Applied Theatre with Youth

Education, Engagement, Activism

Lisa S. Brenner, Chris Ceraso, Evelyn Diaz Cruz, Lisa S. Brenner, Chris Ceraso, Evelyn Diaz Cruz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000398915
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Théorie et pratique de l'éducation

Applied Theatre with Youth is a collection of essays that highlight the value and efficacy of applied theatre with young people in a broad range of settings, addressing challenges and offering concrete solutions.

This book tackles the vital issues of our time—including, among others, racism, climate crisis, gun violence, immigration, and gender—fostering dialogue, promoting education, and inciting social change. The book is divided into thematic sections, each opening with an essay addressing a range of questions about the benefits, challenges, and learning opportunities of a particular type of applied theatre. These are followed by response essays from theatre practitioners, discussing how their own approach aligns with and/or diverges from that of the initial essay. Each section then ends with a moderated roundtable discussion between the essays' authors, further exploring the themes, issues, and ideas that they have introduced.

With its accessible format and clear language, Applied Theatre with Youth is a valuable resource for theatre practitioners and the growing number of theatre companies with education and community engagement programs. Additionally, it provides essential reading for teachers and students in a myriad of fields: education, theatre, civic engagement, criminal justice, sociology, women and gender studies, environmental studies, disability studies, ethnicity and race studies.

Part 1

Engaging community
Professional theatres and youth ensembles

1 Goodman Theatre

Civic practice in service of community

Willa J. Taylor

Introduction

Recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre is internationally recognized for its artists, productions, and education and engagement programs. Goodman annually produces a nine-show season of classics, contemporary, and new works for the stage that give voice to a wide range of artistic visions. As the Walter Director of Education and Engagement at the Goodman, I create and oversee a portfolio of programs for diverse communities and constituencies. In addition to traditional audience engagement programs found at most theatres (pre- and post-show discussions, artist talks, play readings), we offer arts education programs for youth and arts in education programs for educators. There are also programs intended not for “audience” development but to reach communities who might never set foot in the Goodman (or any theatre) lobby.

The breadth of Goodman’s engagement is as varied and far-reaching as the works on stage, and many of them complement or amplify the themes of the productions. What sets the programming apart from most theatres? While Goodman's mission is dedicated to the guiding principles of “quality, diversity and community” (Goodman, 2020), embodying these principles across all our programs has been an intense focus of my work for the past twelve years. My energy has been dedicated to creating programs that challenge the conventional notions of what arts education can be, expanding theatre beyond the boundaries of our stages, and developing community programming that re-defines “engagement” as civic practice. These are tenets of applied theatre, and while my initial introduction to professional theatre came as an actor at age sixteen, my praxis and philosophy of applied theatre were forged by my time at the Living Stage, part of Washington DC’s Arena Stage.

Lucky enough to have started my career at Arena under the tutelage of its inimitable founder and artistic director Zelda Fichandler, I was fortunate to work with an organization that helped distinguish applied theatre practices in the US – The Living Stage. Founded by Robert Alexander as an outreach of Arena, the Living Stage Theatre Company began in 1966, dedicating itself to programming with an emphasis on social change. Its performance style incorporated street and guerilla theatre techniques and was influenced heavily by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (see Boal, 1993). The small multiracial company came from diverse artistic backgrounds, weaving dance, music, and spoken word into engaging improvisational performances for communities with little-to-no access to the arts. Each play, which was created specifically for its particular audience, dealt with controversial issues of race and inequity, America’s colonialist foreign policies, violence, and freedom. And while the company offered free performances and workshops at their community space in an under-resourced, violence-plagued neighborhood, most of the ensemble’s work took place at sites that included detention centers, senior centers, preschools, and facilities for people with disabilities. Audience participation was essential – as it is in Boal’s Forum Theatre; the ensemble improvised scenes based on issues and concerns from the audience, who were then invited to make decisions or act out possible solutions to the characters’ dilemmas (see Boal, 1992 and 1993).

