This article analyses approaches to listening when creating theatre using the words of real people via a recent tribunal play by Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent, "Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry" (2021). The article considers the play in relation to transitional justice practices to reveal how listening…

The presence of non-disabled artists challenges the possibility of disability aesthetics in arts and disability projects. This study therefore examines the meaning of disability for the aesthetics of their collaborations and artistic practice through in-depth interviews with twelve Belgian non-disabled performing artists. The findings show that…

This article reflects on the ethics and process of writing and performing the play "This Is Us" with a group of rejected asylum seekers from Deportation Centre Sjaelsmark in Denmark. Positioned within larger frameworks of political and media hostility, the group pushed for a more radical approach of 'not just theatre', but called instead…

This is an attempt to articulate and explore the relationship between the science of memory and the applied theatre project, "The Not Knowns." The project was a collaboration between theatre practitioners and a psychologist who worked together with a group of young people known, problematically, as the "not knowns" throughout…

Through this paper, I consider how we might be aesthetically and relationally accountable in creating research-informed theatre through the conceptual frame of an aesthetic of relationality, and in-depth considerations of the theoretical notions embodiment, imagination and foolishness (as vulnerability-bravery). Through the example of…

This article compares and analyses factors that impact when creating a network on both online and live networking platforms, designed as spaces for artistic and critical engagement both within Africa and beyond. As I draw on the African Womens' Playwright Network as my example, I consider how we can acknowledge the materiality of the processes and…

The theatre classroom is necessarily a space in dialogue with myths about the marginalisation of theatre as an art and theatre audiences as a public. It is precisely "because" theatre is a marginalised discipline that curricula should incorporate the processes by which the labour of theatre artists changes value and joins the mainstream;…

This paper explores an example of applied theatre and praxis learning in an Australian classroom with drama students aged 16-17 years which took the form of "real fiction" or social theatre monologue writing. It presents monologue responses from nine participants, altered by the researcher to protect identities and to tease out issues…

Debates surrounding the teaching of playwriting are heavily influenced by theories of creativity. This article reports on research in Australian secondary schools that explored the student and teacher experiences of playwriting pedagogy. The findings of the research revealed that teaching was based on a belief in intrinsic creativity: that…

An artists' residency in a primary school in regional Victoria Australia staged a production of Shakespeare's "King Lear" in a local theatre. A qualitative, reflective practitioner research study into this project collected and analysed data from participating children and their community audience that gave some insight into their…

The centre of this article is a critical description of the development and production of "Everyday Theatre's" performed pretext, called "replay@timeout", including a detailed account of the devising process and the programme's content. The programme is located within the history and traditions both of theatre in education…

In recent decades a number of Australian artists and teacher/artists have given serious attention to the creation of performance forms and performance engagement models that respect children's intelligence, engage with themes of relevance, avoid the cliches of children's theatre whilst connecting both sincerely and playfully with current…

When children come together to play dramatically they are involved in the creation of an improvised text. This text emerges spontaneously via the moment-by-moment contributions of individual players who must operate in a highly collaborative way in order to achieve cohesion. This paper reports on a research project involving several groups of 11-…

For over ten years, London's National Theatre, under the banner of "Connections", has been commissioning ten professional playwrights per year, each to write a play for young people. The plays are workshopped and performed by secondary schools, colleges and youth theatres across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and are presented in a…

As someone who writes plays specifically for young people, this author believes she has a responsibility to create texts which are structured to help young performers extend their performance skills. This can and should include effective use of linguistic devices as well as indicating possibilities for physical gesture. The author contends that,…