Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia 1350086118, 9781350086111, 9781350086173, 9781350086166

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Applied Theatre

RELATED TITLES Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System Caoimhe McAvinchey ISBN 978-1-4742-6255-2 Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing Veronica Baxter and Katharine E. Low ISBN 978-1-4725-8457-1

Applied Theatre A Pedagogy of Utopia Selina Busby

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Selina Busby, 2021 Selina Busby has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work. For legal purposes the Permissions on p. xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover photograph © Rajshekhar Kundu All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931282 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-8611-1 ePDF: 978-1-3500-8617-3 eBook: 978-1-3500-8616-6 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Graeme, who travelled every step of this journey with me, in every possible sense.

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Contents Foreword Helen Nicholson  Acknowledgements  Permissions  Introduction  A pedagogy of utopia  Defining social justice  The politics of dignity  Axiology of practice  What comes next?  1 Costa Rica: Utilizing a global vision to safeguard the local village  The context: The community at Yorkín  Axiological impasses  The globalization of a village  2 Partnerships, integrated community investment and nebulous utopia  Dharavi: A ‘sub-city’  Pluralism or neo-colonialism?  Can the subaltern make theatre?  Embedded integrated investment  Cultural invasion or concrete utopianism?  Finding a nebulous utopia  3 Aspirational thinking: Social justice and critical pedagogy  Neoliberalism and social exclusion  The bridge to cultural capital  Cruel optimism and aspirational thinking 

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23 25 29 35

45 54 59 61 64 68 70 73 75 80 83

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Bridges crossed with critical pedagogy  92 Resistance or compliance in prison theatre?  93 The (broken) criminal justice system  96 The Children’s Theatre Project  99 Radical containment – or just plain violence?  102 Is making children’s theatre in prisons a pedagogy of utopia?  106 An ‘unfinished’ work in progress  109 Resistance or compliance?  114 4 Articulation and amplification  The politics of articulation  Walk a mile in my shoes: Irondale Theater  Becoming fully human and Edward Bond  An accordion shop, a riot and change 

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5 Finding a thirdspace  The spatial turn and safety  Heterotopia and the Halfway House Project  Not safe space or brave space, but a thirdspace  Thirdspace as intercultural meeting point  Youth theatre as thirdspace: Company Three  Brainstorm  The Company Three methodology 

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6 Geographies of resistance  The disruption of presence: NT’s Connections  Disrupting cultural spaces  Seeking spatial justice and jumping scale  Privatopia: The neoliberal dream?  Resisting spatial injustice in an urban village 

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Conclusion 199 Concluding – but not final thoughts: The voices of Dharavi  199 Breaking barriers, breaking bread  201 A word, or several, from Dharavi  204 Notes  References  Index 

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Foreword Helen Nicholson

It is September 2020, and in the last six months I have been to the theatre just once. London’s theatres were ordered to close on 20 March 2020 to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and in common many theatres across the world that went dark renewed the tradition of illuminating the stage with a single lantern – a ghost-light – as a promise that we’d be back. Fittingly, the first play I attended in the theatre after lockdown eased was Simon Stephens’s adaptation of José Saramago’s dystopian novel Blindness, reimagined as sound installation at the Donmar Warehouse (London, August 2020). The audience, masked and partially lit in a darkened auditorium, listened through headphones to an apocalyptic allegory about an outbreak of blindness that caused society to break down. Dystopias offer warnings and, as Selina Busby describes in this book, utopia is a search for hope. Each ghosts the other; they shed light on each other. Using the metaphor of blindness to invoke dystopian social unrest is, of course, not without controversy, and the ideal of twenty-twenty vision holds many contradictions in 2020. But, as partially blind academic Hannah Thompson points out, it was the theatricality of Blindness that showed audiences ‘the value of the non-visual senses, the creative and aesthetic benefits of blindness’. It seems that the intensity of living through a global pandemic has brought a different kind of perception, a reimagining of the delicate bonds that link dystopia with utopia. It brought the past into the present with a clarity I’d not experienced before. It illuminated the paradox of living locally in a time of increased global interconnectedness. Inequalities and social injustice became more visible, more acute. Perhaps it is not surprising that some of the first and most compelling visions of utopia emerged when daily lives were shaped and scarred

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by outbreaks of plague. Thomas More was familiar with the deadly effects of contagious diseases when, in 1516, he published his book in Latin, Utopia, a word he coined from two Greek terms, ou-topos (no place) and eu-topos (good place). Francis Bacon’s unfinished utopian novel New Atlantis, published posthumously in 1626, describes how visitors to his utopian island were put in quarantine if they arrived with symptoms of illness. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe ([1719] 2014)  imagines another island utopia, and it is no coincidence that he also wrote Journal of the Plague Year, based on recollections of the plague during his childhood in 1655. Perhaps there is something about the fragility of life in times of plague that inspires utopias. They make us pause, experience life in the shadows of ghost-light and imagine what matters. Utopias are often found on islands, imagined places away from the realities of disease and contamination, corrupt leaders, broken societies and persecution. They are inherently theatrical, performed spaces where visitors reflect on their own experience as they discover an alternative way of life. Bringing this impulse into applied theatre – and the multiple spaces in which theatre happens – is part of the importance of Busby’s book. She speaks to the urgency of this experience, and with artistry and compassion. Through careful analysis of different examples of practice, Busby’s utopia occupies the productive hinterland between no place and a good place. Whether she is writing about theatre-making in prisons, schools, villages in Costa Rica or cities in India, this practice finds room to ‘play between the real and imagined, where we are now, and where we want to be’. It is these in-between spaces created in the drama itself that she describes as ‘gaps for the imagination’, and this is central to Busby’s idea of a utopian pedagogy. Drawing on a wide range of theorists and pedagogues with clear examples of practice, Busby shows how bringing people together to make theatre provides a supportive framework to imagine life afresh. This utopian theatre occupies a creative space that is both outside the patterns of everyday life and deeply enmeshed in it. This book shows how theatre has the

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potential to turn utopia from an imagined island to a practical politics for living. Busby’s thoughtful analysis recognizes the political complexity of imagining utopia and how this process can be a site of struggle and contradiction. Historically utopia has often been imagined by people with social and cultural privilege, and reclaiming utopia as an inclusive space is part of its pedagogical labour. Not all utopias are good places; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) famously shows how conformity to one utopian world view oppresses and imprisons women. In his book Back to Black, Andrew Kehinde is scathing about attachment to a utopian ideal of precolonial Africa as a source of liberation (2018:  127). It is in this context that a pedagogy of utopia becomes pressing. At the heart of all great visions of utopia lies a clear system of learning, often playful, communal and built on egalitarian principles. In Busby’s book this utopian pedagogy is alive with creative action and critical thought, a pedagogy that is alert to the multiple contradictions and hierarchies that are found in the complex spaces in which applied theatre takes place. Following Paul Ricoeur, Busby describes her pedagogy as a ‘nebulous utopia’ to underline how utopias are differently imagined and to recognize that the social imagination can be both constructive and destructive. In her feminist utopian novel Herland (1915), the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s heroine Somel describes education as ‘our highest art’ and teaching her playful pedagogy is ‘only allowed to our highest artists’ (2015: 110). This sentiment may belie some of the more egalitarian impulses of much of the practice described in this book, but I have chosen to invoke this utopian pedagogy because it underlines its artistic qualities; the relationship between the arts, artists, pedagogy and utopia runs deeply and richly through this book. Reading Pedagogies of Utopia is an inspiring experience. At times like this, we don’t need toolkits to download or quick-fix solutions, we need time with artists and thinkers to help us reflect in the ghost-light and find metaphors of hope.

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References Atwood, Margaret (1985), The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Blindness, adapted by Simon Stephens, directed by Walter Meierjohann. Donmar Warehouse, London. August 2020. Defoe, Daniel ([1719] 2014), The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, New York: Black and White Classics. Kehinde, Andrew (2018), Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism from the Twenty-First Century, London: TED Books. Oxford World Classics (2008), Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: ‘Utopia’/Francis Bacon: ‘New Atlantis’/Henry Neville: ‘The Isle of Pines’, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perkins Gilman, Charlotte ([1915] 2015), Yellow Wallpaper and Herland, London: Penguin Vintage Classics. Thompson, Hannah (2020), ‘Blindness at the Donmar Warehouse’. http:// hannah-thompson.blogspot.com/. Accessed 11 September 2020.

Acknowledgements It is a well-worn trope that books are not written by one person alone, and it is a trope that is absolutely true of this book. It could not have been written without the support of friends and colleagues in many places, each of whom offered stimulating conversations, pragmatic help and wisdom. Formal thanks are due to The Leverhulme Trust, which has funded many students from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama to work on some of the projects discussed in the book and to The Global Challenge Research Fund, which has funded the final project discussed in Chapter 6. Thanks are due to Central as an institution for generously supporting me and often funding my work as both a practitioner and a researcher within the UK and internationally for over fifteen years. In the last five years the research office, Dan Hetherington, in particular, has been invaluable to my work, and colleagues in the BA DATE team have offered support, cover when I am absent and rich conversations. I would also like to thank the team at Methuen Drama, particularly Lara Bateman and Mark Dudgeon. As a dyslexic researcher I owe thanks to a range of people who have steered me through the writing process, particularly Gilli Bush-Bailey, Jackie Bratton, Tara Foss and David Edgar for their careful reading and editing; Sally Baggott for patience and technical skills; Sara Wiener, for sourcing things; Joe Parslow for indexing and conversations about utopia; and Tanya Zybutes, my dyslexic support tutor, for her guidance, questioning, nagging and friendship. I also want to particularly thank close friends that I  work with at Central, for their humour, insights, probing and wine:  Steve Farrier, Sylvan Baker, Kat Low, Adelina Ong, Jessica Hartley and Daron Oram. There are also many friends working in applied theatre who have provided me with inspiration, challenging conversation and support in more ways than I could count, so thanks also go to Michael Anderson, Kelly Freebody, Charlene Rajendran, Alison Groves, Kate Smyth,

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Penny Bundy, Julie Dunn, Madonna Stinson, Peter O’Connor, Michael Finneran, Kathleen Gallagher, Peter Duffy, Christine Hatton, James Thompson, Paul Sutton, Max Dean, Catherine McNamara, Anton Franks and Baz Kershaw. Many students  – Cathy Sloan, Chengyu Tan and Nina Lemon, to name a few  – have been involved in various ways in the creation of this book, and our conversations have been invaluable. The BA and MA students who have worked with me in India, in prisons, in Costa Rica, in the United States and the UK – of whom there are too many to name – have been a huge part of the practice and thinking contained within these pages and I thank them all. I also thank the practitioners who shared their rehearsal spaces with me: Ned Glasier, Louise Nicol and Terry Greiss; the team at NT Connections, particularly Rob Watt; and Alice King-Farlow and those at G5A and Covenant House New York. I also thank partners without whom projects would not have happened and whose practice has enriched my thinking about the theatre we make, the places we make it in and the people we make it with – Divya Bhatia, Satish Deembe, Cat Jones and Cathy Han. There are three women without whom this book would not have started, and I  thank each of them for their mentorship and support:  Maria Delgado whose sharp advice and pragmatic action galvanized me to write; Sally Mackey who took a risk and trusted me to work on the project that started this journey and whose continued wit, wisdom and friendship made the practice and research possible; and Helen Nicholson for guiding me through the PhD process that started my theoretical journey to utopia, for her reading and reviewing, for her writing of the foreword to this book and for always being there. Special thanks also go to Paul Higgins, Chris Stone, Chris Haynes, Annie White, Fiona, Ethan and Rob Spreckly – you know what you did and when. Thanks also go to my mother Liz – we don’t always agree, but she was the one who instilled in me a burning sense of social justice and told me to follow my dreams. And to Graeme for being my rock, my safety net, for the laughter, faith in my utopic visions, for picking up

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the pieces of me, for the shared tears and for letting me be even when that made no sense and being there to hold my hand. Lastly and most importantly to my friends, participants and co-researchers in prisons, schools, youth theatres, PRUs, the Covenant House, halfway houses, Dharavi and Worli Koliwada – your passion, commitment, humour, bravery and compassion remain my inspiration.

Permissions Portions of this book have appeared elsewhere in a different form as stand-alone considerations of projects. These brief articles and chapters were stepping stones to developing a pedagogy of utopia. I  first used this title in 2015:  ‘A Pedagogy of Utopia’, Research in Drama Education, 20 (3): 413–16. A version of part of Chapter 2 first appeared in 2017: ‘Finding a Concrete Utopia in the Dystopia of a “Sub” City:  Applied Theatre in Dharavi’, Research in Drama Education, 22 (1): 92–103. I have previously discussed the Crossing Bridges Project that is discussed in several chapters of this book in 2018:  ‘Streets, Bridges, Cul-De-Sacs and Dreams:  Does Inviting Shelter-Dwelling Youth to Work with Culture Industry Professionals Engender a Sense of Cruel Optimism?’ Research in Drama Education:  The Journal of Applied Theatre, 23 (2):  355–72. I  refer to the National Theatre Connection Scheme in 2019: ‘ “The Biggest Youth Theatre Festival on the Planet”: National Theatre Youth Connections’, in Michael Finneran and Michael Anderson (eds), Education and Theatres:  Beyond the Four Walls, 115–30, London: Springer. The Children’s Play project was explored in 2019: ‘Dancing in the Wings: Is Prison Theatre a Form of Radical Containment or Does It Offer a Pedagogy of Utopia?’ in Ashley Lucas (ed.), Show Me the Way Out: Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration, London: Methuen Drama.

