ABSTRACT

Exploring how educators and institutions might embrace the STEAM turn to ensure that theatre and performance can be instrumental to the neoliberal university, without being instrumentalized by it, this volume showcases alternative models for teaching and learning in theatre and performance in a neoliberal age.

Originally a special issue of Research in Drama Education, this volume foregrounds the above ideas in six principal articles, and provides a range of potential models for change in twelve case study discussions. Detailing a variety of ‘best practices’ in theatre and performance education, contributors demonstrate how postsecondary educators around the world have recentred drama and performance by collaborating with STEM-side faculty, using theatre principles to frame and support interdisciplinary learning, and working toward important applications beyond the classroom. Arguing that the neoliberal university needs theatre and performance more than ever, this valuable collection emphasizes the critical contribution which these subjects continue to make to the development of students, staff, and institutions.

This book will be of particular interest to students, researchers, and librarians in the fields of Theatre Studies, Performance Studies, Applied Theatre, Drama in Education, and Holistic Education.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

Theatre and Performance, Crisis and Survival

section Section One|125 pages

Face the Steamroller—Essays

chapter 1|21 pages

Power and Privilege in a Neoliberal Perspective

The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University

chapter 2|18 pages

Theatre Training and Performance Practice in Neoliberal Zimbabwean Universities

Survival Strategies and Frustrations

chapter 3|21 pages

Television as Theatre Text in the Austere Academy

A Curricular Exploration

chapter 4|21 pages

Faces Between Numbers

Reimagining Theatre and Performance as Instruments of Critical Data Studies Within a Liberal Arts Education

chapter 6|19 pages

Masihambisane [Let’s Walk]

Walking the City as an Interdisciplinary Pedagogical Experiment in Durban, South Africa

section Section Two|95 pages

Trust the Work—Case Studies

chapter 7|11 pages

Living the Interdiscipline

Conceiving, Developing, Managing, and Learning From a Large-Scale, Multidisciplinary, Scenario-Based Project Supporting Police De-Escalation Training in Ontario

chapter 8|9 pages

Hul’q’umi’num’ Language Heroes

A Successful Collaboration Between Elders, Community Organisations, and Canadian West Coast Universities

chapter 9|8 pages

Celebratory Theatre

A Response to Neoliberalism in the Arts

chapter 11|8 pages

Reimagining Applied Practices

A Case Study on the Potential Partnership Between Applied Practices and Education for Sustainable Development

chapter 12|6 pages

Exacting Collaboration

Performance as Pedagogy in Interdisciplinary Contexts

chapter 13|7 pages

Working at the Margins

Theatre, Social Science, and Radical Political Engagement

chapter 14|6 pages

Devilish Deals

Art, Research, and Activism With/in the Institution

chapter 15|8 pages

The Verbatim Formula

Caring for Care Leavers in the Neoliberal University

chapter 17|9 pages

Surviving, But Not Thriving

The Politics of Care and the Experience of Motherhood in Academia

chapter 18|6 pages

Writing Wrongs

Disruptive Feminist Teaching Within the (Anxious) Ivory Tower

section |11 pages

Afterword