ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the value and efficacy of applied theatre with youth while also addressing its challenges, deliberating the ethical dilemmas, and offering workable solutions. It provides an interactive format intended to generate discourse. The book culminates with a roundtable discussion with the contributors. It includes Sindy Castro’s discussion of the importance of incorporating immigrant students’ home languages as part of education writ large, rather than designating. The book offers a serviceable way to acknowledge theatre as a means towards a larger communal, pedagogic, or political goal rather than an end in and of itself. It explains, “What people are trying to do with young people is give them tools and skills that make thoughtful, activist human beings who may or may not decide to do theatre”.
