Applied Theatre: Ethics

Abstract

Applied Theatre: Ethics explores what it means for applied theatre practice to be conducted in an ethical way and examines how this affects the work done with communities and participants. It considers how practitioners can balance aesthetics and ethics when creating performance, particularly with relatively inexperienced and often vulnerable groups of people who are being asked to both tell and stage their stories. The two sections bring together theoretical and practical ways for theatre-makers to examine the ethics of their applied theatre projects. Part One offers an overview of critical debates and the editors’ reflections on their own practice. It introduces readers to ethics in applied theatre, informed by the thinking of philosophers, scholarly literature and the editors’ own experience, including Indigenous perspectives on ethics and theatre. For applied theatre practitioners, it provides recommendations for community-based ethical approaches working with principles of voice, agency, care, service, collaboration, presence, relationality and