Theatre Program Research Articles

Methodology of the national mapping of educational theatre programmes

During the second half of the 2012–13 theatre season, we mapped all then-existing educational theatre practices in Hungary against a standardized set of criteria. We contacted a total of 298 institutions and observed 118 programmes in person. We aimed to map the complete picture, so we involved every programme that fitted our low-threshold criteria and responded to our inquiry. Presumably, we covered the entire Hungarian educational theatre sphere. For each programme, we collected data from six sources: children or youth participating in the programmes; teachers accompanying the participants; organizational contact persons; creators/performers of the programmes; observing of the programmes by independent observers; and secondary research on the internet. In 2023, we repeated part of this data collection. In this article, we present the methodology used for the mapping in detail since we believe it can serve as a model for similar mappings in other countries.

The big picture: Objectives, strategies, attributes, financing, participants, leaders and the significance of educational theatre programmes in Hungary

During the second half of the 2012–13 theatre season, we mapped all then-existing educational theatre practices in Hungary against a standardized set of criteria. We contacted a total of 298 institutions and observed 118 programmes in person. For each programme, we collected data from six sources: children or youth participating in the programmes; teachers accompanying the participants; organizational contact persons; creators/performers of the programmes; observing of the programmes by independent observers; and secondary research on the internet. In this article, we present the descriptive statistical analysis of the findings. Areas covered include the role and significance of educational theatre; programme financing; participants and programme admission; number and length of sessions; programme venues; strategies and interactivity; aims and objectives; impacts; opinions; and relevance.

Supervivencia del ecosistema teatral caleño frente al impacto del covid-19, comparativo de los años 2018, 2019 y 2020

The present research focuses on analyzing Cali’s theater ecosystem survival against the impact of covid-19 based on the analysis and comparison of the theatrical programming of concerted theaters between 2018 and 2020. The sample is composed by nine theaters located in Cali, winners of the National Program of Concerted Theaters during the years 2018, 2019 and 2020. Theapproach used was mixed research and the concurrent triangulation design (DITRIAC, in Spanish). The research technique is the documentary analysis of primary sources; for this purpose, a Matrix of analysis of concerted theater programming, self-made and validated by experts, is used as unique instrument to collect information and data on four categorical variables of the PESTEL analysis. The data processing was performed with the SPSS program, which allowed identifying the impact of each of the components of Cali Theater Ecosystem’s and its survival strategies against the impact of covid-19, among which there are: Organizational Downsizing, Outsourcing or the externalization of activities, Cost Reduction as a Sanitation strategy and the restructuring of operational plans.

Supervivencia del ecosistema teatral caleño frente al impacto del covid-19, comparativo de los años 2018, 2019 y 2020

The present research focuses on analyzing Cali’s theater ecosystem survival against the impact of covid-19 based on the analysis and comparison of the theatrical programming of concerted theaters between 2018 and 2020. The sample is composed by nine theaters located in Cali, winners of the National Program of Concerted Theaters during the years 2018, 2019 and 2020. Theapproach used was mixed research and the concurrent triangulation design (DITRIAC, in Spanish). The research technique is the documentary analysis of primary sources; for this purpose, a Matrix of analysis of concerted theater programming, self-made and validated by experts, is used as unique instrument to collect information and data on four categorical variables of the PESTEL analysis. The data processing was performed with the SPSS program, which allowed identifying the impact of each of the components of Cali Theater Ecosystem’s and its survival strategies against the impact of covid-19, among which there are: Organizational Downsizing, Outsourcing or the externalization of activities, Cost Reduction as a Sanitation strategy and the restructuring of operational plans

TITIRITIANDO: Creating an engaging theatrical education program to teach children that cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) are not pets.

Cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) are a critically endangered primate found only in Colombia. Proyecto Tití has been leading conservation efforts in Colombia and has developed successful conservation education programs that engage communities in activities that promote the long-term survival of cotton-top tamarins. TITIRITIANDO is an educational theatrical program that introduces children to cotton-top tamarins and the challenges they face in the illegal pet trade. We presented this program to 4018 elementary school children to determine if using puppets and interactive messaging created an emotional connection between children and cotton-top tamarins that inspired them to engage in actions that aid cotton-top tamarin conservation. Pre- and post-test evaluations were conducted on 1917 students. Pre-surveys found 34% of the children were unable to identify at least one action to help cotton-top tamarins. Following the program students could on average identify at least 3 actions that positively impacted cotton-top tamarins with "not having a cotton-top tamarin as a pet" (75%) as the most frequently sited response. Misconceptions regarding the health and wellbeing of pet cotton-top tamarins was evident with 20% of the students believing that animals were well cared for and had a better life living with people than in the forest. Following the program, students were able to understand and empathize with pet cotton-top tamarins and on average could identify at least 3 negative impacts on individual welfare/well-being with the most common answers as they (1) are sad/depressed (91%), (2) die (87%), (3) are fed an inappropriate diet (80%), (4) have lost their family (74%) and (5) have lost their freedom (39%). This study demonstrates the effectiveness of educational theater in helping children to understand the impact the illegal pet trade has on cotton-top tamarins and how they can engage in activities to protect them.

