the Baobab Project – provides an area of focus for our considerations of embodied heritage as well as how the efficacy of mask-work and site-specific theatre breaks the boundaries (and theatrical conventions) with regard to framing culture.

Applied Drama: A Facilitator’s Handbook for Working in Community by Monica Prendergast and Juliana Saxton (2013) Intellect, Bristol ISBN 9 7818 4150 7408, 241 pp., £16 (pb)

A Reflective Pra ctitioner’s Guide to (Mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or What wa s I Thinking? edited by Peter Duffy (2015) Intellect, Bristol ISBN 9 7817 8320 4731, £30.00