Working with members of the company, I received a different kind of graduate education than the traditional theatre I had grown to love: this was visceral, gut-punch work that challenged and provoked participants to think deeper and differently; rehearsed alternative solutions to problems they faced; and provided space not just for the performance but for understanding how performance techniques could be used to enhance conversations and explore solutions. Living Stage’s work pushed me to expand my ideas of what and who theatre was for and challenged me to redefine how I thought about my discipline: how I could use theatre to facilitate community dialogue, build social inclusions and cohesion, and explore how to create a more just and equitable society. Orrin Sandal, Jennifer Nelson, Rebeca Rice, Ezra Knight, and Robert Alexander taught me that theatre could be about process and not product, that it could influence how people see themselves, and that it could foment change. They insisted that it was more than a set of skills and techniques for the stage, but also praxis that could empower all people to be engaged citizens and use their voices to make a difference. They helped me learn how to listen to communities that are often unheard; they taught me how to facilitate processes for exploring complex issues; they insisted that the tools used to rehearse and prepare for a performance are the same ones I could use to engage youth in exploring their identities.

I have never forgotten those lessons. Their practice of what would come to be called “applied theatre” has become the undergirding principle for every program I have developed. Living Stage’s ethos lives in all the work I have done since leaving Arena Stage: in the inaugural education programs created for Lincoln Center Theatre and the New Victory Theatre, for projects on- and off-Broadway, and now at Goodman Theatre.

Like Living Stage, the Goodman believes the arts must be a catalyst for positive social change. Due to the primacy of our work as storytellers, we know that stories are how we learn who we are, where we have been, and allow us to imagine the world we want to live in. In a similar vein, we see stories as another tool in our applied theatre arsenal, a way to explore our similarities and differences so we can begin to work together to build equity and demand justice.

Goodman’s thirteen education and engagement programs run the gamut from teacher training to pre-professional development for young musical theatre artists. Goodman programs seek to make a positive change in the communities we serve: From a collaboration with Disney Musicals in Schools to GeNarrations, a personal narrative storytelling program for adults fifty-five and older; from our signature Stage Chemistry—a series of interactive hands-on workshops that explore a specific STEM concept that is evident in the show onstage—to the community-focused NOURISH, where Goodman staff and artists mentor community projects.

Why applied theatre with youth?

The Goodman’s practice of arts-as-education (using the process of artistic creation to empower youth) reframes the place of the arts in civic discourse to center social justice and social change as the barometer by which we measure success. The arts-as-education philosophy deeply roots applied theatre practices and habits of mind alongside the more traditional models of arts education and arts in education. Arts education generally focuses on learning to make arts (taking a sculpture class, studying voice), and arts in education emphasizes the use of the arts in non-arts classrooms across the curriculum. However, we believe that the practice of, experience of, and making of the arts can be used effectively in service of social change.

Theatre practices are especially good at engaging young people because of the art form’s immediacy and dialogic nature. In its performative mode, it is a conversation with the audience. Each performance is unique because the feedback from the audience (laughter, gasps, call and response, applause) is different each time. In its process, while collaborative, it is introspective and diacritical. Individual improvement in each technique and skill, such as creating a character, analyzing a text, lighting a scene, engages habits of mind essential for critical thinking. These habits of finding meaning, imagining, planning, close examination, questioning, and persevering serve participants far beyond the rehearsal room, contributing to their ability to collaborate, celebrate, and embrace ambiguity and multiple perspectives. Applied theatre coalesces these attributes and focuses them through a lens of civic practice. It insists theatre practitioners activate their talents in service of community, teaching them to apply creative solutions to community problems. As Nina Simone famously said, “An artist’s duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times” (2013). Using an applied theatre approach as the basis for all our youth programs, centers their voices as agents of change, develops their ability to transfer the tools of artmaking to change-making, challenges assumed knowledge, and continually interrogates the “why” of the world.

The programs

Goodman’s programs include workshops and training done both on site at our theatre, in neighborhoods in partnership with community organizations, and in juvenile detention facilities in the Chicagoland area. During the school year, our work is primarily focused on teacher training by practicing applied theatre techniques, including Theatre of the Oppressed, that enhance educators’ capacity to transform their teaching. Two youth-centered programs, however, employ applied theatre to emphasize community involvement and leadership: the Cindy Bandle Young Critics (CBYC) program and the Goodman Youth Arts Council (GYAC), offer opportunities for youth to develop their leadership capacities and writing skills. CBYC, a writing-focused workshop for tenth and eleventh grade girls, partners young women with professional journalists as mentors, to explore the power of their voices. Participants hone their critical and analytical skills through writing assignments. Through sociometric activities and theatre games, they learn to dissect media, parse facts, build persuasive arguments, and write compelling stories. As young critics, they review every Goodman show for their school and neighborhood papers, focusing on how the issues in the production play out in real life to impact their lives. They have applied their skills to advocate for arts programs in their schools and to raise money and in-kind contributions for Streetwise, a newspaper enterprise that engages homeless people as writers, couriers, and distributors.

