Abstract
This article, understanding populism as an essentially undemocratic ideology, argues that the pro‐social theatre education approach of ensemble pedagogy can offer a model of educational practice which counters these anti‐democratic rhetorics by creating a shared space for the enactment of empathetic discourse. Via an ethnography of the UK Shakespeare Schools Foundation festival project, the notion of the theatre education ensemble ‘family’ as a model of civic caring is offered as an alternative, feminist ‘care perspective’ on civic and political rhetorics, in contrast to the patriarchal ‘justice perspectives’ which facilitate the reductive anti‐democratic rhetorics of populism. Thus, this article concludes that ensemble approaches to theatre education, viewed through this feminist pedagogy lens, hold rich potential for developing learners’ capacity to resist populism and act in socially hopeful ways.
Highlights
There has been a global surge in populist rhetoric across the political spectrum in the last 20 years (Lewis et al, 2019)
In this article I have argued after Mu€ller that the current global rise of populism is a fundamental threat to democracy
In considering how theatre education pedagogy could counter these anti-democratic rhetorics of populist ideology, I have discussed how the theatre education approach of ensemble pedagogy has been positioned by scholars and practitioners in the field as a democratic endeavour
Summary
There has been a global surge in populist rhetoric across the political spectrum in the last 20 years (Lewis et al, 2019). Within the UK, populism has typically been connected to far-right rhetorics, as in the vote for Brexit in 2016 (Browning, 2019); and more recently the 47 parliamentary seat gains of the Conservative Party under the leadership of a divisive Boris Johnson in the 2019 election. Experiencing this from my position as a theatre education practitioner and scholar, typically working in racially and culturally diverse areas of London, the racist Islamophobic and misogynistic (Elgot, 2018; Pengelly, 2019) elements of this far-right populist public discourse is of immediate concern. In responding to this edition’s call for contributions considering the intersections of populism and education, this article focuses not on a partypolitical populist perspective, but on what Mu€ller argues is its underlying anti-democratic nature (Mu€ller, 2016)
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