In this article, we consider the aesthetic, political and pedagogical strengths of a verbatim theatre performance, "The Middle Place" by Project: Humanity, a play that explores the experiences of shelter youth in Toronto, Canada. This ethnographic study moved from drama classrooms into theatres and charted audience responses to the production, its…

In this paper, the authors consider early results from their ethnographic research in urban drama classrooms by parsing the aesthetic and social imperatives at play in the classroom. Moved by the observation that teachers and students alike seem to be pursuing elusive aesthetic and social ideals, the authors draw on Judith Butler's notion of…

This article reports on an impact assessment study, conducted between 2007 and 2009, of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario's (ETFO) Poverty and Education Project, an intervention which encouraged educators to challenge their assumptions about poverty and explore collaborative opportunities to mitigate the effects of poverty in their…

This article examines the particular strength of theater to raise questions about relations of gender and race. The authors consider the "rights" of youth and teachers in schools to use drama to critique their cultural contexts and connect these educational struggles to those of broader political, cultural, and social democratic life. The…