This article focuses on resilience and chronic pain in the context of choreography and performance. Through critically-creatively reflecting on my practice-as-research project, "Ecologies of Pain," I explore practices of resilience that emerge from turning towards and working creatively with chronic pain. I draw from two strands of the…

This article examines the evolving nature of how race and difference are represented in creative applied theatre work in classroom and community-based settings. The author uses several examples of performances and workshops she's attended to ask important questions that point to the tensions percolating in our discipline around who gets to tell a…

A reflection on the process that led to the development of dementia friendly theatre performances at Leeds Playhouse (formerly West Yorkshire Playhouse) including the vital involvement of people living with dementia as creative consultants. This article outlines the inspiration behind such performances, the steps required to make the necessary…

Despite a diverse and vibrant contemporary artistic scene, East Africa sees less international exposure than other regions on the continent; this article argues that a new approach to understanding the complexities and value of performance in the region is fundamental to developing the sector. East African Soul Train is a pop-up residency, which…

This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the concept of the 'cwrdd' -- a Welsh word for gatherings made, found and stumbled upon -- we explore how our AGENDA cwrdds…

This paper engages with the medically established view that individuals with autism are not capable of play or being imaginative. This paper resists this idea by reflecting on psychobiographical research conducted on the life of Temple Grandin. By re-witnessing creative experiences in her life, dialogue surrounding the imaginative capacities of…

This article considers how intergenerational arts can help support the resilience of people living with dementia. Theorising a moment of process from Magic Me's "Reflections of Stepney," it analyses how art facilitators help a child and care home resident to overcome the challenge of relating and create a performance together. It…

This article explores how intergenerational performance ecology might distinctively contribute to developing an ecological performance practice. It focuses on a practice-led research project, "Wild Life"--a collaboration with professional and nonprofessional child and adult performers. Drawing on critical perspectives in ecology and…

This article explores the practices of three young artist/facilitators, illustrating how they use their own age identity to develop expertise in working with older people in residential care homes. A research process of reflective dialogues reveals that they respond to the arts and drama-based workshop practices at creative ageing organisation…

The article examines the ways in which failure operated in the devising process with a colleague with learning disabilities. Themes of collaboration, co-creativity and power relations are set within the account of a process between the author and a research participant with learning and physical disabilities. The postdramatic device of failure…

In this paper, I document and discuss the frustrations and survival strategies of Theatre Arts and/ or Performing Arts departments in STEMatised neoliberal Zimbabwean universities. I submit that while these departments devised creative survival strategies which kept them relevant and competitive for some time, they also relegated them to the…

Drawing from my first-hand observations and embodied experiences of having collaborated with HORA over the course of several years, this paper discusses an under-investigated area within the field of disability and performance: pioneering work by directors and with learning or cognitive disabilities, an area which has not yet been addressed in the…

This paper explores the reformulation of the English curriculum for prison education across England and Wales in the second decade of the twenty-first century. As a PhD researcher and Functional English teacher examining the use of drama and creative education in a prison at the time, a prohibition on the use of fictional reading and writing…

In 2013 Becca Wood, Spatial Performance Practitioner, and Molly Mullen, Applied Theatre Practitioner, collaborated to create a short ambulatory performance with audio score for a group of drama educators attending a conference workshop on the possibilities of walking as performance. The performance was created remotely from the intended site:…

This article addresses live intermediality as a tool for creative learning in the context of workshops carried out with young people in the town of Terezin, in the Czech Republic, site of the Nazi concentration camp, Theresienstadt. Live intermediality, as a mode of live media practice, involves the real time mixing and merging of sound, image,…