Shakespeare's elite cultural status bolsters the sense of achievement and empowerment experienced by participants in prison performance programmes; and yet, such engagements paradoxically risk further marginalising participants by reinforcing a colonial mentality in which Shakespeare represents an offering from a morally superior white culture.…

The history of arts education in Brazil is summarised, based on its contradictions. Some aspects of the Brazilian educational system and the National Curriculum Parameters are presented, in order to identify the predominant approach to theatre education. Three situations of the theatre education landscape in the state of Santa Catarina, southern…

This article explores the ways in which playback theatre was used to interrogate the views of adolescents on their social context(s) and establish what the personal and dominant discourses operating in their views were. Playback theatre, with its focus on reframing personal stories to generate new perspectives on these stories, was an appropriate…

"Ten in Bed" was a project led by participatory arts organisation Phakama, in partnership with Queen Mary University of London. Over an eight-week period we ran a series of intermedial arts workshops and staged a performance with under five-year-olds and their families at a community centre in Bethnal Green, London. We attempted to…

"Crows on the Wire" (COTW) is an intermedial project deploying applied theatre, educational drama and digital performance [Dixon, S. (2007). "Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art and Installation." Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] to explore the recent history of the peace process in Northern…

Over 18.5% of military personnel returning from war zones to civilian life suffer mental health issues, which can lead to family breakdown, homelessness and other problems. Almost 4000 Australian soldiers have returned home from active service in the last decade suffering from combat stress and mental health conditions. A 2009 Australian…

In 1996, the authors were invited to join an international research project, DRACON (=DRAma+CONflict), into the use of drama for assisting conflict management in schools, with a particular initial brief to investigate the cultural components. The Brisbane DRACON project has been based at Griffith University in Brisbane, and has incorporated sites…