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A pedagogy of utopia I have been working with drama in community settings since 1995. With different constituent groups that include teenagers in New York, men in prison in the UK and women in Mumbai, I have used drama as a means of education and as a means to effect change. I have also simply made theatre with different people without an explicit agenda. The contexts, settings and locations of this work have varied greatly, as have the ages of the participants. Since I  started this journey, the policies that directly affect this work, and its funding streams, have also varied and they have changed how those of us who make art in community contexts do so. Internal debates about the binaries of process/product and affect/effect have also had a major impact on our field.1 Not surprisingly, all of this has affected the thinking of researchers and practitioners: they have either prioritized one part of these binaries or tried to find a third way that accommodates both. For me as a practitioner-researcher, the manner in which I have described, named and defined my work has been modified over the last two and a half decades. Currently ‘Applied Theatre’ is my designation of choice although my practice might be better described as ‘applied art practices’. While the term ‘Applied Theatre’ is not without problems,2 it does in a straightforward way describe the application of theatre. While being sympathetic to Mojisola Adebayo’s charge that Applied Theatre ‘omits its politics’ (Adebayo 2015: 123), I would argue that applying theatre in non-theatrical settings is an inherently political act. This is a principle that has underpinned my theatre-making throughout my twenty-five years of practice. Three other elements have remained steadfast: first,

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throughout my time working in the field, I have been troubled by the intention to ‘change’ participants, which appears to be a recurrent focus of the work; second, an ethos of ‘hope’ underpins my practice; third, I define my practice within Applied Theatre as part of a search – or, rather, a demand  – for social justice and equity. If anything, this final principle has only grown stronger and has positioned itself more centrally within my practice as the twenty-first century has progressed. This book explores these principles and the ways in which they have developed and played out in my practice over the last twenty-five years. As such, the book examines my work as a researcher, teacher and practitioner and balances the three as they have simultaneously been established during my work in the field. This is not a book that is written as a guide to working in the field of applied theatre, as it does not contain a working method or modes of practice to be adapted by others, nor does it contain descriptions of the theatre produced during this journey or blow-by-blow accounts of what happened in the workshop space, the prison chapel, the village hall, the gym of a homeless shelter or the lanes of informal housing settlements. I  do not practise a set working method or framework and so if you are looking for a toolkit for Applied Practice, you have come to the wrong place. Rather, this book focuses on the theories, principles and ethics that sit at the core of my theatre-making. I make no assertions about the correct way to work with integrity alongside communities, but I do explore what works for me, why it does so and how I believe making theatre can be an asset for those seeking social justice.

Defining social justice In their introduction to Drama and Social Justice: Theory, Research and Practice in International Contexts (2016), Kelly Freebody and Michael Finneran observe that ‘social change’ tends to be more prevalent than ‘social justice’ in the literature of Applied Theatre. They suggest this might stem from the assumption that any social change is always necessarily a

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just change (Freebody and Finneran 2016: 18). I suggest that this is, in part, because social justice is a slippery term. Interestingly, sociologist Neil Thompson believes that ‘most people would agree with the idea of social justice and see it as somehow related to a notion of fairness but have little understanding of the complex nature of this concept and how one carries out a practice where social justice is an integral part and not just an empty slogan attached to practice’ (Thompson 2017: xiii). It is this commitment to fairness that goes beyond ‘an empty slogan’ that lies at the heart of both the theory and practice of Applied Theatre. Thompson (ibid.:  3) defines social justice as being ‘about the social context of fairness and the fairness of the social context. That is, not just about individual issues in specific contexts, but, rather, how those individual issues reflect wider patterns of injustice, discrimination and oppression.’ While my theatre practice is about the issues of fairness at the level of the individual – it rages against the waste of an individual’s potential and their degradation  – it is also about the wider social patterns of injustice, discrimination and oppression that generate such waste. I  choose to focus my practice, sometimes indirectly, sometimes very directly, on the injustice or unfairness experienced by some of the most socially excluded sections of society, those whom anthropologist Arjun Appadurai describes as being ‘bare citizens’. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s use of the term ‘bare citizens’, Appadurai uses the expression to describe the urban poor who have ‘been pushed into a state of bare citizenship’ (2013: 118), a state where their rights have been reduced, or stripped back, to the bare minimum, such as those who might be classified as prisoners or refugees. For him, the urban poor, those who live in informal housing settlements, shelters, slums or on pavements, can be seen as ‘bare citizens’ with no access to the rights and protections offered to regular citizens. They are those without disposable incomes and who cannot therefore consume mass-produced products and culture, and so, in the words of Indian writer Arundhati Roy, without spending power, they do not matter (Roy 2010:  xxv). When making theatre with ‘bare citizens’ in prisons, homeless shelters or slum

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communities, I  understand and deploy the term ‘social justice’ in line with Thompson’s definition. I  identify three key dimensions of social justice as equality, or equity, rights and responsibility, and merit (2017: 41–2). With regard to social justice, inequality is not merely about lack of money or even poverty; it is a complex triangle of discrimination, poverty and social exclusion that results in some people having less, being denied access and ‘accepting disparaging treatment’ (Thompson 2017:  42). Inequality results from a hierarchy of privileges, whereby some benefit from an excess of privilege, while others are hindered by a deficiency of privilege. Since 2009 there has been much written about the rarefied 1 per cent of the world’s population who hold 99 per cent of the global resources (Dorling 2014, 2015; Stiglitz 2016; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). However, the 99 per cent are not equal in their misfortune and exclusion. The structures that emerge from our neoliberal order ensure that there are hierarchies of inequality within the 99 per cent that cut across the globe and within each nation, and even within each community group. This inequality results in many individuals and groups being unable to participate in economic, educational and cultural society; they are excluded in ways the 1 per cent are not. With the vast majority of citizens falling into the 99 per cent, social exclusion is deeply ingrained throughout and across societies, so it is not surprising that social exclusion has become the key territory for Applied Theatre projects that seek to make theatre with community groups, often in partnership with so-called marginalized groups such as those ‘at risk of offending’; youth not in employment, education or training; those living with addiction; pavement-dwellers; and recently arrived immigrants and refugees. Using the ‘social exclusion’ label unlocks funding for arts projects with various community groups, which is then used to justify the value of projects in terms of improved inclusion or equality.3 In 2013, the World Bank published a report entitled ‘Inclusion Matters:  The Foundation for Shared Prosperity’. It states that ‘individuals and groups are excluded through behaviors and practices,

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including stereotypes, prejudices, and stigmas that are socially constructed and influence day-to-day interactions. These practices play out at different levels, often underpinned by sophisticated and ingrained social norms and the beliefs of both the excluder and the excluded’ (World Bank 2013:  loc. 1691). The repercussions of these ‘behaviors and practices’ by ‘both the excluder and the excluded’ are far-reaching and these are examined throughout this book. That the World Bank should be interested and concerned about social inclusion was an unexpected but welcome discovery. However, it is less radical than initially supposed:  the Bank is specifically concerned with how inequality interferes with a community group’s or individual’s ability to make economically valuable contributions to society, rather than from a humanitarian impulse. Thompson’s discussion of the rights and responsibilities of the individual, in the context of social justice and exclusion, is connected with his notion of ‘citizenship’. For Thompson (2017), social justice requires the rights and responsibilities of people to be respected. Social justice, therefore, is not only about economic values, or even ensuring people’s basic human rights (another somewhat slippery term4) are met, but about ensuring that individuals also have the opportunity to contribute constructively to their society. This can only occur if people feel a strong enough attachment to their community to care about it and the people within it. Those living in poverty or those who have a minority status are often excluded from political spaces and forums, and this can compound their sense of powerlessness. In the words of the World Bank report, ‘feelings of fairness, justice, and “being part of society” can be manifestations of how much the society recognizes, respects, and listens to its members’ (World Bank 2013: loc. 2978). Individuals need to have a sense of ownership of, and to feel they have a genuine stake in, the societies in which they live; they must feel that they have the right to contribute to the development of its policies, rules and laws. In other words – and to use an often-overused and ill-conceived Applied Theatre term – people need to feel that they have a ‘voice’ in their communities, but more than this, that this voice will be heard.

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The third element of social justice that Thompson describes is merit. By this he means that people should be given their ‘just desserts’ and that it is unjust to give people the ‘message that they are less worthy than others; that they are of a lower level of merit’, based on things over which they have no control (Thompson 2017: 42). This sense of unworthiness could be described as being treated with a lack of dignity and respect. Taken together it is clear these dimensions of social justice are centred on fairness, equity and power relations. In Applied Theatre contexts, I  turn to Freebody and Finneran’s declaration that social justice ‘represents an aspiration to bring equality and fairness to bear in any area of society and community where a conspicuous or indeed hidden inequity exists’ (Freebody and Finneran 2013: 47). The idea of inequity, as existing both implicitly and explicitly, underpins my interest in making theatre and researching questions that disrupt power structures on both the micro and macro levels. The micro level involves challenging the internalized negative identities that are created for individuals, identities which impede their potential and aspirational thinking. On the macro level, I seek to invite the general public, public institutions and policy makers to experience the harm that inequality, social exclusion, discrimination, and lack of respect and dignity have on both individuals and society as a whole. These are ambitious aims but ones I continue to pursue – whether I am working with adults or with youth and whether I  am working in the UK or internationally. Applied Theatre as a starting point for change is not a novel concept. Jenny Hughes and Karen Wilson, in early and detailed research into youth theatre, discussed the widely held perception that Applied Theatre can generate positive effects for participants who have been marginalized by their socio-economic circumstances (2004:  58). However, the assumed impacts of Applied Theatre on participants have been contested and I  am mindful of researchers who counsel restraint when celebrating the value of the practice. These researchers include: Michael Balfour who recommends ‘a theatre of “little changes” which eschews big claims of social efficacy’ (Balfour 2009: 347); James

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Thompson (2009) who asserts that Applied Theatre that focuses on instrumental effects is limited without consideration of joy or pleasure; and Dani Snyder-Young’s (2013) proposal that artists wishing to make social change should look beyond theatre to more effective means of changing society. In her 2014 book, Why Theatre Matters, Kathleen Gallagher also cautions against making overblown claims for drama with youth, stating:  ‘There are many such stories of transformation in the arts and education literature. They do happen. But it is often far more complicated than such neorealist narratives would have us believe’ (Gallagher 2014: 132). Gallagher is correct that the complexities of shifting self- and group-identity should not be underestimated, but neither should the potential of theatre to contribute to this complicated process be overlooked or underestimated. Dialogic devising processes and text-work may contribute to change, but perhaps in response to the determined shift towards measurable outcomes and economically quantifiable impact in the humanities overall, Applied Theatre researchers have made grandiose claims about their work. In part, this may be an attempt to justify, compete or be taken seriously by the more traditional disciplines that use conventional quantitative research methods and partly to justify public funding of university courses. The academic focus on impact follows that of the public and private sectors, with the latter seeking evidence in the form of hard data to rationalize their support of community projects. The neoliberal sleight of hand can be seen through the structures of the public sector, which has given rise to the slogan ‘value for money’, which is a leitmotif in everything we do, as if measurable transactions have an innate merit. Isabel Lorey, in State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious, describes this trend as ‘a fear of the incalculable and culture of measuring the immeasurable’ (Lorey 2015:  2) and is part of what Henry Giroux describes as ‘the cult of the measurable’ (2015: 40). While appreciating the need to provide evidence for the effective nature of research and practice in the field, and an accountability for public funds, it is vital that we do not succumb to reducing the participants to quantitative elements of our work, as things to be measured. Allowing participants to become

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‘data’ inevitably leads to hero narratives about drama and its practitioners ‘saving the world’ and reinforces the power imbalances that those who work for social justice should be confronting. Since 2015, academics such as O’Connor and Anderson (2015) and Victoria Foster (2017) have been interrogating and challenging a system that prioritizes statistics over people. Applied Theatre research and practice are qualitative in nature and thus do not produce hard evidence of improvement. This is further complicated by understanding that what might work for participants is not necessarily best for funding bodies or academia. And who is to say what counts as improvement? In her article ‘Art-based research for social justice’ (2017), Foster notes that qualitative and arts-based research ‘gives weight to the experiences and understandings of marginalized people, the intimacies and routines of their everyday lives, and as such is at risk of being automatically consigned to an inferior status’ (2017: 113), while also noting the end goal of such work is to address the imbalance of power relations. Short-term measurement is virtually impossible and often detracts from the people with whom Applied Theatre researchers want to work. The measurement of the impact of Applied Theatre requires longerterm studies than meet the needs of the current funding climate. When talking about personal change and aspirational thinking, it is difficult to define the criteria that might demonstrate impact in the short term, and there is very limited funding available for the long-term projects this requires. There is ongoing debate about whether Applied Theatre should be viewed as art or as instrumental (Jackson 2007; Matarasso 2007, 2013, 2019; Reason 2017). If the latter reduces the former, funding arts projects based on notions of change, while providing access to the arts for those who might remain excluded from theatre, does lend an instrumental element to the work. This position is dangerous because it encourages a justification of art which can only lead to transformation stories and the erosion of the value of artistry and beauty (Thompson 2014; Winston 2010). As a field, we are right to question the hero narratives told in an attempt to justify the work and the ethics of what we do, in whose name

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we do it and how we work. But we also, perhaps, should not wallow quite so much in what I have heard Simon Parry and James Thompson refer to as ‘the Manchester miserableness of applied theatre’, which takes the view that change is not made through theatre projects. I not only welcome the integrity and scrutiny this brings to the work but also believe that applying theatre that is about theatre and social justice should, in the words of Freebody and Finneran, ‘be understood as being fundamentally emancipatory in intent’ (2013: 45). The ethics and law scholar Martha Nussbaum believes that ‘citizens cannot relate well to the complex world around them by factual knowledge and logic alone’ (Nussbaum 2010: 95). Art, and specifically theatre, provides a lens through which individuals and groups can process and reflect on their lived experiences of the world and offer a means of understanding and articulating the complexities that surround us both implicitly and explicitly. Theatre-making with aims of social justice enables people to find new ways of communicating their views, their discontent and their wishes. Neil Thompson claims that ‘trust and a sense of security’ are a ‘part of the measure of social justice’ and that a ‘society cannot be said to be fair and just if it leaves its most vulnerable citizens in a state of insecurity and mistrust’ (Thompson 2017: 45). Theatre is one tool in our armoury that may help us to relate to our complex world and to improve insecurity, mistrust, exclusion and responsibility; it’s the only weapon I  have against the global domination of neoliberalism and the lack of justice, equity and dignity that it creates, and so I intend to continue to use it for such aims.

