In Kenya there are an increasing number of applied theatre and peacebuilding projects taking place. Currently, the perspectives and experiences of those undertaking this work, on the ground, are not adequately reflected in academic discourse or in the processes of setting up projects or establishing modes of support and collaboration. In this…

This paper explores young people's aspirations and the influence of community drama in shaping these arts-focussed aspirations. Research was undertaken using creative drama methods with young people who attend a youth drama group. The young people identified career and personal aspirations, recognising the hard work and support that it can take to…

Responding to transitional justice circumstances in Sri Lanka, Theatre of Friendship connects groups from Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim backgrounds. We use Playback Theatre as a participatory arts approach to transitional justice, working to build covenantal pluralism. As our work has evolved, we have extended the principle of emergence within…

This article explores the risks and potentials of staging vulnerability in community theatre with teenage girls. By drawing on postconstructionist and spatial theories, the article elaborates on how aesthetic spaces emerge when interwoven with spaces of vulnerability. Exploring how vulnerability becomes a generative, or restrictive force, the…

This article examines the complexity of embedding the element of sustainability to foster successful TfD practice. I recount my own experience as a TfD practitioner in western Uganda, where, in spite of my effort to execute a sustainable TfD project, I was let down by insufficiency of funds resulting from the high handedness of the funders of my…

Co-authors Lee and Peters collaborated across 2019-2021 on a community-engaged project with Carclew's ExpressWay Arts. They ask, when your creative practice is premised on relationship building, belonging and care, how do you step away from projects responsibly, meaningfully and carefully? This article explores how establishing rituals of closure…

This article considers Bolton based community drama group, Melodramatics, and the ways in which their practice helps illuminate forms of relational activity that confront the nihilism of the resilient subject. If we accept resilience as a normative force that restricts the ability of the political subject to 'become otherwise', we are invited to…

This article focuses on the community play, as conceived by Ann Jellicoe, as a form of political theatre-making. Examining two community play productions: "Drummer Hodge" (2014) and "Love on the Dole" (2016), I explore how the form's theatrical conventions combine with the play's content to generate political action. Discussing…

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…

Community collaboration is essential to the survival of theatre and performance labour in the neoliberal university. This evidentiary document describes one project of a successful collaboration between Hul'q'umi'num' Elders and teachers, community organisations, and a range of Canadian West Coast universities, including the University of…

Through this reflection on ageing and occupationally damaged bodies in performance, I argue that a probody aesthetics is fundamental to generating and sustaining care in community-engaged theatre projects. Such aesthetics is concerned with adopting a body-centric approach to making community-engaged theatre and arts, which insists artistic…

"Dementia's Journey" explores the year-long process of a playwright working with a charity and its partners in writing a play focussing on experiences of dementia in a South Asian community, and how the need to tell an emotionally engaging and resonant story is balanced with the requirement to raise awareness of the issues involved. It…

Improbable Players (IP) has been creating applied theatre for substance use disorder prevention since 1984, training more than 200 sober actor/teaching artists to perform plays and facilitate workshops addressing addiction, alcoholism, and the opioid crisis. The company operates, for its actors, as a long-term arts- integrated peer recovery…

This case study of a community youth theatre project interweaves reflective descriptions of practice, data excerpts and analysis to examine young people's exploration of cultural identity through theatre in a regional city in Australia. The process undertaken to create this work is theorised in relation to concepts of cultural difference and…

In this article I reflect on my experiences as a previously incarcerated individual being involved in theatre performance for the first time. I reflect on how my involvement in arts and education programmes in prison made me aware of the larger structures of Whiteness that were embedded in the educational and arts contexts that I found myself in…