PANEL FOUR: SOCIAL POSITIONINGS AND URBAN SPACE: A CHALLENGE FOR THEATRE PEDAGOGY

Kathleen Gallagher, OISE; Philip Lortie, OISE; Dominique Riviere, OISE

This panel presentation is based on findings from a SSHRC-funded study titled, Drama Education, Youth, and Social Cohesion: (re-)constructing identities in urban contexts. It examines the experiences of youth in ethno-culturally diverse urban drama classrooms in order to develop a theoretical and empirically grounded account of the dynamic social forces of inclusion and exclusion experienced by adolescents within their unique contexts of urban North American schooling. Four drama classrooms (two in Toronto, two in New York City) have participated in the study, now in its second year. One primary focus in these sites has been on the extent to which drama education illuminates the coherence (and conflicts) between youth's personal/cultural lives and their school lives, and,subsequently, how these resonances and ruptures influence the formation of their social identities and artistic musings.
    The panel discussion will focus on two critical episodes encountered in one of our Toronto classrooms, bringing the convergences and conflicts of diverse ideas and identities in drama collaborations into sharp relief. These episodes paint a picture of drama classrooms in urban settings that intensify questions of identity, place and creativity, or social positioning and artistic collaboration. Part director, part writer, and part muse, drama teachers must strive to provide frameworks potent and sensitive enough to overcome students’ reluctance to experiment with their identities. We are interested in how drama pedagogy might better negotiate aesthetic practice with a sensitivity to students' social positioning.