The politics of dignity Thompson tells us that social exclusion is unjust not only economically but also in terms of dignity. Exclusion can lead to low self-esteem, which can lead to low aspirational thinking. If an individual belongs to a socially excluded group, such as shelter-dwelling youth, and is affiliated with that social grouping, then according to social psychologists (Abrams

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and Hogg 1998; Fiske 1998) they are likely to develop similar mindsets to that group and behave accordingly. A change in social strata may lead to a resignation, at both group and individual levels, to the status quo. If none of the shelter-dwelling youth attend school or college, then it can be supposed that none of them will continue with their education, and a self-fulfilling prophecy emerges where there is no attempt to change the belief that homeless youth cannot succeed academically. Appadurai believes that a lack of ‘capacity to aspire’ results in individuals from disadvantaged groups, or society’s ‘bare citizens’, setting the bar lower than they would if they belonged to higher achieving groups (Appadurai 2004). Writing in The Future as Cultural Fact (2013), Appadurai links a lack of capacity to aspire with housing, intimate relationships and dignity, identifying poverty (and more specifically homelessness) as a key factor in individuals’ ability to aspire to different groups. Without access to basic rights it is easy to see that these ‘bare citizens’, those who are utterly excluded and have a lived experience of discrimination, are less likely to aspire to, among other things, apply to higher education (Leonhardt 2013) and therefore are more likely to be socially excluded. In a powerful text entitled Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists, Danny Dorling (2015) outlines five principles of inequality:  elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair. Throughout his book, he links educational attainment to social mobility, making the point that those with better educational opportunities avoid both the curbing of their potential and the likelihood of falling prey to many social problems. By implication, those who miss such educational opportunities are consigned to a spiral of marginalization. In a neoliberal society with a culture of blame and where poverty is seen as a crime, the terms ‘homeless’ and ‘shelter-dwelling youth’ become synonymous with words like lazy, stupid, clumsy, worthless and undesirable. In Criminology Theories, Ronald Akers (1997) suggests that self-identity is constructed through the ways in which others label and react to a person, so that labelling someone as ‘deviant’ will instigate the corresponding behaviour. He states that ‘the disgrace suffered by people who are labelled as delinquent or criminal more often encourages

Introduction

11

than discourages future deviant behaviour’ (Akers 1997:  101). Since the 1990s the inherent determinism surrounding labelling theory, illustrated in this quotation, has been rightly rejected. Labels do not define individuals or generate actions; there are many causal factors that affect identity and behaviour. However, these classifications have a flattening effect that may reduce people to being perceived as a homogeneous group, such as ‘homeless youth’. Geoff Wood has written interestingly and extensively about the effects of labelling and its ability to delink individuals from their personal histories (1985, 2007). Labelling reduces people to one story when each of them is much more than a titillating headline: homeless, abused or trafficked. The label does not cause a behaviour trait to become normalized, but continuous repetition of negative identity markers over time can help those traits become internalized. This internalization does not lead to corresponding behaviour but can be linked to poor self-esteem, lack of dignity and despondency, thus allowing the label to initiate a depressing inescapable cycle. In 1979, sociologists Lisa Berkman and Leonard Syme drew connections between social exclusion and health issues that included depression, mental health problems, disability, physical illness and chronic disease. More recently, Dominic Abrams, Michael Hogg and Jose Marques (2005) have linked a lack of inclusion to a lack of social networks, reduced social capital, and defensive and uncooperative behaviours like unprovoked aggression. Those who feel socially included  – those who participate and have a sense of respect, those who can consume and matter and are not ‘bare citizens’ – have greater feelings of self-esteem and a greater sense of security (Frey and Stutzer 2010) and well-being. Thomas Friedman (2012), writing in the New  York Times about the process of discrimination and disrespect wielded by dominant cultures, social norms and institutions which results in exclusion, calls for a ‘politics of dignity’. Marginalized groups, according to Friedman, have three choices:  opting out completely, protesting or submitting. Here, Friedman implies that change is not possible  – either on the macro or micro scale. I  am more optimistic

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than Friedman and argue that Applied Theatre and working within a politics of dignity can effect change in both people and the systems they find themselves in. As human beings we have invented our societies and cultures, our belief systems, social norms, and institutions. If they were invented then they can be questioned, reinvented and thus are subject to change. Indeed, any cursory look at history shows that such change is possible. Fostering greater social equity is a possibility, if people have the freedom to evaluate and recognize the conditions that surround them:  what currently exists, and the imagination and drive to innovate a new reality, or the what is not yet. Applied Theatre should invite participants to question, challenge and invent. If this sounds utopian, then I stand by the claim that the theatre I teach and research is a theatre of hope that imagines other possibilities and different futures. In other words, that ‘hope sits at the heart of drama education and of social justice’ (O’Connor 2016: 163). Since 2015 I have been defining my work as a ‘pedagogy of utopia’. I draw on Paul Ricoeur’s work in which utopia does not mean the hope of a better place but rather the ability to recognize current circumstances, and from this understanding develop the desire and capacity to change these circumstances. Ricoeur claims, ‘utopia is not only a dream, it is a dream that wants to be realised’ (Ricoeur 1986: 289). This concept has become important to me and is a catalyst for my practice. Engaging with this vision of utopia has energized my work and brought me to a practical application of Ricoeur’s theories; yet, using the word utopia troubles me. It is a word that has fallen into disrepute and one that is often dismissed as an outdated and an impossibly naïve concept in a society where the growth of neoliberalism has ensured that real or significant change is no longer truly possible (Giroux 2003; Jacoby 1999, 2004; Levitas 1982; Marcuse 1970; Masini and Steenbergen 1983; Shklar 1957). Despite this, Michael Hviid Jacobsen observes that visions of utopia are stubbornly persistent: ‘Utopianism has remained a continuously and conspicuous yet always ambivalent presence in social and political thought. It has been praised and castigated, valorized and

Introduction

13

condemned, worshipped and ridiculed, and yet it has – in some form or other – survived and continued to inspire thinking, dreaming and action throughout most parts of human history’ (Jacobsen and Poder 2008: 209). In her book Utopia in Performance:  Finding Hope at the Theatre (2005), Jill Dolan is optimistic about this exciting and yet perturbing concept and links utopia and live theatre, drawing on the idea of the active spectator to claim that Live performance provides a place where people come together, embodied and passionate, to share experiences of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world … audiences feel themselves allied with each other, and with a broader, more capacious sense of a public, in which social discourse articulates the possible rather than the insurmountable obstacles to human potential. (Dolan 2005: 2)

While Dolan’s view seems immensely optimistic, it is the sense of ‘social discourse articulating the possible’ that underpins both my thinking and my practice, as it is the potential of participatory drama to stimulate questioning of experiences that, I  propose, enables a ‘pedagogy of utopia’ to emerge. In this, I am extending Ricoeur’s notion that a utopia ‘wants to be realised’ and that therefore ‘the intention of the utopia is to change’ (Ricoeur 1986: 289). When talking about the utopian desire to change in connection with my practice, I would not say my intention is to make change happen but rather to allow for the possibility of change so participants might see that there is the potential for them to create, choose and change. I am drawn to Ernst Bloch’s notion of people as being unfinished or living in a state animated by dreams or desires of a better life, with utopian longings for another way of being. In the aptly named The Principle of Hope, Bloch (1986) defines two utopias: the abstract, or the dream; and the concrete, or the utopia that constitutes a real possibility. His distinction between the two resides in ‘the power of anticipation, which we [call] concrete utopia’ (Bloch 1986: 157). Through the power

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of anticipation, it is possible to see an ‘ideologically unobstructed view’, and this unobstructed view leads to a clear understanding of what is now and maybe what could be in the future. This equates to Ricoeur’s field of the possible, or a place where it is possible to re-examine what is, in order to see what might be. In other words, the concept of utopia contains anticipation or what both Bloch and Ricoeur call the ‘not yet’. For both the ‘not yet’ is what might be and thus creates the possibility of change. A  concrete utopia may be triggered by prison inmates working on a play project that creates a piece of children’s theatre for their families. While acknowledging the damage a prison sentence does to the parent–child relationship, participating in such a project allows incarcerated fathers to demonstrate tangibly that they are serious about parenting by creating something for their children. Simultaneously, working on the project may raise their expectations and constructively challenge their self-identities as they see themselves as capable professionals who are now, have always been and can be more than prisoners. Projects such as this one invite participants to practise skills and to envisage a future for themselves that may be different from their past and therefore make positive life choices that enable them to aspire to achieve that glimpsed future. I also conceptualize a pedagogy of utopia as an extension of Henri Giroux and bell hooks’s pedagogies of hope. hooks talks about a pedagogy of hope as being a ‘discourse of critique and social transformation’ (hooks 2003: 12), and Giroux tells us that hope ‘gives substance to the recognition that every present is incomplete’ and that hope is the ‘mobilizing foundation for human beings to learn about their potential as more civil beings’ (Giroux 2004:  38). The concepts of social transformation and the potential to be more ‘civil beings’ are directly connected for me with issues surrounding social justice and inclusion, issues which are the heart of my practice. A pedagogy of utopia includes a ‘discourse of critique’ and is based on not only a ‘mobilizing foundation’ but also what Ricoeur describes as ‘the field of the possible’ (Ricoeur 1986: 310). Critique and possibilities at both the

Introduction

15

macro and micro levels go some way to describing the way I have and intend to use theatre. Since 2004, my application of theatre has largely been in the form of long-term projects with specific communities or organizations. In 2017 I described this as a ‘sustained, deeply embedded practice’ (Busby 2017: 93). Now I would describe my work and the work of those with whom I  research as being comprised of a series of sustained, deeply embedded social justice projects that occur within specific community settings. In this book, I  draw on examples of my work over twenty years:  work with ‘bare citizens’ in the criminal justice system; with impoverished communities in India, Costa Rica and North America; with shelter-, slum- and pavement-dwellers; with youth at risk of offending; and also on the work of various practitioners and companies who apply theatre in a sustained and embedded manner. I do not wish to suggest that there is anything inherently problematic with shortterm projects. Applied Theatre is not a single approach, a toolkit or even several different toolkits all ready and waiting to be literally applied to different groups of people, with differing aims and in different contexts. Since Judith Ackroyd first described Applied Theatre as an ‘umbrella term’ (2000: 1), it has served as a useful description for an over-arching field, an ‘umbrella’ beneath which can be found diverse practices and theories. What works with one group may be a disaster with another; even the ethical codes of working with people vary depending on a range of factors that are individual, social, cultural, institutional and political. Importantly, Helen Kara argues that researchers who work with human beings should move beyond the usual baseline for ethical practice, that is, ‘do no harm’, and instead suggests that research ethics should move towards a ‘social justice approach’, stating that ethics ‘runs through our lives like blood through our bodies: mostly invisible, but constantly functioning and affecting everything we do’ (2018: 18). This sentiment resonates with my own approach to ethical Applied Theatre practice. For me, ethics is involved at every step of Applied Theatre, in

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each project undertaken, in all the decisions made, in the words and instructions facilitators speak, in the actions they take; it infiltrates every aspect of what we do, and why we do it. Recently, I have been using a term that goes beyond the usual understanding of the ethics of practice: I now situate my own work as developing an ‘axiology’ of practice.

Axiology of practice Axiology is a relatively recent concept. Samuel Hart, writing in 1971, credits the French philosopher Paul Lapie with the first use of the word ‘axiology’ in 1902 (Hart 1971:  29). Lapie coined the expression from the Greek word for worth, axios, and the word for theory, logos, to create a term that denotes the theory of worth. The term was developed by Robert Hartman (1961) in ‘The Logic of Value’. Hartman made a distinction between three dimensions of values: intrinsic, extrinsic and systematic. More recently, the term has become popular in literature on research methodologies, and axiology refers to the role that value plays in qualitative research. In 2008, David Hiles, when writing about scientific axiology, stated that taking an axiological approach allows a more transparent ethics to emerge by acknowledging positivist opposition to the notion of ‘value’ in scientific enquiry, as ethics always ‘rest on a consideration of values’ (2008:  55). Hiles outlines the way in which qualitative research involves a continual ethics process that goes beyond an ethical code, ethics committees and guidelines into and beyond research with participants. Hiles uses axiology to describe questions relating to the concepts of goodness, right conduct, value and obligation throughout the research process. These values, I argue, should underpin Applied Theatre research and practices that might shelter under this new and generous umbrella. I am also drawn to Hiles’s exposition of research as cooperative enquiry where research ceases to be about people and is rather an activity undertaken with people, arguing that if research participants are

Introduction

17

not respected, they are disenfranchised, disempowered and oppressed by the researchers. Hiles elaborates that research participants can be misrepresented and reduced to accessories to the work; that they are vulnerable to manipulation, denied access to knowledge; and that they may be exploited by the researchers and personal motivations (Hiles 2008: 56). It has become a well-known trope of Applied Theatre that it is not a practice that is for or about communities but that it is theatre created by and with community groups. It is important to remember that Applied Theatre can also be disempowering, exploitative, manipulating and artist-serving rather than beneficial to the community if that community is not considered an equal partner from a project’s inception. Isabel Lorey (2015: 14) cautions: ‘Practices of selfempowerment do not automatically have an emancipatory effect but are instead to be understood … as ambivalent. They can signify modes of self-government that represent a conformist self-development, a conformist self-determination enabling extraordinary governability.’ Applied Theatre researchers who create drama by and with community groups would do well to heed this warning alongside that of Hiles and to look to non-Eurocentric and indigenous research methods for guidelines on how to plan and deliver genuinely community-centred theatre-making. Axiology has become closely associated with discussions of indigenous research methods. Axiology prompts Kara to compare indigenous and Euro-Western research and ethics. Drawing on indigenous researchers Shawn Wilson and Bagele Chilisa, Kara claims that axiology can destabilize the dependence on Euro-Western models, since it ‘privileges values such as relational accountability, respect and reciprocity’ (2018:  24). Kara suggests that there are four central ethical principles at stake in indigenous axiological research: relational accountability, community of knowledge, reciprocity and benefit sharing. These tenets are fundamental to my Applied Theatre practice, but they are not always straightforward to apply. When working with a community group in Costa Rica during 2005, relational accountability, communality of knowledge, reciprocity and

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benefit sharing were at the centre of the project from the planning stages. However, it soon became apparent that each of these aspects needed to be re-thought on a daily basis. Reflecting on this work now, over ten years later, it has become evident to me that this project was fundamental in the development of my approach to my practice. It would frame all my later work and would prove to be the cornerstone of my work with so-called marginalized communities and their ‘bare citizens’ in the UK, Malta, India and the United States. In revisiting this Costa Rica project I  am adopting a position described by the educationalist Elizabeth Ellsworth as ‘the specific study of what happens and how in actual instances of dialogic teaching practice … deconstruct[ing] moments in classrooms when things go wrong’ (Ellsworth 1997: 99). Analysing ‘when things go wrong’ allows me to demystify the processes of my practice and integrate the axiology that runs through it. Reflecting on the Costa Rica project and applying these reflections to the development of the project in India that followed, key principles started to emerge for me when thinking about this work, which I  now call a pedagogy of utopia. The politics of dignity and articulation, equitable dialogue, deeply embedded partnerships and the construction of neutral thirdspaces that invite resistance to social and spatial injustices foster aspirational and utopic thinking and in doing so create the possibility of change. Axiology runs through each of these foundations as the lifeblood of the work and cuts across and through the different groups I work with as principles which form the base of the work, wherever it happens.

