ABSTRACT
Collaborating with Project: Humanity, an acclaimed socially engaged theatre company, we mobilized, over 16 weeks, an applied theatre methodology of drama workshops and traditional qualitative research methods to explore issues of spatialized inequality and localized poverty with a youth shelter community in Toronto, Canada. Observations gleaned through drama activities provided graphic evidence of the multiple and overlapping socio-economic pressures and limited infrastructural and personal support experienced in their young lives. In this article, we use critical race theory to trouble majoritarian narratives of access, capacity, and success. In particular, Yosso’s [2005. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 8 (1): 69–91] typology of ‘community cultural wealth’ has allowed us to reconsider the idea of ‘capital’ as it is exploited by youth in creative engagement with the material precarity of their daily existence.