Boundaries Beyond the Bathing Suit

A literature review and analysis evaluating how the practices of Intimacy Choreography support the aims of one of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse prevention programs collectively called VIRTUS. This article defines scenarios of legally unacceptable risk (high stakes) as well as legally acceptance risk (low stakes) and how the tools of Intimacy Choreography (Theatrical Intimacy Education, in particular) and VIRTUS both aim to establish and uphold boundaries, but in different capacities. This article compares the tools of each area, and makes an argument for how Intimacy Choreography's consent-based practices are a good for Catholic diocesan schools' theatre programs that utilize VIRTUS training.

Cultivating ambiguities within higher music education – preparation for singers’ professional societal participation in opera conservatory and music theatre programs

Earlier research has stated the need for conservatory education to prepare aspiring musicians more thoroughly for a dynamic and changing society. A project that challenges the conservatory tradition is Sammankonst (TogetherArt) where students at a musical theatre program at folk high school level collaborate with intellectually disabled adults. Based on a phenomenological way of thinking, this article aims to describe and analyze the education of aspiring musicians for professional participation in society based on an analysis of experiences among conservatory students, music theater students and their teachers. Interviews were made with six conservatory students, 15 musical theatre students, and two teachers. The results show ambiguities when it comes to what voice students should be prepared for and how the choice of preparations influence the view of singing and musicians’ quality competence.

Fort Worth After School Arts

This project illustrates my process of creating the curriculum for a pilot Musical Theatre program called Fort Worth After School Arts. The program is designed to address the widespread issue of a lack of arts education in low-income schools by beginning with middle schools in Fort Worth ISD, partnering with the preexisting Fort Worth After School program. Moreover, the program is designed to provide intentional accessibility efforts as well as personal development and mentorship opportunities by utilizing college-aged interns. I documented each step of the process, from the multiple factors that led me to begin to deciding what the program would look like, writing the curriculum, and receiving feedback. I also documented anticipated further challenges that would need to be addressed for the program to be fully realized. Through this project, I learned how to synthesize information from a variety of places and experiences to benefit others. This project also reinforced my view of the opportunity and necessity for innovative thinkers to create creative projects that serve communities–something I hope and plan to do for my entire career.

A művészet és a hit kapcsolódási lehetőségei büntetés-végrehajtási keretek között

Aim: The penitentiary organisation gives an important role to drama education, prison theatre and the combination of religion and faith with art therapy programmes in order to combat the harms of forced detention in prisons and to reintegrate prisoners into society. The aim of this study is to present the progress made in implementing the above and the art therapy programmes planned for 2024.Methodology: As a practising prison specialist and head of the Incarceration Affairs Service of the Hungarian Prison Service Headquarters, the author has an insight into the range of art therapy programmes offered to prisoners and their practical implementation. During his career, he has been involved in the creation and implementation of several such programmes, both as an implementer and as a supervisor. In preparing this study, he has drawn on his personal experience as well as on the available literature on the subject.Findings: The prison population is very open to different kinds of artistic programmes, and they actively and creatively participate in their implementation. Drama-based theatre programmes, combined with elements of religion and faith, can be clearly integrated into the range of programmes to prepare prisoners for release, sometimes with elements of reparation.Value: Art programmes in prison environments not only help prisoners to reintegrate after release, develop their personality, skills and competences, but are also suitable for sensitising society and reducing prejudices and antipathy towards prisoners.

A Multi-Point Call to Action for Diversifying Student Enrollment in Theatre Programs: The Framework for Providing Pathways Toward Building an Inclusive Culture

Abstract The March 2019 issue of The Association of American Colleges and Universities reported that, in the twenty-year span between 1996 and 2016, student enrollment of non-white-identifying students increased by over 15 percent. However, according to Ben Dedman, “While the racial and ethnic make-up of students in higher education has become more diverse, ‘college faculty, staff, and administrators remain predominantly white.’” Today’s academics are not unsympathetic to the challenges of diversifying a student body and often look to expand their own diversity in appealing to the nation’s young people. Unfortunately, this perspective on diversification has proven much too simplistic to generate any substantive impact in increasing the inclusion of underrepresented groups. This article seeks to put forward a comprehensive but not exhaustive collection of recommendations to be considered in the areas of leadership and pedagogy, in part or in its entirety, in order to ensure the most audacious effort has been made to achieve this goal.