What comes next? In this book you will not find neat chapters on theatre in prisons, with youth or in specific contexts, because the foundations of making theatre alongside ‘bare citizens’ remain the same even when the conditions surrounding the work differ greatly. The book is therefore framed around the concepts of partnerships and integrated investment,

Introduction

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aspirational thinking, articulation, thirdspaces and resistance. I begin with the Costa Rica work, which, although sixteen years ago, continues to be seminal to my current thinking, research and practice. And so, this project is the focus of Chapter 1. I have used a more narrative tone in this chapter than in the remainder of the book as this work and my subsequent reflections on it informed my later practice and formed the origins of axiology in my work. It is a critically reflexive undertaking, rather than a recounting of the methodology of the project, in which the narrative tone reflects the nature of the work and honours (or recognizes) the wishes of the community and their cultural practices, as far as possible, in written form. Chapter 2 sets out a theoretical discussion of the concepts of utopia, change and hope as they apply to the theatre I  make with groups of people. In doing this, I utilize the work of Paul Ricoeur and introduce the idea of a nebulous utopia. This consideration of the utopic in my work is linked to the search for hope and draws on both Henry Giroux and bell hooks. Concepts surrounding the fluidity of identities and futures pave the way here for a consideration of how theatre creates utopic spaces in which different futures can be imagined and invite aspirational thinking. The foundation on which these are built is deeply embedded and sustained partnerships. The discussion of hope leads to a discussion of critical thinking and critical pedagogy drawing on the writing of Joe Kincheloe. To illustrate these ideas, I present a case study of the Dharavi youth project in Mumbai which ran for ten years and is ongoing in new forms, asking whether this project did indeed invite participants to see that alternatives are imaginable and allow them to explore the field of the possible. Chapter 3 explores the concept of social justice and why it is key in Applied Theatre that is practised in a neoliberal climate. It will draw on writings from Henry Giroux. The chapter focuses on the cornerstone of dialogical practice and includes a case study of Crossing Bridges, a project which took place in a homeless shelter for youth in New York and involved professional performing artists from the United States and the youth working together to create urban fairy tales for a performance

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in an off-Broadway theatre. The chapter also asks if this type of work unfairly raises the expectations of the youth and explores this in the light of Lauren Berlant’s (2011) concept of ‘cruel optimism’. Drawing on theories of cultural capital and critical race theory, it explores the responsibility of the practitioner to create an equitable rehearsal room. This work is juxtaposed with a second case study which focuses on a long-running project in European prisons in which inmates devise children’s theatre for their families. The fourth chapter focuses on themes surrounding the politics of articulation and amplification, on the giving and taking of perspectives. The chapter considers the politics of articulation as outlined by Stuart Hall and includes a consideration of pre-written texts and the practices of devising original work and considers how both have strengths in the context of a pedagogy of utopia. The chapter explores the idea that participants can amplify their own voice through other peoples’ words and the safety that using fiction provides. I  include a case study of Irondale Theater’s remarkable project To Protect, Serve and Understand and also Edward Bond’s and Cush Jumbo’s theatre for young people. This latter’s focus is on the need for gaps for imagination and meaningmaking and the links between this and a pedagogy of utopia. Chapter 5 discusses the themes of spatial justice and thirdspaces. It begins by introducing the broad concepts of space, site and place, then I draw on the writings of Edward Soja to outline the geography of thirdspaces and Homi Bhabha to outline the concept culturally. I argue that ‘safe spaces’ (and ‘brave spaces’) in Applied Theatre should be replaced with the concept of thirdspaces. To illustrate this point, I consider the work of Company Three and include a case study of their Brainstorm project. This project started life in a London youth theatre and moved first to the National Theatre’s Temporary Space and then to the BBC’s digital channels (BBC iPlayer) and now is an international blueprint for a method of working with young people. The method allows young people to create work that has strong aesthetic values for and about the youth experience. This chapter also considers a project that took place in a halfway house for excluded women in India and

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discusses the usefulness of Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’ and Soja’s subsequent development of the concept. Chapter 6 continues to examine issues of space and considers how Applied Theatre can contribute to the ‘geographies of resistance’ by exploring how this practice creates spaces that resist inequity and neoliberalism. The chapter also considers how Applied Theatre invites participants to ‘jump scale’, both literally and figuratively, by drawing on the theories of geographer Neil Smith and referring to Crossing Bridges. The chapter also considers the Voices of Worli Koliwada, a project which takes place with women living in an urban village that is part of the mega-city of Mumbai. In this project, the women created site-specific performance work about their hopes for spaces in which to live. The picture on the cover of this book is taken from these workshops, it is one I am ridiculously attached to. It has come to symbolize my practice and the equity of drama workshops where no group is privileged over the other. I am not sure if this image translates as that to others, perhaps it is because in this line of shoes, which is at once jumbled and ordered, I can recognize each individual participant – each facilitator, translator, co-researcher’s pair of shoes – and yet they are all afforded the same status in a space that is so clearly a theatre space. It also feels fitting that this project’s image starts the book and yet it is a project that is only midway through a four-year cycle, and some of those shoes belong to people who have been on this journey with me for over a decade and who feature in early chapters. The conclusion features testimonies from the youth of the Dharavi project as they reach their mid-twenties and considers their reflections on the value of having participated in Applied Theatre projects. In doing so, it focuses on the intentionality of the work, the importance of the longevity and the ultimate handing over of the practice to the young people. This closing section asks questions about the importance of reflexivity and how this links to axiology and responsibility when working with human beings in different cultures and contexts. Overall, this book maps a research journey working through reflective practice. It explores and interrogates my thinking and practice,

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mistakes and successes over the last twenty-five years of working within a pedagogy of utopia. It discusses how I have attempted to apply the tenets of axiology, ethics, hope, change, voice, story, space, equity and social justice when working with groups both in the UK and elsewhere. In it I am laying my soul bare, but feel that I have learnt things along the way that are worth sharing, critiquing and taking on into future work. I hope you feel the same.

1

Costa Rica: Utilizing a global vision to safeguard the local village

This chapter discusses and reflects on a complex and multilayered project that has informed my application of axiology. It was both my first experience of working with international partners and my first engagement facilitating theatre-making outside of the UK. In many respects I was parachuted into the work, as I neither initiated the project nor was involved in the negotiations that took place before it began. It is a project that taught me much and which has defined my practice and therefore my pedagogy of utopia. I was immensely privileged in 2005 to be given the opportunity to work in Costa Rica to support the project of four students from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Central), who were studying on the undergraduate Applied Theatre and Education degree programme. An indigenous community living in a remote part of the rainforest wanted to create a performance based on their creation myth to ensure their children remembered the stories. They were also looking for ways to improve their economic conditions. They discussed their situation with the Talamancan Association of Ecotourism and Conservation. The association was already working with a British expatriate journalist and humanitarian aid worker living in San José. The journalist was the family friend of a Central alumnus and suggested the community recruit our students to work with them to devise a performance based on the myth. The community agreed this would be a useful way to move forward and the expat contacted Sally Mackey, then course leader, to see if this was possible. It was, and their conversations resulted in

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students being invited to Yorkín, Costa Rica, to spend five weeks living in a Bribri community. Formally, we were invited to take part in a cultural exchange and to develop performances that would document and preserve the oral traditions of the community and disseminate them to a wider audience; specifically, we were asked to work with the Bribri creation myth as source material for a performance. As part of the programme, we were asked to help improve the children’s English. I  was to tutor the Central students through the project and spend one week assessing and monitoring them in Costa Rica. The students paid most of their own expenses, supplemented by the support of charities they themselves approached. These charities also provided a fee for a host based in Costa Rica. Central supported my visit as the academic tutor assigned to this project. Although I did not initiate the work, the project seemed to offer a unique opportunity for students to take part in a dialogue at an early point in their development as theatre practitioners. The project presented interesting possibilities in the intercultural dialogue, particularly in light of the writings of Raimon Panikkar, the philosopher and comparative religion academic who has influenced my thinking on intercultural dialogue. While various ethical impasses emerged during the project, I argue that it involved genuine intercultural dialogue. Panikkar describes dialogue as being a ‘mutual opening up to the concern of the other … [that] both parties acknowledge and neither party controls’ (Panikkar 1995:  78). A  ‘mutual opening up’ seems useful when working in settings with participants and facilitators from different countries, cultures, ethnicities, belief systems and classes and is one I explore in this chapter and develop throughout the book. Although Panikkar is discussing interfaith dialogue, this ‘opening up’ does, in my opinion, equally apply to intercultural dialogue. A small community of indigenous people had initiated the cultural exchange to find a way for the community to negotiate their place in an ever-changing world. To repeat an earlier reflection, I  was deeply troubled by the idea that as British theatre practitioners we were to document and disseminate an indigenous people’s myth in a



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project that involved dramatizing its performance (Busby and Heap 2019: 136). The whole process of the project was deeply troubling and, with hindsight, problems started at its conception: issues surrounding language, and the politics of working in English and Spanish within a colonized country and with indigenous people whose language has been criminalized. There were the difficulties of working with cultural myths of the Global South using theatre techniques from the Global North; the inherent dangers of introducing artefacts and concepts alien to the community we were working with; and, by no means last, the difficulties surrounding issues of cultural invasion. Yet, problematic as it was, I believe the project resulted in a polycentric dialogic performance process in which the Bribri were agents for their own change. The project did recognize a plural and diverse world and it aimed to respect a ‘pluriverse’ (Panikkar 1995:  54) in which the Bribri could conserve their cultural identity and assimilate the so-called ‘developments’ of a globalized neoliberalism, and which might help them avoid involuntary displacement. But it was still a troubling project. In the next section I examine the ways it was troubling and the ethical dead end the students and I faced, and how the project has contributed to my thinking on the centrality of relational accountability, communities of knowledge, reciprocity and benefit sharing in a pedagogy of utopia.

The context: The community at Yorkín The Bribri at Yorkín are one of six indigenous rainforest communities in Costa Rica. These communities constitute only 1 per cent of the Costa Rican population. Due to the startling and complex economic drivers of deforestation, many are losing their historical community locations as well as their indigenous knowledge and languages. Yorkín is situated in a mountainous area of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. Rodrigo Salazar’s ethnographic overview of the Costa Rican indigenous people states:  ‘During European conquest and subsequent colonization in the 1500s, indigenous people were displaced from their homelands to

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areas that were unsuitable for agriculture, such as Talamanca’ (Salazar 2002: 20). The Talamanca region was, until recently, extremely difficult to reach. The historical inaccessibility of the region has, to some extent, enabled indigenous communities to maintain their traditional way of life, shielded from the processes of globalization. However, in the early 2000s this situation underwent rapid change. Despite the Indigenous Law of 1977, which recognized the Bribri’s right to communal land, their reserves were invaded by migrants, cattle farmers and logging companies. While the indigenous reservations of Costa Rica comprise several hundred thousand hectares, ‘conservative estimates maintain that the indigenous populations effectively controls only some 60% of that total’ and ‘this has led to the disappearance of several communities’ (ibid.: 21). In 2005, the Bribri community at Yorkín were surrounded by logging companies which were eroding their territory from several directions. At the time Costa Rica was removing nearly 57,000 hectares of rainforest each year, despite 30 per cent of the national territory being protected as part of national parks and reserves (Rudel 2005). The World Resources Institute calculated that the Costa Rican rainforests were being cleared at a rate of 4 per cent a year. The UN (2007: 7) reported that although Costa Rica’s ‘legal framework on indigenous issues is quite strong – the practical applications of laws and international conventions that Costa Rica has ratified has been lacking in force’ and that the ‘indigenous peoples are reportedly still subject to insecurity over land’. This was evident in the Yorkín Bribri community who had, over a number of years, been the victims of involuntary displacement. The Bribri community at Yorkín consisted of a communal meeting house and families housed in isolated locations. Travel into the area was usually by boat as the nearest road was six kilometres away. The village was also accessible via a single-track path through the rainforest, along the banks of the Yorkín river. During the 1980s, the Yorkín cacao and banana plantations yielded little fruit and members of the community were consequently forced to seek employment outside the village. The inaccessibility of the community resulted in an involuntary



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displacement and threats to cultural heritage and way of life. The men from the community were away for long periods, often for two or three months at a time, travelling to towns quite distant from the village in search of work. Sometimes they opted to move their families to towns and cities. While this is not a unique situation, the community’s reaction to it was quite extraordinary. In an attempt to halt the expatriation, three of the women formed an organization called Estibrawpa (the Bribri word meaning ‘artisan people’) with the aspiration to transform the traditional patriarchal autonomous community into a matriarchal cooperative. When I  first arrived in the village the women handed me a one-page document that outlined their history. They described themselves as the Estibrawpa Association (since then, they have adjusted the spelling to Stibrawpa). The initial idea was suggested to the other women of the village. Eight agreed and they formed Estibrawpa, a cooperative with women as decision-makers. The document outlined their proposal to use the proceeds from ecotourism to supplement the village’s income and improve their small-scale farming operation, making it more reliable and thus removing the need for the men to seek employment outside the Yorkín area. In our conversations, Bernarda Morales, the spokesperson and co-founder of Estibrawpa, was very open about the hostility the nascent cooperative received. At first, some male members of the community were resistant: traditionally, the Bribri are a patriarchal society where women have few rights. Morales became president of the association, as her husband was more relaxed about his wife’s mobility compared to other husbands in the community. After a decade, the women had enough support from the community to put their ideas into practice. By the time we were there in 2005, the organization was established and led by the women, who delegated responsibilities and had the authority to expel dissenters from the community. The remaining dissenters, including many of the elder members of the community, had left the village voluntarily by this point. Estibrawpa then comprised fifteen families who firmly believed that their twenty children were the future of the organization and the key to maintaining the Bribri traditions.

