Making Space

Abstract

Engaged performance, as defined by Jan Cohen-Cruz, depends on ‘a genuine exchange between artist and community such that the one is changed by the other’, and this relationship is ‘characterised by paying attention to a social call and making a public, collaborative response’. In the context of theatre-making with young people, participant-led projects can have a parallel goal to that of engaged performance: positioning young people as active contributors with agency over the direction and intent of the projects they participate in. Jade Lillie describes this way of working as ‘community-engaged practice’, ‘a deep collaboration between practitioners and communities to develop outcomes specific to that relationship, time and place’. This chapter focuses explicitly on theatre-making practices with young people in South Australia, drawing on first-hand experience and interviews with three theatre-makers: Alysha Herrmann, Claire Glenn, and Sarah Peters. Between us we have worked in a variety of roles across the theatre industry not only in South Australia, but nationally and internationally as creative producers, directors, playwrights, dramaturgs, and facilitators. We have worked in rural, regional, and urban contexts, with young people from primary school through to tertiary institutions, and in both community and professional contexts. This chapter draws on our wealth of practical experience and diverse knowledges and examines this through a critical feminist framework to analyse how our practice as artists subverts and critiques power structures and modes of oppression, socio-economic and political barriers, and enables transformed understandings for young people about themselves and their place in the world. By exploring the diverse tapestry of our process and pedagogy for community-engaged and participant-led theatre-making practice, the ways this practice is responsive to context, and the opportunities and barriers of working in this way, this chapter demonstrates how making theatre with young people acts as emancipatory praxis. Making theatre with young people can foster positive relationship building and resilience, develop practical and professional skills in theatre practice which are transferable to other industries, and provide spaces and places for young people to be and belong.