Applied Theatre

Abstract

Applied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing within international contexts and communities. This book offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so it is a timely analysis of the concepts that inform applied theatre and argues that a number of concepts that form cornerstones of the discipline, have become shibboleths in applied theatre thinking, practice and teaching. The book problematises some of these key concepts, specifically regarding change and transformation, safe spaces, impact, exit strategies, ethical practice, process versus product and the concept of the applied theatre practitioner tool kit. Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, Malta, New Zealand, the USA and the UK to consider her key question: is the 21st century the end for applied theatre as it was understood to function at the end of the previous century? Drawing on 20 years of practice in prisons, youth theatres and with street and slum-dwellers, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms a ‘nebulous utopia’.

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