Theatre and Empowerment

Theatre and Empowerment examines the ability of drama, theatre, dance and performance to empower communities of very different kinds, and it does so from a multi-cultural perspective. The communities involved include poverty-stricken children in Ethiopia and the Indian sub-continent, disenfranchised Native Americans in the USA and young black men in Britain, victims of violence in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and a threatened agricultural town in Italy. The book asserts the value of performance as a vital agent of necessary social change, and makes its arguments through the close examination, from ‘inside’ practice, of the success – not always complete – of specific projects in their practical and cultural contexts. Practitioners and commentators ask how performance in its widest sense can play a part in community activism on a scale larger than the individual, ‘one-off’ project by helping communities find their own liberating and creative voices.