Dreaming the Possible: Exploring Global Worlds and Micro-Ecologies Using the Pedagogies of Drama

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium session offers a macro-analysis on a multi-sited, mixed methods, hyper-media, ethnographic research project in schools, communities, and theatres across five global cities in Canada, England, Greece, India, and Taiwan. Youth, Theatre, Radical Hope and the Ethical Imaginary: An Intercultural Investigation of Drama Pedagogy, Performance and Civic Engagement explores how the concepts of hope and care function in the lives of today’s youth and how their creative and artistic engagement might provoke forms of engaged citizenship worth considering in times of increasing social instability. The symposium places the five micro-ecologies in conversation with each other to illustrate how diverse young people are challenging the ubiquitous discourses of problematic, civically disengaged, apathetic youth, and irrelevant arts practices.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Macro-analysis of the social contexts of teaching and learning

Chair

• Kathleen M. Gallagher, OISE/University of Toronto

Papers

• Nurturing Dreams, Cultivating Sisterhood: What a Drama-Informed "Universe of Care" Teaches Us Through Counterstory - Dirk J. Rodricks, University of Toronto

• Toward "Compassionate Witnessing": Community-Making Through Theater - Nancy Cardwell, University of Toronto

• Negotiating Tradition in the New Global Order: What Taiwanese Youth Teach Us About Care and Accountability - Kelsey Jacobson, University of Toronto

• Seeing Possibilities Through Precarity Using Process Drama - Rebecca Starkman, University of Toronto - OISE

• "So Good Luck With Your Life—Your Mediocrity!" Interrogating Identity, Belonging, and the Future Through Verbatim Theater - Andrew Kushnir, Project: Humanity

Discussant

• Anne Harris, RMIT University