This article examines how "Off Centre," a play by Haresh Sharma about mental health in Singapore, first devised and produced by The Necessary Stage (TNS) in 1993, provides a valuable opportunity for audiences to encounter characters labeled "mad" or "off centre" (a colloquial term in Singapore for being mentally ill),…

Theater is considered one of the creative arts, and participation has long been tied to such disparate outcomes as creative thinking, empathy, and emotional understanding. Yet research on what actually happens in a theater classroom from a psychological perspective has been lacking. In particular, how thinking strategies beyond improvisation, used…

This study explored the impacts of a creative drama course on pre-service teachers' beliefs about teaching skills. The participants kept weekly reflective journals and were observed in micro-teachings during the drama course. They were also interviewed four times over a period of two years. The results revealed positive perceptions about using…

This article will provide an overview of how the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP) has attempted to explore the use of interdisciplinary art-based practices for peacebuilding in Rwanda. In particular, we will detail how performance has been used to create a…

In drama lessons based on improvisation and role playing, participants express themselves spontaneously, take on various roles and act out by pretending. With improvisation, which is one of the two basic strategies used together with role playing in drama, the participants act in accordance with the designed dramatic fiction. The goal of this…

The aim of this essay is to consider some of the issues and possibilities presented by recent developments in citizenship education and drama education in China. It is written from the personal perspective of a drama practitioner whose professional life has given her first-hand experience of those developments. This essay reflected the literary…

The purpose of this paper is to study how pre-analysis affects drama-based art programme in South Korea to reach the drama educational goals. In the cognitive, psychodynamic (functional), and affective parts, the learner's analysis has been analysed through questionnaires, the learner's situation, and the lesson plan. Also, through the pre-meeting…

This activity introduces undergraduate students to the idea of metacommunication by means of a performance praxis assignment. Students will engage in a performance that enhances their communication skills and better understand how the frames of mimesis and poiesis are utilized to understand communication form and context. Courses: A single-class…

This paper reports on a collaboration between advocacy organisation, "Sweltering Cities," artists and researchers who developed a multi-site research project that provided South West Sydney residents an opportunity to engage in drama and poetry workshops that gave voice to their lived experience of rising surface temperatures, as well as…

In a context where more than 40% of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the UK are estimated to avoid sports due to experiences of discrimination, with disengagement closely linked to negative experiences during physical education at school, the ability of specifically LGBTQIA+-oriented sports clubs to buck this trend and create vibrant inclusive sporting…

As a society, we face increasingly complex and intertwined environmental issues, such as extreme weather events, droughts, sea level rise, and unprecedented loss of biodiversity. The extent and ramifications of these issues remain largely unknown and clear-cut solutions are out of reach. We thus refer to them as environmental wicked problems…

Theatre practitioners use empathy formation techniques within their acting methodology to develop particular characters for the stage. Here, Ann Phelps and Dylan Brown argue that, when Constantin Stanislavski's seminal dramatic method is placed in conversation with exemplarist moral theory, acting can become a tool for moral formation. To…

In this paper, I explore German playwright Bertolt Brecht's conception of the art of acting, and his views on the new actor's conduct towards their craft, as a pedagogical model for Brechts' broader view on how we should live our lives. Drawing on his key writings -- most importantly, his famous street scene essay -- I will show that Brecht's…

A recent production of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Globe Theatre in London has foregrounded the themes of mental health and a sick society. My essay begins by exploring the controversial reception of the 2021 production. But Shakespeare's play has a number of key features that are undecidable, by design. These are directly relevant to the…

This article shows how a student centered pedagogy called the Improvisational Theater Art Form (ITAF) empowers transformative awareness, growth, and change. In this particular study representative of a larger body of work, 30 undergraduate researcher/participants created improvised games and scenes as expressions of their inner selves to explore…