How can comedy be used as an effective tool and truly help innovate the learning experience? This paper outlines how aspects of comedy have been creatively integrated into primary and secondary academic curricula such as English Language Arts, social studies, drama, as well as in areas of mental health and wellness. The essay demonstrates, for…

This article spotlights the power of pushing limits and boundaries through emergent curriculum and process drama as told through the story of a preschool class's exploration of the topics of paths, maps, and pirates. The story is framed in terms of the three phases of the class's project adapted from the Project Approach (Katz et al., 2014), which…

This paper follows the author's trajectory as he collaboratively experimented with ethnodrama (theatre scripts generated from interviews, media artifacts, and written media) and devised theatre performance (theatre collaboratively created with a group), culminating in the analysis of a performance with high school students combining elements of…

Our article explores the impact of the global health pandemic on our five-year, multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic study titled "Global Youth (Digital) Citizen-Artists" and "their Publics: Performing for Socio-Ecological Justice" (2019-2024). We illustrate how our arts-led, youth-driven ethnographic…

This paper explores the use of performance in a college-level course that teaches education majors how to use drama, dance, and music in their instruction. Students engage in drama activities such as improvisation and playbuilding in an effort to experience firsthand the benefits of such practices for their future classrooms. The essay shares some…

In this interview, arts educator Kristen Witczak discusses her experience of teaching drama with children, adolescents, and adults in various educational settings. She shares her early motivation for becoming an arts educator and the moments in her career that nourished her passion for her work. She also outlines some of the institutional and…

Recent research into critical pedagogy supports the implementation of performance-based practices into the classroom. This qualitative research explored the pragmatic ways in which youth, ages 8-17, are taught in Canada's, specifically Ontario's, education system on topics of difference and power. Through semi-structured interviews, four…

This article describes how dramatic writing and performance practices can be used to reshape qualitative interview data into a verbatim theatre performance with the intent of drawing attention to social movements in education. The performance described in the article reveals the consequences of a punitive educational policy agenda and addresses…

In this interview, Joe Norris reflects on his early experiences with performance and how he became involved with collective creations and playbuilding. His work has led him to develop and implement qualitative research methods using playbuilding. In his role as artistic director of Mirror Theatre, he has been the driving force behind numerous…

In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author shares insights and memories from a career devoted to drama and performance studies. He enthusiastically recounts events, initiatives, and collaborations that have helped sustain his lifelong passion for performance.

This autoethnographic essay describes an ambulatory workshop with fellow graduate students, a walking tour to remote parts of campus where we paused to consider writing prompts and to create short performative sketches highlighting the nature of our relationships to the land around us. In this reflection on our "walk and talk," I…

How do we enlarge the space of the possible to encourage our students to notice the educational, social, economic, communal, and political scripts that perform us? Academic performance imagines new ways of performing research. Conventional academic performances have been interrupted. Be aware. We can never take for granted the performance that is…

Rooted in arts-based learning, funds of knowledge, and culturally sustaining pedagogies, this paper describes the experiences of a cohort of preservice teachers who co-created arts integration units with emergent bilingual students, engaging them in the creation of plays based on culturally relevant children's literature. This cohort was designed…