Jan Selman

Deep Listening in a Feminist Popular Theatre Project: Upsetting the Position of Audience in Participatory Education

Investigating the participatory, collaborative, and conflictual character of learning within feminist coalitions was the focus of an interdisciplinary community-based project that used popular theatre as the methodology. Popular theatre, with its creative approach to analyzing, naming, and acting on problems and working creatively with conflict, created a unique opportunity to enrich and complicate ones understanding of deep listening—an embodied and active stand-point for speaking and listening across difference. This article outlines some of the deeper under-standings about feminist politics, theatre processes, and the creation of democratic sites of learning that emerged from this study. The authors focus on theatre processes that created new opportunities for high-risk storytelling and deep listening. Insights from this study can be applied to the learning processes of movements for social justice, particularly feminist coalitions, and to the ways the participatory process and democratic intent of adult education class-rooms are understood.

The effectiveness of participatory theatre with early adolescents in school‐based sexuality education

Public concern about adolescent sexuality has garnered considerable interest in recent decades. Most teenagers are either thinking about or acting on their sexual impulses. Yet notable controversy exists regarding sexual education among youth. Adolescents report sexuality education must speak to issues of interest to them and be delivered in a compelling manner. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of theatre as an effective means of education. Six hundred and twenty‐seven Canadian Grade Nine students completed a questionnaire before and after a theatre production as part of sexuality education in their schools. The limited statistically significant findings were unexpected. However, students revealed positive comments in interviews. The nature of theatre, the personal content of the play, and the science‐based methods of evaluation are suggested as reasons for this contradiction. Future research on theatre in school‐based sexuality education must incorporate qualitative research methods if different approaches to evaluation research in fine arts (such as drama) and social science are to be resolved.

Telling Old Stories in New Ways

The project “Old Stories in New Ways” involves multiple partners including Luo-Kenyan performing artists, a Canadian popular theatre director, plus Canadian and Kenyan academics from several disciplines. The chapter’s authors, Jan Selman and John Battye, both affiliated with the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta, co-direct and organize the project.