Goodman’s Youth Arts Council is composed of youth who have previously participated in a Goodman program and are selected by their peers to serve as ambassadors for the theatre. Civic service is a large component of their leadership development, and the YACs have offered workshops for young children, volunteered at senior centers and nursing homes, organized food and clothing drives, and marched with striking public-school teachers. Having been introduced to applied theatre in other programs, they work to hone their abilities to facilitate conversations with their peers and encourage them to become more civically involved, as well as create opportunities for intergenerational political action.

When school ends, our efforts pivot to summer programming that is explicitly for youth ages fourteen to twenty-four. PlayBuild is a seven-week devising workshop for youth ages fourteen to eighteen, designed to develop habits like resilience, perseverance, and ensemble-creation through theatre-making. A cohort of eighty teens from across the Chicagoland area and the suburbs spend four days a week using applied theatre methods to explore issues of identity, history, and present-day societal concerns. Each group is carefully constructed for gender parity and to be as diverse as possible geographically, ethnically, racially, and economically. Through an ensemble-style audition, students are chosen for their willingness to make creative choices, take direction, and work as a group. Because the work is physical and emphasizes integrating thoughts and actions intentionally, program participants learn to embody who they are by actively exploring choices and responses instead of just talking about them. Sociometric activities like Spectrum, where participants place themselves along a line in response to a binary prompt (i.e., “I believe in love at first sight; I don’t believe in love at first sight”), sensitizes them to group social dynamics while making apparent factors that motivate individual choices, both others’ and their own. Drawn from psychodrama, it facilitates an understanding of the relationship between oneself and the power one has to the current social and political moment.

Musical Theatre Intensive (MTI), which runs concurrently with PlayBuild each summer, is a pre-professional training program for teens interested in pursuing musical theatre as a career. Focused more on skill development, students are chosen through a more rigorous audition process where they perform a monologue and a song. Yet even within this more traditional arts education program (students study dance, voice and music, scriptwriting, and acting) applied theatre techniques inform the philosophical underpinnings of the training. These techniques help participants explore their identities and the summer’s socially relevant theme, like 2018’s I Too Sing America, which was a pointed critique of politics of exclusion, racial hatred, and transphobia. Using 1960s protest songs and original spoken word poetry, students built a final production that was exemplary of Nina Simone’s dictate.

Both summer programs culminate in public performances, but PlayBuild and MTI are more about the process than the production. In final evaluations, students consistently comment that by the end of their time with us, they feel more secure in who they are (which helps them resist peer-pressure), understand how to advocate for themselves and others, and be more confident. Classroom teachers, who help promote the programs in their schools, have informally commented to staff that students return to school more focused, more secure, and more mature. Parents/guardians are especially complimentary in formal evaluations of the changes they’ve witnessed. This is our measure of the programs’ success, not the applause at the end of performances. Applied theatre techniques of questioning (i.e., “Why do I believe what I do?”), discussing issues (e.g., immigration and nationalism), role-playing, improvisation, and tableaux (still images of physical postures created by the participants based on prompts), allow teaching artists and staff to facilitate a process of discovery that is more open and in-depth than in educational settings. Each activity is followed by a participant-only debrief: how it felt; what they discovered; what is different now than they thought previously. This encourages meta-cognition, celebrates honesty, and coaches empathy.

Participant input is essential to the structure of all our programs but especially for our work with young people in the summer. While it takes a few weeks for them to take ownership of the process, by week three they begin to understand the collaborative professional environment we work to establish. PlayBuild and MTI participants sign a contract that details the rules by which we work, and we emphasize that they are the same rules around absences, lateness, unwillingness to follow directions, as any performer working for the Goodman. These agreements also outline the consequences for non-compliance, which ...