This paper discusses the use of applied drama within the microblogging platform "Twitter" as a method to increase students' social media and news literacy. Online news sites are increasingly using "Twitter" as a source for eyewitness accounts of events or public opinion. "Twitter" offers users a simple way to publicly broadcast or "tweet" about…

This paper explores the design of virtual and physical learning spaces developed for students of drama and theatre studies. What can we learn from the traditional drama workshop that will inform the design of drama and theatre spaces created in technology-mediated learning environments? The authors examine four examples of spaces created for…

Since 2006 the UK based applied theatre company C&T has been using its experience and expertise in mixing drama, learning and digital media to create a new online utility for shaping collaborative educational drama experiences. C&T describes this practice as "Networked Theatre". This article describes both the motivations for C&T's development of…

By refocusing traditions preoccupied with stimulating critical reflection, the article seeks to contribute to a rekindling of a socially oriented drama teaching and to add to the reservoir of teacher reflection in the field. A passage of a drama by Dorothy Heathcote is analysed, in which the theme of pollution is the concrete starting point,…

The earthquake that thumped the Haitian coast in January 2010, wiping off entire suburbs of Port au Prince and other cities, left 222,570 casualties with an estimated 80,000 corpses still missing. One and a half million people were displaced and the majority is still living in 1000 improvised camps, in tents or self-made shelters. The national and…

This paper analyses the contribution to creativity, culture and community of disabled children provided by the work of the theatre company Oily Cart and their production "Something in the Air?" In the paper, we present a radical humanist conception of disability and creativity. In order to explore disability and creativity we focus on a case study…

This paper offers a queer-theory inflected reading of identity practices in British Theatre-in-Education (TIE) work seeking to address sexual identity and, more specifically, homophobic bullying. Noting the potentially unmarked or socially invisible quality of queer identities, this discussion seeks to reconsider the status of "coming out" as the…

Theatre of the Oppressed was conceived by Brazilian theatre director and theorist Augusto Boal as a "rehearsal for revolution"; it hinges on participants' power to select material for inquiry and frame, shape, script, and perform stories of problems/oppressions in their own lives and communities. In a 12-week-long study I co-facilitated in the…

Applied theatre often draws upon critical pedagogy and constructivist methodology as a way to bring participants into direct engagement with their own learning experiences. As learners, adults bring a wealth of perspectives that further affect how they interact with an applied theatre experience. "Drama for Schools" (DFS) is a professional…

The three papers and the pictorial essay that follow Rustom Bharucha's keynote all originated at "Theatre Applications" (Central School of Speech and Drama, London, April 2010). One theme of the conference was "cultural geographies of dislocation, place and space"; the three papers and pictorial essay respond to that theme. All address issues of…

Most of the applied drama and theatre projects being carried out in African contexts tend to be one-off events with limited follow-up in terms of building the capacity of target communities and organising them for action. Besides bringing people together for workshops, performances and post-performance discussions, such projects simply pass by…

"Theatre Applications" was an international conference convened by the Central School of Speech and Drama, London, in April 2010. Framed by the subheading "Performance with a purpose", the call for papers invited contributors to consider how theatre making in different settings can "make a difference" to those who inhabit the social contexts that…

This article revisits radical playgrounds of the past to offer a productive dialogue with recent debates on how child environments can foster citizenship and community. Joan Littlewood's playground projects are familiar examples of theatre techniques being applied to develop children's sense of belonging in a city. This essay considers the less…

Performance is a key tool in emergency preparedness and the rehearsal of professional response, simultaneously raising questions about the practice of cultural assumptions in this context. Usually the actors in preparedness exercises are civil servants who perform the work of the nihilistic imagination in often-apocalyptic fictional scenarios,…

The author travelled to Jaipur, India, in June 2009 to run a project with a group of 12 young runaways at the Bal Basera Centre, a transitional shelter for boys under the age of 18. The Centre sits within the Jaipur Municipal Police force compound, just a few yards away from the City Railway Station. Bal Basera, or "transit home" in Hindi, was…