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Morales told me the aims of the organization were to support the economy inside the community, maintain our culture and protect the environment via ecotourism (Morales 2005). We became part of this inspired but precarious strategy when we were asked to work with the children on their English skills and to create a performance that would tell the story of the Bribri creation myth. The creation story involves a god, Sibú, who changed the earth from an inhospitable rock to fertile plains and forests. To do this he sacrificed his sister, a Tapir goddess named Namaitmi, who had refused to marry a man she did not love when Sibú asked her to. Sibú sent out a vampire bat who had mixed Namaitmi’s blood with that of a jaguar and together the bloods fertilized the earth. My students were given the task of employing community theatre techniques, following a well-known model described by community theatre practitioner and academic Eugène van Erven as a process by which ‘local stories are processed through improvisation and collectively shaped through cultural exchange’ (van Erven 2001: 2). The Bribri faced fierce opposition from other indigenous communities in the area who objected to the sharing of their oral traditions with people not from the region. I am acutely aware that elements of this story are not mine to tell. Writing in an article entitled ‘Stop Stealing Native Stories’ Lenore Keeshing-Tobais (1990) draws attention to the rights of First Nations people to control their narratives and cultures. In telling this story about my developing practice, I am providing just the details that give the context of the theatre-making and quote only from the piece of paper I  was given explaining the aims of Estibrawpa, as it was then. I  also provide no direct quotes from the community themselves in respect of their wishes. I do, with their consent, paraphrase discussions that we had in a mixture of Bribri, English, Spanish and mime, without committing their words to paper in such a way as to imply this is the only way to interpret their meaning and in full knowledge that they were often speaking, and I  was listening to, hierarchical languages of colonialism. The writing down of the words we spoke fixes them, and the women of Estibrawpa wished me to take a more narrative



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approach to the documentation of the work as if I, or they, were telling a story rather than reciting facts. I  have tried to honour this request and to think of our discussions and my reflections of the project as a storytelling process and as research, a story that straddles the academic world and the indigenous world, following the lead of Shawn Wilson (2008) in his book Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. With this in mind, I  will share with you that the women of the community told me that the shamans in the surrounding communities refused to relate their traditional stories because they would prefer the myths to disappear rather than be contaminated by Western influence. I was told by the women of Estibrawpa that the shamans were urging the local communities to retreat further into the forest, where possible, to maintain their way of life. Rather than retreat, the Yorkín community were encouraging outsiders into their village. They were particularly keen for the children of the community to learn English versions of their myths to communicate the stories to tourists for a fee. Some of these details were unclear at the start of the project. We were told, or at least we heard, that dissemination of the creation myth was important, but we did not understand that this dissemination would be to tourists, and that a fee would be involved. This became the first of several ethical and axiological dilemmas that brought the project to a temporary halt.

Axiological impasses When we first visited Yorkín there was one teacher and a school room which the children attended until they were 10. The committee saw the volunteers as a way of extending the education to older children. Volunteers arrived, but few stayed for more than a couple of weeks. The women told me they believed this to be due to the harsh living conditions in Yorkín. The village had very little electricity and limited running water and the community were clear in their intention not to change these conditions as they wished to preserve their way of life. The idea of inviting students to be based in the village was developed during

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the early stages of the community’s attempts at attracting tourists. They started to invite two or three tourists into the village at a time for up to twenty-four hours. During the first five weeks my students were in Costa Rica, there were only two groups of tourists who came into the village. This exposure to a limited number of visitors to the area led to offers by volunteers to stay with the community for longer periods of time, which were gladly accepted by Estibrawpa, as they saw this as an opportunity to learn English and improve their educational opportunities. Before my students left the UK, there was much discussion about why the Bribri felt it necessary to invite English students to aid them in their wish to disseminate their creation myth, and a good deal of debate among students and staff about whether this project was ethically sound. Eventually it was decided that we would go ahead and the students – in an excited, nervous and extremely insightful manner  – set about planning the project. The students selected were deemed to be capable of taking responsibility for the project, to work with ethical rigour and to be sensitive to the needs of the community with whom they would be working. They were determined to use ‘bottom-up’ methods and work with the community; they sought to avoid accusations of ‘missionary zeal’ and to reject any colonialist assumption that they knew best. The students approached the project as a mutual cultural exchange:  they would exchange community theatre-making techniques with the performance traditions of the Bribri and would teach the children some English; the children would teach the students some Bribri and the myths and legends that the community wished to be the basis of the theatre project. A  truly mutual exchange would have enabled us to bring the Bribri to London to work with the students at Central. This could not be achieved for two reasons: first, we did not have the financial means; and second, and more important, because Estibrawpa did not want their youth to travel to the UK. They conceived the project as a means to maintain the community’s location rather than disrupting and fragmenting it further, even if this fragmentation was only temporary.



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The realities of Yorkín challenged the ethical codes and reciprocity the students planned. The community told us they did not know their creation myth and wanted us to discover it and then tell them what to do with it. While this provided the students with opportunities for debates about power relations and enabled the students to reflect on Paulo Freire’s (1970) questions around whether the oppressed resist liberation, the ethical questions provoked major practical problems. In addition, my own presence as tutor and researcher clearly presented new problems. My arrival created a stir; much to my embarrassment a good deal of fuss was created over the arrival of the ‘grand professor’. I had to take a fairly firm hand with the students who were in danger of not having a project to submit for assessment because they were too tied up in the ethical dilemmas of their situation to make a move. They had ground to a halt, afraid of being unethical, of causing offense or of making the community voiceless in the process, to do any drama work at all. They were, as community theatre scholar Julie Salverson describes, ‘stuck in a paralysis of caution’ (2008: 247). They were too afraid of doing the wrong thing to make a move and as a result they were likely to fail both the academic unit they were undertaking, which was worth a sizeable portion of their degree, and the community who had invited them with a specific purpose in mind. The pragmatic issue of sourcing the creation myth proved to be easier to solve than the ethical and axiological impasses they faced. A local schoolteacher, Minaur, presented us with a calendar that was made for tourists. The calendar featured a ‘traditional Costa Rican myth’, with a drawing for each month. Minaur read us the story using the text from the calendar. Suddenly, all our concerns about changing or mistranslating and appropriating the story were amplified as we were already working from a changed, mistranslated and clearly Western version of the story. The calendar was in violation of the cultural traditions of the Bribri and with the community’s distrust of the written word and its ability to fix things. If we used this version of their creation myth, we were surely adding to the colonization of the Bribri traditions and taking ownership of the project away from them.

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We were not working with an oral culture or archive of the community with democratic participation and thus we found ourselves occupying a difficult ethical terrain. Our anxieties were compounded by other evidence of our impact upon the community. The Estibrawpa children were learning to speak English, but alongside this they were learning other things: they were learning to use digital cameras and starting to wear the students’ watches and jewellery. Being woken at four in the morning by the children of the community singing ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ was an interesting experience, but it could not be seen as a sign that we were helping to ‘preserve the Bribri culture’, as the original project brief required. The students did, however, set aside the anxiety about our impact in the village and the ethical problems surrounding the source of the story and they worked with the calendar translation; their only other option would have been to leave. This raises important questions about Applied Theatre and the lines that we are prepared to cross as culture workers. The question is:  When do the ethics of a situation become so unendurable that the project should be halted? When working in the field, some of these lines are clearer than others. The ethical codes of ‘above all else do no harm’ are not so clear as they first appear and do not go far enough. My students and I felt as if our ethical sensibilities were under siege, but ultimately this was not important to the community who invited us to work with them. Before I left the UK, I was asked by a colleague what right we had to ‘meddle’ with an indigenous culture. Once there, we were viewing this question from the opposite position and were asking ourselves if we had the right to say no to the Bribri families who were appealing to us for help. Our privileged positions as European university students and their lecturer gave us the option of saying yes or no to the community. The Bribri saw few options to survive as an autonomous community on their own terms and it felt wrong to deny them the help they sought from us. Rightly or wrongly, we stayed and continued the work. Doing so led me to consider the extent to which our ethical codes were appropriate when working in intercultural projects and to acknowledge that what



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is required in such work is less of an ethical framework and more of an axiological code that deals with values, ethics and aesthetics. The students organized for Minaur to read the story to the Yorkín community one evening after dinner. After that evening the students worked with the older children each morning, while the younger ones were at school. They used drama techniques to rework the story, facilitating while the children of Yorkín devised and improvised. The students watched each afternoon as the older children led the younger ones through material they had created; the students’ workshops had been a framework for this work, but the Bribri young people were the decision-makers. The hope was that this transference of skills would generate a model of sustainability, with each generation of older children facilitating the performance for the following generation. The students delivered workshops in English and Spanish and then the children worked in Bribri and Spanish, the former the language of their community, the latter of their public lives. During the devising process they did pick up a good deal of English. The adults of the community took on extra chores and community jobs to allow the children to be relieved of their daily routines and to be with us during the day. We worked outside in the sun in the mornings, playing children’s games and improvising in the community hall under its tin roof in the afternoons. Small crowds would often gather to pass comment on the work or just to sit and watch. Sometimes the women would bring work with them, such as sewing and preparing vegetables. The women and I would laugh together at the students and the children making fools of themselves. As the days passed, a routine developed so that in the late afternoon the whole community came together to paint leaves and stick them onto a backcloth for the performance, often taking it in turn to sing as they did this – sometimes in Bribri, sometimes in English, with students and community members each taking turns; sometimes everyone sang rock and pop songs from the 1960s and 1970s. The small children painted their favourite animals, plants and flowers on stones which were to be used as a border for the stage area. The community and the students cooked in the same space

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together on the open fires in the evening. As the days passed, each group began teaching the other different ways to cook rice or use flour, all laughing at each other’s unfamiliar ways of doing things. In these moments the ethics of the practice appeared to become less important. The project culminated in an evening of celebration in which the students and the Yorkín community shared and exchanged foods, songs and dance. The evening concluded with a short performance of the Bribri creation myth acted out by the younger children of the village, but devised by the older Bribri children. Although the process had been problematic for the students, the evening was a success in the eyes of the local community in that it attracted members of other surrounding Bribri communities and a variety of tourists, NGO project organizers and local dignitaries. The children performed to a packed community house with much laughter and genuine warmth. The Morales family and the Estibrawpa community invited us back the following year so that we could work with other Bribri traditional stories. As a practitioner, researcher and teacher, it was obvious that the project had benefits for my students and the community. The students’ portfolios detail these benefits in great length using words like empowerment and self-confidence, referring to Freire and François Matarasso and a host of Theatre for Development researchers and academics. The work left me with a horde of dilemmas, the first of which was: Does it matter that the story isn’t authentic? We were invited in by the community as agents for change and as a means to strengthen the community and we worked on their terms, but the Estibrawpa were surely walking a very fine line between strengthening the community through resisting change and offering their members a completely different lifestyle. While my students were genuinely as sensitive as they could be to the stated aim of their hosts to maintain their traditional ways of life, they still engaged in behaviours and displayed possessions that influenced the community in ways the Bribri could not have predicted. None of us truly knew how this partnership was going to affect our behaviour.



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The community at Yorkín were very aware that they were living in a changing world and were attempting to adapt to those changes on their terms. They wanted to change to preserve their lifestyle, within their own stipulated conditions, rejecting electricity and plumbing. They sought to build an economy that empowered them to make these choices, and this desire has all the potential to be ‘bottom-up’, but I can’t help but think that their intentions may have been altered in ways they did not expect due to our presence.

The globalization of a village In Costa Rica, the growth of tourism has created a demand for improved infrastructure. Consequently, Talamanca has become more accessible and a number of tour operators have placed the region on their itineraries. The Bribri in Yorkín could not have avoided this development, but through projects such as this, they attempted to avoid the destruction of their traditional lifestyle and the breakdown of social foundations that often accompany ‘development’. Instead of resisting change, they actively participated in the emerging tourist industry by inviting tourists into their village. They intended to act as gatekeepers and only allow access on their own terms. On returning home the debates started again. We wondered if we should go back the following year. Reflecting on the project now I am reminded of Sayed Jamil Ahmed’s wish for ‘a world without theatre for development’, ‘where development does not lead to globalisation’ (Ahmed 2002:  218). In this project we were aiding the forces of globalization, but it was at the request of the community. However, it still sits uneasily within the community theatre model I  was used to working in, which resists capitalist goals rather than advancing them. Any intervention is problematic, but the aims of this project were neither to transform nor to develop the community at the whim of an outside agency. The word ‘development’ is itself troubling. The word

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‘undeveloped’ has been used since the end of the Second World War to classify countries, often former colonies, as having less advanced standards of living than countries in the Global North, specifically the United States, the UK and other dominant European ex-colonial states. Development in these terms becomes synonymous with economic trade and globalization at the expense of indigenous communities. In her 2002 overview of Theatre for Development, Marcia Pompêo Nogueria identifies models which are thinly veiled propaganda projects in support of ‘Westernization’. In this type of work, poverty alleviation can be linked to globalization and the infrastructure that facilitates private entrepreneurship and opens local labour markets to international capital, at the expense of the indigenous communities. In contrast to these, she also discusses projects that are built around the meaningful participation of communities. While projects that might be classified as Applied Theatre can and do enable communities to articulate their own agenda for development and affect their own transformative actions, this is not always the case. In the Talamanca region of Costa Rica this was evident in some of the theatre projects run in the name of development which were designed to open the community to tourism on a large scale or to encourage the Bribri to move into cities and change their way of life. Left to outside agencies the forces of globalization could have transformed Yorkín into a lucrative tourist market at the expense of the Bribri. This might have had the effect of reducing them to interactive museum ‘objects’ that demonstrate an extinct way of life and which romanticized their history. The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989, Convention 169 (International Labour Organization 1989) specifically called for integrationist and paternalistic approaches to be replaced by acknowledgement of indigenous and tribal peoples’ cultures and ways of seeing the world. It calls for their full participation in decisionmaking processes and asserts their right to decide their own priorities and self-management. The spokesperson for the Yorkín community, Morales, was an active member of the board of the Indigenous and Tribal People’s Network in Costa Rica and through her work with these



