In 2020, a professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury College in the United States invited me as a visiting scholar-artist to help students stage the docudrama "Jane: Abortion and the Underground." The mission: to "both" rethink normative constructs of gender, sexuality, and abortion "and also"…

As I began my first year of graduate school--admittedly, a shaky start of my own--a group of my former students began to struggle with their transition to high school. Upon hearing this from my friend, colleague, and their current theatre teacher (who I will call Ms. M), I developed a workshop curriculum focused upon health for the artist to…

Most students meet Shakespeare in middle or high school, on a page in a book in an English classroom. This first encounter is a disservice to the students themselves and to Shakespeare: Shakespeare's plays are works of both literature and theatre, and should be taught as such. A performance-based teaching approach not only provides high school…

In this article, I outline and theorize about a series of three lessons on playwriting I conducted in a secondary English Literature classroom in Singapore using drama improvisation strategies that I name drama-based playwriting, or DBP. I advance the argument that this genre of creative writing is best taught through the medium of drama so as to…

In March 2017, Meredith Starkman and Meghana Telang, in collaboration with Khula Aasman Trust, entered a women's jail in Mumbai, India, to facilitate a drama workshop focused on the foundations of theatre performance. This article records their experience and the hurdles they faced, from unwilling participants to the height of Mumbai's sweltering…

The Phoenix Players Theatre Group was founded by incarcerated theatre artists located in a maximum-security prison with the aim of creating a space where they can be witnessed in order to initiate a process of personal, cultural, and sociopolitical transformation. This article integrates research from trauma theory with theatre and social justice…

Social Activism Through Theater" chronicles the author's first full year as a teaching artist in New York City, including the launch of National Queer Theater and its inaugural show, Speechless, as well as his experiences investigating film and storytelling with teenagers at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy.

This article suggests how teaching artists can develop practical coursework in audio playwriting. To prepare students to work in the reemergent audio drama medium, the author created a seminar course called Radio Theatre Writing, taught at Arkansas Tech University in the fall of 2014. The course had three sections. First, it focused on…

This article presents a critical and comparative look at how two theatre programs help young people develop an artistic voice and sense of self as an artist. Each program begins with art. Individuals explore basic tenets of dramatic expression through foundational activities. As they play and experiment, the individuals discover their capacity for…

The author is a teaching artist. Most of her previous experiences as a teaching artist have afforded her the opportunity to create and facilitate a lesson or an arc of lessons through a residency in a school. She was the "expert" artist in the partnership. The author longs to have a deeper, more fruitful impact on classroom learning. What might…

No matter how disturbing, it is common to hear "that's so gay" or "you're such a fag" echoing through the halls of a high school, but when the high school is an international school in Uganda, those words have a newfound potency. As an American teacher working abroad, the author often struggled over her responsibility for the…

This section is full of stories from teaching artists working to clarify what needs to change within their practices and moving toward solutions--whether it's supporting a classroom of learners in new and unexpected ways, reassessing one's approach in the classroom, shepherding an individual child toward success, or professionalizing an entire…

When one says "writing about teaching artist practice," what exactly does that mean? In the first two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319), the authors considered different ways to frame a story by either zooming in closely to a specific moment or zooming out to provide more context in an effort to address complex issues. The stories in…

It is definitely easier to write about work when things are going well, but it is even more important to write about what happens when things get challenging. The act of writing about the challenging times can be challenging in itself but can also provide invaluable insights into the process of teaching: important for the writer and just as…

This article presents an analysis of Nilaja Sun's one-woman play, "No Child" . . ., that applies the Studio Habits of Mind framework to reveal essential features of great teaching artistry and great teaching. The play conveys much about twenty-first century schools and the policies that control them; about respect, equity, justice, and the lack of…