Shortlisted for the 2022 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize Applied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing across global contexts and communities. However, this proliferation is not unproblematic. A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of some of the concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants. The book problematizes some key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: What might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20-years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia'.
Shortlisted for the 2022 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize Applied Theatre is a widely accepted term to describe a set of practices that encompass community, social and participatory theatre making. It is an area of performance practice that is flourishing across global contexts and communities. However, this proliferation is not unproblematic. A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of some of the concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants. The book problematizes some key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: What might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20-years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia'.
The Industrial Revolution was a time of enormous change for the British society. Science and technology developed rapidly and brought wealth and improvement into many sectors of life; inventions like the steam engine, power looms, the spinning jenny or the expansion of the road and rail network made life easier. But on the other hand it was also the time of great misery, exploitation and tremendous class differences between a very thin and very wealthy upper-class, a rising middle-class and a very broad and to a great extent extremely impoverished working-class. But how was it like being a working-class child in Victorian England? To answer this question this work will take a close look at two of the most famous contemporary novels dealing with the depiction of children: Charles Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Oliver Twist’.
He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the most famous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own true story has never been fully told. At last, the truth is revealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer Selina Hastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personal correspondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his only child, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity, and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage. Portrayed in full for the first time is Maugham’s disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, a manipulative society woman who trapped Maugham with a pregnancy and an attempted suicide. Hastings also explores Maugham’s many affairs with men, including his great love, Gerald Haxton, an alcoholic charmer. Maugham’s work in secret intelligence during two world wars is described in fascinating detail—experiences that provided the inspiration for the groundbreaking Ashenden stories. From the West End to Broadway, from China to the South Pacific, Maugham’s remarkably productive life is thrillingly recounted as Hastings uncovers the real stories behind such classics as Rain, The Painted Veil, Cakes & Ale, and other well-known tales.
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