Community responses to persons with aphasia participating in CoActive therapeutic theatre: A pilot study.

Persons with aphasia (PWA) experience a number of communicative and social-emotional challenges. Reported experiences of PWA include but are not limited to, being misunderstood, isolated, frustrated, and infantilised. The aim of this pilot study, involving a Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA), conducted over the course of 2 years, was to understand community perceptions of aphasia while PWA engaged in an interprofessional treatment program involving speech and drama therapy. The interprofessional treatment program involved PWA participating in a therapeutic theatre program using the CoActive Therapeutic Theater (CoATT) while also receiving speech-language therapy. Each year, the PWA performed a different, original therapeutic theatre production for a public audience, at the culmination of their interprofessional treatment program. In this paper, we share data obtained from perspectives of audience members who witnessed the theatre production and aphasia education during the first year of the study and friends and family of PWA who participated in the therapeutic theatre process during the second year of the study. Responses from audience members who participated in aphasia education and witnessed the therapeutic theatre performance by the PWA during the first year, indicated an increased knowledge of aphasia. Friends and family members of PWA who witnessed their loved ones engaging in the CoATT process through interprofessional treatment, in the second year, reported that their loved ones benefited from the CoATT process, which was distinct from other therapeutic processes to their knowledge and that they were impacted by watching their loved one perform. These initial findings create footing towards understanding impact of therapeutic theatre in combination with speech-language therapy in the lives of PWA. They help us to obtain an initial appreciation of how therapeutic theatre and aphasia education help connect PWA and their community. What is already known on this subject Caregivers and communities at large play a significant role in and substantially impact the recovery of their loved ones (Dalemans etal., 2010; Grawburget etal., 2013; Kniepmann & Cupler, 2014) with aphasia. However, existing research suggests that persons with aphasia (PWA) are often misunderstood, isolated and infantilised by their communities. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The findings of our study reveal that friends, families and extended communities of PWA gain a positive and deep understanding of challenges experienced by PWA through therapeutic theatre supported by speech language therapy, based in a new CoActive Therapeutic Theatre (CoATT) model. This PWA community also agrees that therapeutic theatre in combination with speech-language therapy provides confidence and camaraderie between PWAs and strengthen connection between all constituencies. These results support the need for interprofessional intervention within the framework of a Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA). What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Treatment paradigms that bring PWAs in contact with their communities using an LPAA approach can increase confidence and social engagement for PWAs potentially leading to better outcomes for their individual speech-language therapy as well as create means of educating communities about PWA, and their stories.

CDO Theatre programme announced.

CDO Theatre programme announced.

Re-membering pedagogy: reclaiming Hmong heritage and belonging within a youth theater program

ABSTRACT This article draws on ethnographic research to explore the re-membering pedagogy of Hmong immigrant educators. It explicates the ways in which the work of Hmong immigrant educators within a theater project recenters Hmong ethnicity, reveals marginalization, and re-affirms family. Our study significantly advances an understanding of re-membering pedagogy through an analysis of a program within a co-ethnic, community-based organization as a site of re-membering that reclaims and recalls ethnic heritage and belonging.

“EUROPE”: A Patriotic Ballet for the First World War

ABSTRACT From September 1914 to January 1915, the Empire Theatre in London staged what was billed as a patriotic ballet called Europe. In addition to its lengthy run in the capital, a second version of the show toured the country, appearing at theatres in Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham and Portsmouth. The show received unanimous praise in both national and regional newspapers. However, despite its reach, popularity and impact, Europe has been mostly forgotten. Since it was a dance-based performance, no script was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Although the piece did include music, it produced no hit songs captured on gramophone records or sheet music. Moreover, once the reality of the First World War began to hit home, the manner in which the show trivialised and glorified the conflict quickly fell out of step with public opinion. Therefore, when Europe’s run ended, it was permanently shelved and assigned to the passing of time. Nevertheless, the show left an archival imprint scattered through newspapers, theatre programmes, magazines and autobiographies. The following article draws these fragments together to form a blueprint of this hitherto discarded piece of popular culture. This reconstruction reveals a strikingly complex and rich piece of theatre, both in terms of its technical construction and how cultural conventions were adapted to turn the war into entertainment. In its three short scenes, Europe featured national personifications inspired by political cartoons, virtuosic dances associated with European nations, a scenario lifted from a 40-year-old pamphlet on the Franco-Prussian War, and a giant decoupage map of Europe from which melodramatic villains, heroes and damsels in distress appeared. Through these tropes, archetypes and devices, Europe presented a story of the First World War to the masses, including who started it, what had happened so far and how it would end. The ballet also introduced the audience to a conception of Europe that simultaneously confirmed Great Britain’s dominant position within the continental community while underlining the country’s moral responsibility to defend the liberty of the nations within it.

