Applied Theatre Research: Socially Engaged Performance - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2021

This article addresses the potential use of applied theatre in facilitating new language acquisition among refugees who are resettled in European countries such as Germany. The article charts the applied theatre work carried out by one of the authors with Syrian refugees in Europe, with a special focus on participant reactions to the host country’s expectations surrounding language acquisition and identity-making. The authors challenge current ‘integration’ practices that prioritize focused language learning as a major indicator for the refugees’ re-nationing process, arguing for higher consideration of the trauma surrounding displacement, especially when refugees have first arrived in their host community.

In this article, we examine a Playback Theatre performance in which audience members perform their appreciation for living in a diverse community, engaging with the performativity of happy talk surrounding diversity. Happy talk is largely considered to support the status quo of White supremacy, letting those who benefit from dominant systems of power off the hook. However, in this event it appeared to operate instead as a utopian performative. The racially and ethnically diverse storytellers in the workshop narrate positive stories about the diversity in their community, and they do so for a reason. This article looks at the hope animating the event.

Research-based theatre (RbT) is an innovative research methodology that draws on theatre practices and conventions to engage in and share research. It is an inherently collaborative and relational methodology, inviting research participants, artists and researchers to take part in embodied data generation, analysis and knowledge-exchange activities. This methodology encompasses writing, rehearsing and performing a research-based monologue, scene or play. In this article, the authors share three recent examples from interdisciplinary projects where researchers and artists engaged with different communities to dramatize data using an RbT methodological approach. To add to literature in the field, the authors consider their experiences leading RbT projects in three disparate fields: theatrical, social and therapeutic. The authors explore the question of how RbT transforms relationships and how relationships transform RbT.

Young People as Legislators is the result of a six-month Legislative Theatre project with Collective Encounters Youth Theatre, Youth Focus NW and Youth Parliament UK. The project formed part of a wider scheme of practice as research that explored youth theatre practice as political engagement for young people. Legislative Theatre practice was utilized to work alongside the Youth Parliament’s Make Your Mark scheme, an annual poll for young people to decide on campaigning issues. In this article, I consider three elements: tokenism in youth engagement, differing experiences between artistic process and product, and applied theatre’s inability to develop long-term effects. Employing the critical theories of Paulo Freire, the article regards the practice as a failed attempt to develop critical youth theatre practice. I argue that the Legislative Theatre project led to uncritical engagement and no political change due to partner organizations regarding the theatre practice as a service to satisfy their own targets and requirements.