For young people, the space of the drama classroom can be a space for deep learning as they struggle across difference to create something together with common purpose. Collaborating across institutions, theatres, and community spaces, the research in Hope in a Collapsing World mobilizes theatre to build its methodology and create new data with young people as they seek the language of performance to communicate their worries, fears, and dreams to a global network of researchers and a wider public.
A collaboration between a social scientist and a playwright and using both ethnographic study and playwriting, Hope in a Collapsing World represents a groundbreaking hybrid format of research text and original script – titled Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope – for reading, experimentation, and performance.
Table of Contents:
Dedication
Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements I
Acknowledgements II
Prologue
Part I:
Listening, Pedagogy, Theatre, and Cultural Citizenship
Listening as an Artful Practice of Care
Listening and Caring as Political Acts
Creating Social Value from Theatre
The System: Worlds Apart but Structurally Familiar
The Settings: Brief Social, Political and Educational Portraits of Athens, Lucknow, Coventry, Tainan, Toronto
Athens, Greece: Setting the Context
Lucknow, India: Setting the Context
Coventry, England: Setting the Context
Tainan, Taiwan: Setting the Context
Toronto, Canada: Setting the Context
Ethnography and its Ecologies
An Overview of Data Collection
A Word about Ethnography
The Qualitative Landscape: Care and Cultural Citizenship
Daring to Dream in Greek Austerity
Misfit Citizenship and Political Personhood in India: A Methodology of Critical Dialogue and Rehearsed Futurity
Hope, Performance Pedagogies, and Democratic Citizenship
Canley Youth Theatre’s Missive to the World—Listen
A Pedagogy of Hope
Tainan Students Making the World they Need
The Self, the Collective: Theatre and Social Change
Interdependency Against All Odds
Voicing Toronto Stories for a more Equal World
The Territory of Race, Racism, and Gender in Verbatim Theatre Creation
Visible and Invisible Vulnerabilities in Oral History Storytelling
Muckles’ Story of Hearing and Being Heard
Youth Alienation from Mainstream Politics: Who is the Knowledgeable Citizen?
Devising Theatre, Identity and the Search for Structure and Meaning
Hope and Care in the Quantitative Landscape
Key Quantitative Findings Across Sites
‘Outside the Mainstream’ and the Nature of Personal Hope and Experiences of Care
Generating Hope through Self-Creation in the School, the Community, and in the Drama-Making Space
Young People as Care-Givers
Finding and Giving Care in Context
To Conclude: Wrestling Towards Hope through Relationships of Care
Epilogue: Acting in Concert
Turning Towards Part II:
Towards Youth Audience Research
Part II:
A Step Towards Youth
By Andrew Kushnir
Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope
By Andrew Kushnir
Appendix
References
Index
About the Author :
Kathleen Gallagher is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Distinguished Professor in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, and Director of the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.
Andrew Kushnir is an independent artist and artistic director of Project: Humanity