MTEA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee Focus Group Series: Addressing Anti-Semitism Inclusive Musical Theatre Pedagogy

As an ongoing effort to support inclusive musical theater training within our musical theater educational community, the MTEA Diversity, Equity, and ELIANA RUBIN, Inclusion Committee hosts a Focus Group Series. On July 29th, 2023, Vice IONAH SCHWARTZ., AND President of the MTEA DEI Committee Gwen Walker convened a focus group BECCA SUSKAUER to discuss rising anti-Semitism and what musical theatre educators can do to address it. Included in our discussion from our community is an established professional, an educator, a young professional, and a student currently in an academic musical theater program.

Prevention Not Intervention: Stewarding Healthier Singers Into University Musical Theatre Programs

In recent years, singing voice research has become increasingly inclusive of non-classical styles. Studies on the risky vocal demands of contemporary commercial music are readily available, but less available are suggested methods for addressing these challenges. Voice injury prevention is not nearly as studied as voice injury intervention...

음악극이 노인의 우울과 자아존중감에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of musical theater on depression and self-esteem in elderly people. The subjects of this study were 23 elderly people aged 65 to 75 who used a senior welfare center in N-si, Gyeonggi-do. The music theater program was conducted once a week for a total of 8 sessions, 120 minutes per session. To verify its effectiveness, geriatric depression tests and self-esteem tests were conducted and analyzed before and after the program was implemented. As a result of the study, musical theater was significant in reducing depression in the elderly (t=5.348, p<.001) and improving self-esteem (t=-7.934, p<.001). Therefore, this study confirmed that musical theater has a positive effect on reducing depression and improving self-esteem in the elderly.

Editorial

Editorial

Seeking Critical Frameworks for Global Majority Theatre

Abstract: The essay advocates for expanding theater studies publications to more effectively engage with global majority epistemologies as core methodologies for analyzing theatrical phenomena. Academic theatre classes often incorporate performance studies paradigms, but most theater programs remain centered around practice-based exercises for acting, directing, designing, and producing Eurocentric theater. Global majority ways of telling stories are either not taught to students or are integrated into curricula in carefully measured doses as alternative approaches to art-making. This essay encourages twenty-first century scholars to more astutely respond to cultural productions based upon vernacular and indigenous ways of theatrical storytelling, arguing that a significant step would be to incorporate more indigenous languages, and perhaps have the journal publish in multiple languages (with translation) to expand the readership. However, even foregrounding text-based performance may be limiting. Many of the aesthetics that underly arts production in global majority cultures are constituted outside of text-based paradigms; they use symbol, myth, sound, gesture, dance language, and music as poetic containers for delivering their messages. They also build from local epistemologies connected to spirituality, religion, or alternative beliefs about the rationale and intention of performance. This essay calls for more time and space devoted to critical analysis of theatre created and performed outside of standard theatre venues, as well as a more nuanced discussion of complex ecosystems that support artistic innovation.

Addressing SDG16.2: Eliminating violence towards children – An applied theatre approach

We offer a case study of a long-running Aotearoa New Zealand-based applied theatre programme, Everyday Theatre. As both academics and Everyday Theatre practitioners, we explore how the programme addresses the aspirations of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.2, which is centred on eliminating violence towards children. Our reflections are informed by the qualitative data collected in our ongoing discussions as facilitators, our reflective journals, teacher evaluations of the programme, and a series of collaborative research workshops. We investigate the role and place of the drama conventions of teacher-in-role, pre-text, aesthetics, and framing. They are potent constituents of participatory theatre practice that can provoke both students and teachers to collaboratively conceptualise themselves and each other as active, responsible, critical, and empathetic agents for social change. These explorations throw light on how applied theatre practice can form small but significant contributions to engendering opportunities for students and teachers to consider how they could change their own future narratives, creating more socially cohesive local communities, and, in this way, addressing SDG 16.2. Cover image: photo by WOKANDAPIX on Pixabay