The article's main concern is to analyse theoretical and artistic factors influencing the attempt by a group of undergraduate students (at the University of Warwick, UK) to produce a "performative mapping" of the city of Venice. In other words, it asks what kind of performance-based strategies might usefully be applied in the process of…

In 1984, a group of urban theatre activists of Bangladesh rejected their role as "traditional intellectuals", and sought to join the subaltern classes as "ideologues in action" by mobilising their knowledge and expertise on theatre in a manner that would animate those classes entwined in the exploitive infrastructure of the rural areas. This…

In this article, the author discusses how the new age influences the place of manifestos and shares his view on how manifestos become a yearning as a thing in the past. Traditionally, manifestos are writing intended to provoke actions. There are many manifestos authored by artists. Often these are rhetorical, not to be taken seriously. Taken…

How do you stage the world? This article reviews how a series of performance installations by the theatre company Stan's Cafe have approached global space. It examines the way "Plague Nation" and "Of All the People in All the World" tackle national and global scale through the representation of populations. Drawing on a discussion of…

Contact Theatre is an Arts Council of England-funded theatre on the campus of the University of Manchester, in the north of England. From its re-opening in 1999 until the end of 2008, it was led by Artistic Director John McGrath who created a programme of theatre performances and projects specifically geared to young people (between the ages of 13…

This paper illustrates research on the effects of "process drama" to enhance intercultural awareness for learners of Italian as an Additional Language. To validate the potential synergy between "process drama" and intercultural language learning, I created six "process dramas" to explore some contemporary Italian socio-cultural issues, as part of…

This paper explores the cultural implications of the use of the "Theatre in Language Learning", or TILL, model of applied theatre in the second language (L2) classroom. Using a dramaturgical taxonomy the author explores the changes in dramaturgical focus undertaken by Vienna's English Theatre over a 25-year period, and interrogates their effect on…

This paper examines a community theatre project in Kaohsiung County, Taiwan that aimed to tackle domestic violence through a collaboration between local community female elders and the facilitator. The paper investigates how an outside facilitator could unfix the assumed community identities which tend to exclude outsiders or sub-groups, in this…

In this article, the authors experiment with an interdisciplinary, partly empirical investigation into the reception of a community-based theatre production created by three generations of Turkish migrants in the Netherlands. Although community arts has been experiencing a boom of sorts in the Netherlands and local funding agents increasingly call…

This paper aims to explore a range of aesthetic aspects involved in the devising and production processes of oral history performance in a classroom setting. It touches upon the ethical dimension of aesthetics employing the Confucianist Wang Yang Ming's aesthetic philosophy and Buber's theories of relation as the theoretical frames. The devising…

This paper begins by raising a question about the purposes of research in drama in education and reflects on aspects of discourse in the past concerning how and why writers about drama in education choose to describe its aesthetic processes. Whilst it recognises the debate about drama in education's place within the umbrella of applied theatre, it…

In this article I attempt to interrogate some of the issues around the assessment of live work. I use a range of theories, particularly Ranciere's notion of the "aesthetic regime" of art, to suggest a three-pronged ontological approach to assessment that seeks to avoid the dangers of Bourdieu's and Passeron's concept of reproduction, and which…

This article considers the aesthetics of applied performance with people with learning disabilities. Focusing on the integrated punk band Heavy Load, it explores how the aesthetic structure reconstructs notions of learning disability and intervenes in its social experience. It argues that this is facilitated through the punk form which positions…

In this article, I focus on the empowering potential of a participatory practice that frames walking as integral to a performative, self-mapping, and aesthetic process. By discussing my experience as a participant in "Ere Be Dragons" (2007), a work by the artists collective Active Ingredient (Rachel Jacobs and Matt Watkins), I set out some new…

This article analyses Mind the Gap's Boo, a re-imagining of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird", which features a cast of learning disabled actors. It is concerned with the public reception of the work, particularly the "effect" of an all-disabled cast. What are the consequences, both ethical and aesthetic, for these actors to tell this story on…