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bodies, she developed the project in which we were involved and built links with the ecotourist organizations that would enable the community to become autonomous. We did not, then, participate in a scheme initiated by outside forces to serve an outside agenda, but were invited to take part in a cultural exchange initiated by the Bribri themselves, as they sought ways to coexist with strangers and the developments they would bring with them. Tourists, strangers and outsiders were coming to the Yorkín community in any case, and by initiating this project the Bribri retained some agency in the midst of this arrival. On reflection, I  am reminded that the students were invited into Yorkín to take part in a cultural exchange  – but as visitors. It was not, then, as I  mentioned earlier, a true exchange. The visitors only travelled one way, from the UK to Costa Rica. Indeed, the students saw themselves as visitors and were seen by their Bribri hosts as such; significantly, they were not seen as tourists. During the first project in Yorkín in the month we stayed in the village, we saw three tourists stay overnight with the community. During this twenty-four-hour period the holidaymakers were treated to ‘traditional food’ that we had not seen before and community members wore different clothes. Although not part of the community, neither the students nor I experienced any such display. The students were invited as partners in an experiment to manage this tourism; their status as such, and as students, was important:  they were not theatre experts giving direction. As they were learning their theatre-craft, the community were learning how to manage their economy. Neither partner had a blueprint to follow. This goes some way to creating a form of equity where both the students and the community exchanged knowledge and forged new ways of working together which aimed to be a polycentric dialogic practice of mutual respect, imperfect though it was. It was also clear that the women of Estibrawpa expected us to return as they wanted a long-term commitment to the community. We had to weigh up Estibrawpa’s expectation for the exchange to continue and deepen, as well as their desire to maintain the community in the face of encroaching globalization, with our own unease about the lasting effects

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of our presence and our discomfort at the community charging tourists to see the results of the partnership as part of a ‘village experience’. Although it was not an easy decision, we decided to revisit the project for a second year. Axiology dictated that we should return to fulfil our commitment to the community as it was perceived by them and to put an exit strategy in place for our withdrawal when it seemed appropriate for both the Bribri and Central. A new group of four students eagerly set off more prepared than the first group, having quizzed the latter extensively. However, when they arrived, they discovered that the dilemmas thrown up in the first year were magnified by the community’s decision to sell the result of the original exchange to tourists as a standalone event. We knew that the tourists would be paying to stay in the village – that was a vital part of Estibrawpa’s survival strategy – but we had not anticipated tickets being sold to see the children perform a version of the creation myth. The students were horrified. It also became apparent that the children involved in the project were being paid to attend the workshops. The introduction of money into Applied Theatre settings is, as described by Freebody, Balfour, Finneran and Anderson, an unavoidable but undoubted ‘grey area’ (2018: 10). For a field based around the concepts of social justice and addressing oppression, the exchange of money muddies it. Yet – as Freebody et al. (2018), Molly Mullen (2017) and Dani Snyder-Young (2013) all point out at length – Applied Theatre is a growing industry, and one in which funding bodies and private corporations pay for projects and from which practitioners receive an income and academics receive enhanced career prospects. The ethical issues of who is paid for the work and who is not (or who receives benefits in kind and who does not) are complex. Rarely do community participants make money directly from the work and very rarely are they paid to participate. At the time we were working on the project it seemed that these exchanges of cash were contradicting the aims of the work. In hindsight, as I write in 2020, I am leaning towards believing that perhaps this was a more honest transaction than usually occurs in Applied Theatre, where it is very hard to follow the money trails in the work. Here, participants



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were being paid for their time and the community was forging a way to survive. Molly Mullen (2017) asserts that examinations of Applied Theatre often centre around the question of whether the project works to support neoliberal agendas or addresses the inequalities it fosters. In Costa Rica, the practice complicates these binary positions, as while attempting to address those inequalities, it appeared to inadvertently support global neoliberal policies. The work tests the boundaries between the commercial world and pedagogies surrounding justice and equality, and the porous nature of the boundaries between tourism and applied theatre and, in the words of Mullen (ibid.: 17), set alarm bells ringing in the minds of some when the community applying theatre are making a profit from our joint artistic endeavours. The financial exchanges were the start of several problematic areas we found when both working on and reflecting on this project. One of the other criticisms that could be levelled at the project, and which in fact has been, informally by colleagues working in the area of Applied Theatre, is that the Bribri would be affected or changed by our presence. It is true we did have an effect. In the second year, it was evident that the children were still singing ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and playing ‘grandmother’s footsteps’. There were also more significant changes that had little to do with us directly. For the first year, when attempting to find out about the Yorkín community, I found details on two websites. A year later, I found nearly one thousand websites that mentioned them. A  secondary school had been built in our absence which was staffed with money gained from tourism. When we arrived, the community appeared to be healthier and have food to spare and share, but this was not the case on our first trip. These changes were all a direct result of a variety of visitors to the village and the money they brought with them, money that enabled the children, as of January 2006, to stay at school until they were 16 instead of leaving at 10. Some might see these developments as disastrous, since the changes may have led to an exodus from the village as many sought a different lifestyle. This was indeed the case, as some had left and others planned to, expressing the wish to attend university and train to be doctors or teachers. Some

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never intended to come back, but others wanted to return with new skills and be active in the community. This choice, like Applied Theatre, is not unequivocally positively viewed by all and was certainly not the original intention of the project’s initiator Bernarda Morales. The second year of the work also saw a difference in the demands on the Central students’ workload. Rather than the two sessions a day, they were now asked to run additional sessions in both schoolhouses. In the 2006 projects, the children produced image work by focusing on modes of transport:  one group produced an image of a ferry; another a helicopter. Indeed, motifs of moving out of the Yorkín area were key in all the work produced in the schools that year. The children’s preoccupation with travel – or, perhaps, escape – was striking and unsettling. Their images made it clear that far from planning to strengthen family and community and maintain the ways of life held dear by Morales and Estibrawpa, some of the young people wanted changes that perhaps the women had not anticipated when they started the movement and decided to use tourism as a means to hold their community together. The changes I  saw on the second visit were not all a direct result of our presence, but we were part of the wider processes of change in the village. Our project did invite changes in thinking, aspirations and community life, and the community’s desire for change ran in parallel with the work we were making together. In his study of the region, written four years earlier than our work there, Salazar wrote, Today Costa Rica is entering a new era in the exploitation of its natural resources through ecological tourism. This activity now constitutes one of the prime sources of foreign exchange for the country. Whether you call it adventure tourism, agroecotourism, ecotourism or scientific tourism, it brings with it environmental and cultural pollution for the entire country … From the capital, tourist agencies devise tours without taking into consideration the condition and needs of the communities they visit. For their part, tourists look at the natives and the forest like museum objects with a romantic and folkloric attitude. (Salazar 2002: 26)



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When Bernarda Morales worked with RIBCA (a network that represents eight indigenous territories in the region of Limón, informed by the work of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests) she had an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. Subsequently, as a Bribri community leader spearheading ecotourism initiatives, she took an informed risk. Before our arrival in 2005 the Bribri were already changing as a result of the international development and globalization described by Salazar. To argue that a community like this should be timeless and unchanging reproduces problematic binaries of dynamic Western and static non-Western lifestyles. It denies the Bribri the autonomy they desire and seeks to turn them into a living museum for tourists. For Raimon Panikkar, The problem of pluralism arises only when we feel – we suffer – the incompatibility of differing worldviews and are at the same time forced by the praxis of our coexistence to seek survival. The problem becomes acute today because contemporary praxis throws us into the arms of one another; we can no longer live cut off from another in geographical boxes, closeted in neat little compartments and departments, segregated into economic capsules, cultural areas. (Panikkar 1995: 57)

Isolation was no longer possible for the Bribri. We may say that Applied Theatre work is, ideally, concerned with reflection, action and participation, or facilitating action for liberation and I  would argue that the cultural exchange we undertook with the Bribri approaches this ideal. The Yorkín community are living in a postcolonial globalized world and are attempting to bridge urban and rural divides. They do not, however, seek to become part of a flattened monoculture, to which globalization reduces the variety of human experience and serves the interests of the dominant discourses. The Bribri have their own agenda of transformation and liberation that uses and rejects globalized culture as it chooses. One of the global developments they have embraced is the internet. In 2020, with the support of an ecotourist agency, the community has developed a web presence to promote their provision for tourists to the region (https://stibrawpayorkin.wordpress.com).

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Their website seems to imply the balance of accepting and rejecting globalization is one that they are, so far, able to keep. The website is split between focusing on their objectives as a community, which is to be a ‘sustainable development of the community’s economy, conversation of our culture and cultural interchange’ and ‘protection of the natural riches’, and their tours and services for tourists. Their business seems to be flourishing:  a Google search in August 2019 on the Bribri community at Yorkín produced 11,600 results, many of which extol the tourist experience with an indigenous community as being a highlight of any tour of Costa Rica. The Bribri project focused on radical democracy whereby the community were refusing to succumb to the global changes in the usual ways and instead naming their own world. Their agenda had a strong capitalist bent as they needed the money provided by tourists to survive as a community and maintain their traditional way of life. Combining Bribri traditions of storytelling, music and dance with Western theatre techniques to reach a tourist funding stream may encourage others to understand their way of life, while enabling them to stay together as a self-sustaining autonomous society. While globalization privileges the individual over community and homogenizes culture, Yorkín is a placebased community trying to balance globalization, and its monoculture, with their own culture. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, when writing about the effects of globalization, argued persuasively in 2013 that a local site is not ‘an inert canvas upon which the moving space of globalisation is painted, but the local is itself a constant laborious work in progress’ (Appadurai 2013:  116). As such, the local, and by extension a rural community, is not a fixed or sealed entity; it constantly shifts and adapts to the world around it. We were a small part of this adaptation, a part which was an intercultural dialogue in which each partner identified the other’s assumptions and did not seek to change or ‘develop’ them. The project was invested in plurality, not homogeneity, and it remains a project in which the participants, both student and Bribri,



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learn from the other, opening ourselves from our standpoint to a dialogical dialogue that does not seek to win or to convince, but to search together from our different vantage points. It is a practice that is instigated by local people whose aim is to create local autonomy using local knowledge which will be mediated by the process of globalisation and knowledge’s developed through the exchange to remain autonomous and individual. (Panikkar 1995: 78)

The result was a polycentric applied practice that helped the community adapt to a changing world, not by education or development coming from the British partner but with the Bribri in control of the project. Here, the community partners were truly the agents of change. Paulo Freire asserts that ‘only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both’ the oppressor and the oppressed (Freire 1970: 26). I suggest that this is what happened in this project as the agency was located with the subjugated, who were at risk of losing their habitat, livelihood and lifestyle. Having identified this locus of power, the project remains an axiological puzzle to me. It was also a turning point in my thinking about my practice and has informed all the work I have done in the field to date as it still influences the planning of the work that has followed. It encourages me to test that planning and so to again ask Freebody et al.’s provocative question: ‘So where do we stand? How dark or light is our shade of grey?’ (2018: 11). It is key to my understanding of the axiology and responsibilities involved when undertaking work that constitutes a pedagogy of utopia and this is reflected in the following chapters. I  would not describe this project as a pedagogy of utopia, although aspirational thinking was certainly the foundation for this complex project, in that it was formed through the aspirations of the women of Estibrawpa. Politics of dignity and articulation run strongly through the work as these women conceived the plan to support their families and their way of life. In some respects, it is possible to see that the project invited resistance to social and spatial injustices by trying to work with the forces of globalization, rather than in opposition to them,

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and in this respect there are elements of utopic thinking embedded in the work. However, it lacked the cornerstone of a deeply embedded partnership and this made truly equitable dialogue impossible. In some ways we were working for the community as hired hands but with no monetary exchange, and the young people we were working with were employees of the community and were paid for their services. That is not to say that the students and I gained nothing; far from it: we gained practice, experience for our career development, insight, degrees and book chapters, and I formed the basis of an axiology for future practice. Despite the economic complication of the work and the women of the community achieving their goals, the power balance was skewed unjustly in our favour. Our privilege was evident throughout the work and, ultimately, to my mind we may have gained more through the process than the community. Together, the adults and children of the Bribri community, the students and I did create polycentric dialogue and theatre in a ‘pluriverse’, even if briefly. The work has enabled me to reflect on what is fundamentally important to me when working with community groups and ‘bare citizens’. At the heart of my thinking are equitable, deeply embedded partnerships and the axiology that flows when it is the starting point for intercultural theatre practice. This sense of equitable partnership was the basis for the project discussed in the next chapter which in one form or another has been running for over a decade in Mumbai.

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The Costa Rica project provoked me to question the way I  work in community groups and how I train students to become confident theatre practitioners, in particular with regard to axiology or the concepts of goodness, value and obligation that move beyond an ethical framework and permeate the project from conception through to completion along with the responsibilities that run through and across the work in a variety of contexts and settings, both implicitly and explicitly. The Costa Rica project was in this way the starting point of a journey, but the true workshop in which I developed my ideas was a youth theatre project in Mumbai, India, which I began planning in 2006. The keys to this project were, first, the partnerships that made this work possible and, second, a project partner on the ground: Divya Bhatia, a Mumbaibased theatre maker and festival organizer. Bhatia is the director of Stage Left, a community and Applied Theatre company which works with various community groups. In 2006 we set up a pilot project to explore what would happen if we brought together two groups of young people who would not meet in their everyday lives. It was a project with utopic intent that neither of us dreamt would be still taking place over a decade later. In fact, as I write in 2020, we are just planning the projects that will take place this summer, during the Covid-19 lockdown period, in both the UK and India. The original project informed my construction of a pedagogy of utopia in fundamental ways. The work would not have been possible without my partnership with Bhatia whose approach to community work aligns with my own, and our work together over this

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sustained period of time has enabled us to fruitfully debate, discuss and progress our thinking and practices over the years. The initial idea was to bring four or five students from Central together with young people who live in an area of Mumbai called Dharavi in a four-week series of workshops to make theatre. It took us slightly longer than we had planned to work out the logistics of the project and so the Dharavi project did not start until the following year, but we tested the idea with the trial project discussed in Chapter 5 of this book. The delay was caused largely by the difficulties of getting the right partners in place and convincing local grassroots organizations that theatre projects had real value. From the outset, this work was conceived in accordance with Syed Jamil Ahmed’s wish for an international theatre practice that did not intend to didactically deliver information, or to develop participants with a particular Westernized goal in mind, but only develop in the way that all theatre engagement may develop thinking. The article in which he describes his ‘wish for a world without Theatre for Development’ ends with the plea to ‘let us at least have just plain and simple theatre – theatre that never ceases to “develop”, theatre which allows debate, dialogue, reflexivity, dreaming the impossible and the flight to infinity’ (Ahmed 2002: 218). Our intention was to create ‘plain and simple’ theatre which allowed for discussion and dreaming; had we been intending to ‘transmit’ a message, rather than merely make theatre, we might have found a smoother, but less axiological way into the work. In 2017, in an article entitled ‘Finding a Concrete Utopia in the Dystopia of a “Sub-city” ’, I  considered where this, now long-term, intervention might relate to James Thompson’s (2009) call for the end of an Applied Theatre practice that privileges ‘effect’, and his positioning of a radical theatre practice as in alignment with an aesthetics and politics of affect (Busby 2017). In this chapter I focus on the ways in which this project has been the testing ground and a site of consolidation for my pedagogy of utopia. I do so by considering how making theatre with the young people of Dharavi works to engage the ‘social imagination’, a term I take from Ricoeur (1986: xxi), and which I have summarized



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elsewhere but which is useful to revisit here in thinking about social imagination as both constructive and destructive, offering both confirmation, and constitution, of the present. Because the social imagination responds to what is, it can therefore critique it and question it. Once a questioning of the present occurs, alternatives may be imagined. The practice of social imagination can then configure a utopia or, as Ricoeur writes, a ‘productive imagining of something else … from this elsewhere, it is possible to look back to where we have come from and re-examine the present, which now looks strange and opens up the field of the possible’. (Ricoeur 1986: 266, quoted in Busby 2017: 93)

The project did not aim to ‘develop’ the young people from Dharavi in any particular way or direction, but it did intend to engage their social imaginations, invite a re-examination of the present and open up the field of the possible. This is unashamedly utopian practice. As ‘utopia’ is a controversial term I  do not use it lightly. It has become vital to my thinking about Applied Theatre and what I see as its inherently political nature. Utopia has been dismissed as both an obsolete and impossibly naïve concept in the neoliberal world where it appears that change is no longer possible. Utopian scholar Ruth Levitas, writing in 1982, describes the manner in which utopian thinking has been rejected as it was considered pointless. Over a decade later, Russell Jacoby, in The End of Utopia, tells us that the utopian impulse has ‘vanished’ (1999: xi). Worse than this, the notion of utopia has also been consigned to thinking associated with totalitarian master plans. In an article written in 2002, geographer David Pinder outlined some of the problems with the concept of utopia and observed, quoting urban and community planning expert Leonie Sandercocks, that the utopian impulses at the heart of ‘so many experiments in city-building has always proved disappointing, if not down-right disastrous, in actual flesh and stone’ (2002: 229). Pinder’s own aim was to defend the value of the utopian perspective, saying it is ‘necessary to rethink its definitions’ which have traditionally been fixed ‘around notions of an ideal state

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or spatial plan for a perfect future’ (2002: 238). He suggests we think of utopia, instead, as a desire for a better way of living. In 2005, Jacoby suggested the concepts of utopia as either a plan for the future or a desire for a better future. In his book Picture Imperfect (2005) he argues for the restoration of utopia: I wish to save the spirit, but not the letter, of utopianism. I am drawing a distinction between two currents of utopian thought: the blueprint tradition and the iconoclastic tradition. The blueprint utopians map out the future in inches and minutes … I turn instead to iconoclastic utopians, those who dreamt of a superior society but who declined to give it precise measurements. (2005: xx)

It is useful to pause here to consider. In The Principle of Hope (1986) Bloch describes people as being ‘unfinished’, or living in a state animated by dreams or desires of a better life or by utopian longings for another way of being. He describes these longings as ‘anticipatory consciousness’ and argues that it has the capacity to move beyond a first stage of utopia, which is merely an abstract fantasy or dream – nothing but an ‘idle bed of contemplation’ (Bloch 1986: 158). The second stage of utopia, according to Bloch, is a concrete utopia which ‘opens up, on truly attained summits, the ideologically unobstructed view of human hope’ (Bloch 1986:  158). David Pinder takes Bloch a step further to claim that ‘utopia is understood as an expression of a desire for a better way of being and living. It is a desire that moves beyond the limitations of aspects of the present, seeking spaces and worlds that are qualitatively different from what exists’ (Pinder 2005: 18). Applied Theatre projects are often rooted in this ‘desire that moves beyond’ the present and seeks a different future for its participants. Pinder observes that the notion that there is no alternative to the present social order was ‘a talisman of the Thatcher government’ which has ‘become depressingly well ingrained into contemporary consciousness’ (Pinder 2005:  14–15). He suggests that utopian thinking can shatter this concept by inviting new ways of seeing. Many of the ‘bare citizens’ that participate in the community theatre projects I have worked on are



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also conditioned by their circumstances to think that alternatives are not possible, that their futures are set and unchangeable. At the heart of Bhatia’s and my plan to make theatre with the youth of Mumbai was this sense of an iconoclastic utopia, with a desire to wander rather than follow a map to a specific destination. We were searching for a version of Applied Theatre that invites participants to imagine a ‘superior society’ or a more equitable world, believing that such imaginations might lead to different futures that were not predictable or prescriptively mapped out. When Bhatia and I started to plan the Dharavi project, I had begun to think that applied performance may be utopian because it can critique the social order. I understood that such critique creates the possibility for alternatives to be conceived. Applied performance is instilled with a utopian spirit when it uses dialogic theatre-making practices that include aspects of critiquing and questioning the social and political circumstances of the present (Pinder 2005: 17), which can be seen to disrupt dominant assumptions, and this in turn opens the way for other possibilities to be imagined. In this conceptualization, I am also drawing on Ricoeur’s definition of utopia as outlined in Lectures on Ideology and Utopia: The result of reading a utopia is that it puts into question what presently exits; it makes the actual world seem strange. Usually we are tempted to say that we cannot live in a different way from the way we presently do. The utopia though, introduces a sense of doubt that shatters the obvious. (Ricoeur 1986: 299–300)

Bhatia and I wanted to see if making theatre with two groups of young people from different contexts could work to make the actual world seem strange and invite those participants to examine and question what they take for granted as being ‘normal’ and if this might invite the possibility of, or capacity for, change for both groups. Ricoeur does not use the word utopia to suggest a dream or fantasy world – a place better than reality – but rather the capacity and desire to create concrete changes to reality because ‘the utopia is not only a dream, for it is a dream that wants to be realized. The intention of the

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utopia is to change – to shatter – the present order’ (Ricoeur 1986: xxi). Ricoeur describes three stages of utopia  – the unrealizable fantasy, a desire for change, the exploration of change – and I will be referring to these stages throughout this chapter. The first stage is equivalent to Bloch’s first stage, that is, fantasy or the completely ‘unrealizable’; for Ricoeur the second stage is the desire for an ‘alternative power’ and the third stage leads to the ‘exploration of the possible’ (ibid.:  310). I  am most interested in the second and third stages, those where utopia’s capacity to effect change can be seen. The distinction between Bloch’s two stages resides in ‘the power of anticipation, which we [call] concrete utopia’ (Bloch 1986: 157). This is also the difference between Ricoeur’s second and third stages; in other words, the concept of utopia contains anticipation or what both Bloch and Ricoeur call the ‘not yet’. For both philosophers the ‘not yet’ is what might be and, as such, ‘not yet’ produces the imagination and possibility of change. Crucially, this possibility of change is rooted in, and can be seen from, the dominant ideology. When we first planned the work in Mumbai, we knew that making theatre can stimulate the desire for a first-stage utopia, and that it can and does stimulate a desire in young people to be actors or celebrities, but we wanted to explore if we could move beyond this stage to an exploration of what might be possible for the young people on a more realistic level. Bhatia arranged for us to partner with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the part of Mumbai known as Dharavi, often described as a slum or megaslum. This NGO works with the least advantaged inhabitants of the area. The NGO leaders introduced us to a group of young people who identified themselves as living with domestic violence and who volunteered to take part in this drama project. These youths lived, worked and attended school within Dharavi and rarely, if ever, moved beyond the area’s boundaries to venture into Mumbai itself. Their parents sometimes worked within Dharavi and sometimes worked as staff in the hotels and homes of the affluent Mumbaikars beyond its border. Many of the young people in Dharavi who do work do so ‘in day-long 9 to 6 shifts at the plastic recycling units’, only attending



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school once their shifts finish (Ghosh 2014). These young people are conditioned by the social structures surrounding them, and which form their lived experiences, into believing that Dharavi will mark the limits of their existence and that changing these circumstances is not possible. Bhatia and the NGO wanted to expose these young people to new experiences and creative endeavours to see if this might enable them to assess the thinking that seemed to be limiting their world view. We worked with Ricoeur’s description of ideology and utopia as being ‘two opposite sides or complementary functions which typifies what could be called social and cultural imagination’ (Ricoeur 1986: 1). Ricoeur writes, Whether distorting, legitimating or constituting, ideology always has the function of preserving an identity, whether of a group or individual … utopia has the opposite function: to open the possible. Even when an ideology is constitutive, when it returns us for example, to the founding deeds of a community  – religious political etc  – it acts to make us repeat our identity. Here the imagination has a mirroring or staging function. Utopia, on the other hand, is always the exterior, the nowhere, the possible. The contrast between ideology and utopia permits us to see the two sides of the imaginative function in social life. (ibid.: 182)

So, the social imagination for Ricoeur operates both in a constructive and in a destructive way as ‘confirmation and contestation’ of the present (Ricoeur 1986: 1). We created an Applied Theatre process that we hoped would invite these participants to rethink what is and how this can pave the way for a new vision of what might be. We hoped that the young people from Dharavi, working in partnership with students from the UK, might engage their social imaginations to interrogate the present and destabilize the prevailing ‘false consciousness’. The premise was that creating theatre that shows and then discusses current circumstances might be the gateway to a different version or imagined variant of their world. This premise would employ critical hermeneutics in the critiquing of their present, which might lead to a

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new utopia or a ‘productive imagining of something else, the elsewhere’ (ibid.:  266). Having reached the position of elsewhere they might re-examine the place from which they have come, thinking it ‘suddenly looks strange, nothing more being taken for granted. The field of the possible is now open beyond that of the actual; it is a field, therefore, for an alternative way of living’ (ibid.: 16). The deployment of critical hermeneutics opens a gap between what exists and the utopian vision; the imagination then ‘attempts to fill this gap between the dream and the present state of things’ (Ricoeur 1986: 288). When a theatre process invites the participants to fill the gaps, they become potential agents of change; such a theatre practice is, thus, political. ‘Social imagination’ allows people to think critically within the dominant ideology. Thought, Ricoeur argues, is mediated by but not bound by ideology. He expands on this theory by claiming that moments of ‘distanciation’ can be created from within an ideology that opens a space for critique. My belief is that Applied Theatre processes can create these moments of distanciation that allow a critique of the present and ‘the space’ or interstices for reflection within which the imagination moves from the constituted to the constituting and possibly from confirmation to contestation. To establish this position, it is worth taking the time to explore Ricoeur’s work in more detail. The ‘Mannheim paradox’ is central to Ricoeur’s theories:  ‘The paradox is the non-applicability of the concept of ideology to itself. In other words, if everything that we say is bias, if everything we say represents interests that we do not know, how can we have a theory of ideology which is not itself ideological? The reflexivity of the concept of ideology on itself provides the paradox’ (Ricoeur 1986: 8). This results in a false consciousness, which means that while we can ‘speak [or think] about ideology … our speech [or thought] is itself caught up in ideology’ (ibid.: 160). These statements would appear to imply that human beings are trapped in a closed loop:  it is impossible to think about our ideological state of being because we can only do so from within this thought pattern and therefore our thinking will still be from within that ideology. This would be binding if it were not for ‘the most



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primordial, most hidden dialectic – the dialectic that reigns between the experience of belonging as a whole and the power of distanciation that opens up the space of speculative thought’ (Ricoeur 1977: 313). For Ricoeur, distanciation is a ‘positive component’ in text that enables the ‘critique of ideology’ (Ricoeur 1991: 290). Ricoeur is, of course, writing out of literary studies as his focus on ‘text’ bears out, but I  believe that Applied Theatre activates the same distanciation and prompts the same reflection and critique. Ricoeur writes that the ‘text may escape from the author’s restricted intentional horizon’ and ‘recontextualise itself differently in the act of reading’ (Ricoeur 1991: 290–1). Recontextualization by means of distanciation makes critique possible:  ‘The power of the text to open a dimension of reality implies … recourse against any given reality and thereby the possibility of a critique of the real’ (ibid.: 292). When the subject matter is explicitly connected to contemporary reality, the reader  – or, in the case of Applied Theatre, the participant  – can critique the conditions which surround them and the ideology that underpins it. It is here, in this moment of critical distance, that the participant is cited as an agent of change, as questioning paves the way for considering alternatives. Ricoeur points out that ‘the deinstitutionalization of the main human relationships is … the kernel of all utopias’. This leads to the question: what to replace these institutions with? He proposes that ‘We should also ask whether utopias deinstitutionalize relationships in order to leave them deinstitutionalized or in order to reinstitutionalize them in a supposedly more humane way’ (Ricoeur 1986: 299). I did not want to resolve this uncertainty; rather, Bhatia and I invited the young participants to ask the question, what do more humane and equitable social institutions look like? and – albeit gently – to contemplate the possibility of change for them which could lead to an optimistic recognition that change is possible. Yet, we did not intend to effect change with this project. For us, the intention was for the participants to experience the potential to imagine change. The intention of this utopian theatre practice was to create an environment that invited the kind of reflection in which change is both desirable and conceivable,

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but without dictating the course of that change. In the Dharavi project we sought to work with a dialogical performance practice that would enable two groups of young people who would not ordinarily meet to exchange ideas creatively. We were interested in using theatre to support the development of a practice where young people from Dharavi could come together with students from the UK in mutual respect and work towards a common goal, based on an intercultural dialogue and artistic exchange, where the values of one group did not outweigh those of the other. Working towards an intercultural dialogue as a process of identifying one another’s assumptions and seeing the other not with a goal of change or development, but an openness to plurality rather than oneness, was the basis for our theatre workshops.

Dharavi: A ‘sub-city’ Dharavi is a complex and unique place and its inhabitants are ‘bare citizens’ in that they have none of the rights and privileges that accompany citizenship. Bhatia chose the young people of this informal housing settlement to be our India participants as a result of his long history of working within the area and with those whose world can be confined by the area’s limits, both geographically and aspirationally. Dharavi is situated in the centre of Mumbai, one of India’s megacities. It is often described as the largest of Asia’s slums by the popular press and by academics, including geographer Vandana Desai, who wrote the paper ‘Dharavi, The Largest Slum in Asia: Development of Low-Income Urban Housing in India’ (1988), and the historian and Subaltern Studies1 Collective member Gyan Prakash (2010). Whether it is the largest is disputable, but Dharavi is certainly one of the world’s most densely populated so-called ‘slums’ with substantial notoriety. In June 2019, the Daily Telegraph announced that not only was it the largest slum in Asia, but that it had just ‘won’ the first position on the Top Ten experiences for tourists visiting India, claiming that it was ranked more highly by tourists than the Taj Mahal (Ray 2019).



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Dharavi therefore is both a place of extreme deprivation and a magnet for tourists. Having been thrust into the spotlight by director Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), filmed in Dharavi, the area is shown to be an unsanitary, disease-ridden and violent labyrinth in which the young hero fights for survival. In the UK, two years later, it was featured in a Channel 4 documentary titled Slumming It (2010), presented by the popular television personality Kevin McCloud who hosts Grand Designs, an architecture-based reality TV programme. In Slumming It, McCloud explores the supposed reality of those living in Dharavi. In part, he presents a positive, but patronizing, image of the communities there, describing them as ‘some of the happiest and most beautiful I’ve seen’ (2010). While McCloud extols the community spirit that thrives in Dharavi, in spite of the conditions its inhabitants endure, the visuals in the documentary communicate a more negative picture, leading the Indian authorities to accuse the film and McCloud himself of ‘damaging the country’s tourism industry by making “poverty porn” ’ (Singh 2010). By 2019, it appears the government’s misgivings were wrong and rather than damaging the tourist industry, ‘poverty porn’ has proved very popular with travellers to Mumbai. Dharavi is alternately perceived as a squalid eyesore or romanticized as a place where ‘real’ community feeling is extolled. In reality, Dharavi is neither, both and much more. McCloud’s documentary takes the position that the inhabitants have no agency in this situation, by assuming that the communities have not formed social and political communities knowingly, following a long tradition of denying the agency of those in colonial and postcolonial positions. Subaltern Studies, as practised by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988, 1990), Ranajit Guha (1963), Partha Chatterjee (1986, 1993) and Gyan Prakash, has sought to uncover the history and agency of those otherwise deemed to be outside of the colonial and elitist structures of power due to class, caste, gender, race, language and/or culture. The discipline of Subaltern Studies seeks to restore history to the subordinated (Prakash 1994: 1477). Areas designated as slums, a term that is deeply prejudicial, overly simplistic and problematic, are growing in both size and scale across the

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globe. In 2006, Mike Davis in Planet of Slums stated that globally there were more than 200,000 slums, describing ‘megaslums’ as areas where ‘shanty towns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery’ (Davis 2006: 26). Since 2006, the world’s megaslums have continued to grow and in 2016 it was estimated that between 25 and 50 per cent of the world’s urban population lived in slums, and in 2017 the global number of slum dwellers was two billion (Krass and Schlacke 2016). The figures for 2018 were over 1 billion, with 23.5 per cent of urban population living in slums. And an estimated 3 billion people will require adequate housing by 2030 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Statistics Division 2019). Dharavi is unique in terms of ‘slum’ locations, as it is not on the periphery of Mumbai but, rather, at its centre. It is thus not marginalized geographically, and thus not out of sight or mind. It sits in the heart of the city, with commuters, shoppers and travellers from all sectors of society traversing it as they navigate through Mumbai. In the eighteenth century the area in which Dharavi is situated was a swamp. In the early nineteenth century it became a fishing village for migrant workers. In the decades that followed, Mumbai developed around that area. Today, Dharavi has an estimated population of over one million people packed into a square mile (the same population as the UK’s second city Birmingham, but packed into an area 1 per cent its size). It is a collection of settlements, each with its own identity, community and history. Mumbai-based journalist Kalpana Sharma, writer of Rediscovering Dharavi, sets out the history of the sub-city describing both the people of the area and the ‘subhuman conditions’ in which they live, explaining that Dharavi’s current configuration dates from 1909. Originally found on the outskirts of Bombay, as Mumbai was known at the time, Dharavi now finds itself in the very centre of Mumbai (as the city has expanded) where it occupies a prime location highly prized by developers. Today, Dharavi sits between the two main Mumbai suburban railway lines and water



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and sewer lines have been added around the houses and buildings. Two main roads cut across and through the area. Containing ‘twentyseven temples, eleven mosques, and six churches’ (Sharma 2000: ix), its sheer size can be daunting. It has retail shops, warehouses, goods transport companies, lawyers, accountants, hotels and entertainment businesses, health clinics and an estimated GDP of over $1.5 billion, all established illegally on land not owned by its residents. Not surprisingly, the land it occupies has been valued at approximately $2 billion (Harvey 2008) and has been the target of government reclamation for decades. Joseph Campana laments that it is not considered a city in its own right, stating that ‘tradition, entrenched attitudes and colonialera ideas about cities consign Dharavi, in the minds of the country’s middle classes and elites, to the status of an urban blemish – a slum’ (Campana 2013: iii). Yet in both size and scope, Dharavi is a city with a population as cosmopolitan as that of Mumbai itself. It is a city within a city, or rather, a sub-city that contains the very poor and destitute as well as thriving businesses that employ a large proportion of the population. Its industries contribute to the global economy as legitimate businesses; however, its citizens are ‘bare citizens’ in that they have no legal status, property ownership or access to government services (Sharma 2013: x). Dharavi was a settlement before British rule, but the colonial period had a huge influence in its development. As Tayyab Mahmud notes in his analysis of the area in ‘Slums, Slumdogs, and Resistance’, A defining feature of colonial India was the spatial divide between the centres of gravity of colonial presence and the native quarters. Natives not recruited into colonial security, administrative, and commercial regimes, remained at or beyond the spatial and social margins. A policy of neglecting even minimal housing needs of native neighbourhoods escalated into a de facto housing policy of reliance on local elites who built overcrowded, unsanitary, but highly profitable tenements. (Mahmud 2010: 695)

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Today the people who live there lead a precarious existence. Families of fifteen or more often live in 300-square-foot homes that were built illegally (on land not owned by the builders) and are now rented illegally, hence their present occupants’ legal non-status. Most dwellings in Dharavi are in need of sanitation and adequate clean water. In a place where space is at a premium, areas serve multiple purposes:  street, lunchroom, playground, political meeting place, pathway, production line and drama workshop all occupy the same patch, often at the same time. Homes double as factories, offices, recycling centres and shops. Dharavi runs twenty-four hours a day, with people (including the young) often working long days for little return. Sharma observes that it is not simply ‘a chaotic collection’ of people and structures, but a vibrant collection of individuals, families and communities ‘who have figured out a way to survive in the most adverse’ of conditions. She cautions that such a situation should not be romanticized, since ‘there is nothing to celebrate about living in cramped houses with no natural light or ventilation or water and sanitation … no one should live in such conditions’ (2000:  xx). The lack of private toilets and sanitation means that people use overcrowded public facilities, or they simply urinate and defecate directly into the river and when the monsoon rains flood the city each year, this river water floods the pavements and floors of Dharavi. The UNDP Human Development Report (2006) claimed that there was, on average, one toilet for every 1,440 people in the sub-city. Unsurprisingly, the mortality rate in Mumbai’s informal housing settlements is reportedly 50 per cent higher than that of the surrounding areas (Jacquemin 1999: 90–1). After his own description of Dharavi in The Future as Cultural Fact, Appadurai (2013:  151) declares that it ‘is a grim story about one of the world’s most dramatic scenes of urban inequality and spectral citizenship’, but adds that ‘spectres and utopias – as the practice of the imagination – occupy the same moral terrain’. It therefore feels fitting that working in partnership with those bare and spectral citizen a pedagogy of utopia emerged as part of a theatre practice that incorporated the social imagination and polycentric dialogue.



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Pluralism or neo-colonialism? The NGO, Bhatia and I all wanted to explore the aspirations of young people and confront the limitations as perceived by them. In the first year, for the NGO this translated into improving the young people’s job prospects and in Dharavi this meant learning English. Ever since we first planned a project in 2006 to take place within this sub-city, around six students from Central have created theatre with some of the young inhabitants of Dharavi each June. They often worked in cramped and overcrowded makeshift spaces – rooms above churches or temples, or in storerooms. The work was always improvised and drew on the skills and interests of the participants, who decided the themes and content of the final performances. We worked in partnership with an NGO, a Dharavi-based non-profit organization committed to investing in women’s health and young people’s education as a means to building viable urban communities. This organization, which wishes not to be named, has operated for over twenty years, working at the community level to encourage ‘slum’ communities to become catalysts of change. This very practical aim was in tension with the kind of dialogue Bhatia and I wanted to engender between the students and inhabitants of Dharavi. We sought to practise performance methods that prioritized equity between the participants from both Dharavi and Central, rather than serve instrumental ends. Whether theatre should be instrumentalized to serve pragmatic ends has been much debated.2 In our practice we prioritized the theatre-making and any instrumental result was a by-product of that process. We were keen to emphasize a non-deficit thinking in our practice, as opposed to educational systems that fail or hold youth back due to a model that implies the participants are inferior in some way. The perceived deficit is often the result of issues surrounding low income, or racial, ethnic or religious differences. Deficit thinking is addressed in more detail in the following chapter. Bhatia and I wished to eschew notions of deficit and instrumentality and create a piece of performance devised through a practical dialogue that would celebrate a ‘pluriverse’, as defined by Panikkar and discussed in Chapter 1.

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The Dharavi participants worked each year with a different set of Central students and the theatre methods and outcomes varied each year, but the lead facilitation team and the schedule did not change. Each year the students and the Dharavi youth worked for five weeks, coming together for four or five evenings a week in three-hour sessions, with a break for chai and food midway through. The sessions involved a range of theatre-devising techniques and skills-sharing. These sessions have included an exchange of puppet-making skills from both India and the UK, the teaching of Bollywood musical numbers in exchange for street dance routines, Indian pop music with British and American pop music, classical Indian dance and storytelling games, along with a range of devising techniques from across the world. The entire process moves towards a performance given by the young people, for audiences invited by the young people and the NGO. The subjects of the performances are generated in the early workshops and are decided by a process of collective decision-making by the young people. While we aimed to create a pluriverse which does not privilege one group over the other, we also needed to help the participants learn English as per the NGO’s objective. This immediately created a hierarchy which disadvantaged the Dharavi young people, placing their local language, and their language of comfort, in a subordinate position to that of the Central students. It also brings our ‘first-stage’ utopic dream to an abrupt end with an arguably deeply regressive practice that could be described as a cultural invasion that reinforces colonial tropes. As the applied linguist Suhanthie Motha notes, the teaching of the English language contributes to ‘the international dominance of English, associated with its Whiteness, wealth, power and cosmopolitism’ (2014:  xxi). Sahith Aula (2014) also observes that English is the language of the elite classes and the government in India and that only 30 per cent of the population speak it. For Aula, knowledge of the English language has informed a kind of discrimination that was instigated by British colonialism and continues today, to the particular disadvantage of the poor and those from lower castes. Its continued use keeps those without it in a state of ‘bare citizenship’. English is still the language of government



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documentation and yet many government (or state) schools do not teach English, while the elite and middle classes send their children to private English language schools. The NGO nonetheless saw the development of English skills as an important means for the young people to change their circumstances and the young people themselves have often been very keen to experiment with their English skills. It is evident that English plays a paradoxical role. Our privileging of the English language not only reinforces inequalities of race, class and caste but also provides Dharavi inhabitants access to the English language that offers a positive means of addressing the discrimination that Aula (2014) identifies. To my mind, there appears to be a binary at play that could lead to an ethical impasse like the ones created in the Costa Rica project. In the Dharavi case to use English or not caused a sticking point, and by conceding, did we reinforce colonial and deficit thinking in regard to a hierarchy of language? In Costa Rica, the Bribri largely refused to speak Spanish but were happy to work in English. Working within a Subaltern Studies framework I  am conscious of the ways in which binarized thinking can mask the complex interwoven histories and engagement between apparent opposite poles, in the context of postcolonial territories (Cooper 1994). We felt the complexity of this when planning the Dharavi work. It wasn’t a matter of using or not using English, but examining the situation pragmatically from a facilitation point of view (the students and I could only speak English) and from the point of view of the NGO and the participants (using English would undoubtedly be useful). It ceases to be a binary of right or wrong, good or bad, but a consideration of how light or dark grey we were prepared to go. Subaltern Studies, although largely the arena of historians, has something of value to add to this discussion.

Can the subaltern make theatre? Dolan (2005) suggests that hope can be found in theatre because it articulates the possibility of change, rather than its infeasibility. The

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contradictory function of English in the Dharavi project is an instance of such hope, as it potentially both confirms and contests colonial attitudes in a postcolonial context. The NGO encouraged us to see teaching English as a benevolent act that would enable the learners to develop skills to seek employment outside Dharavi and lead more secure and potentially more prosperous lives. They had no preference for which methods we used, so we chose to use theatre as a ‘hook’ to engage the participants and allow our students and the young people from Dharavi to play in a place where play is hard to come by, both spatially and temporally. To imply that the people from Dharavi had no agency in this process would be following in the colonial traditions that erased subaltern politics and agency in the history of India. Subaltern Studies outlines the manner in which the history books imply that peasant rebellion in India was controlled or motivated by external factors which resulted in ‘spontaneous eruptions’ or ‘reflex actions rather than as the result of conscious agency’ (Prakash 1994:  1478). When we debate whether teaching English as part of the Dharavi project is conservative or emancipatory, we run the risk of ignoring the agency of the participants themselves. Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay asks: ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988), focusing on the tradition of the Hindu custom for widows to burn themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands. She outlines the way in which the debates surrounding this ritual practice were framed between the ‘barbaric Hindu practices’ and the ‘civilising British mission’. This binary left the women at the centre of the debate without a voice of her own:  if she condemned the practice she was forced to side with the colonial power and to do so using the language of the oppressors; if she followed the tradition she surrendered her ability to speak altogether. Either way, her voice is erased from the history books. Mahmud succinctly clarifies the position of the marginalized – the subaltern: Spivak cautions that external attempts to represent the subaltern run the risk of logocentric assumptions of solidarity within heterogeneity, and of speaking for the subaltern rather than allowing them to speak for themselves. The point is that if the subaltern could speak – that is,



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speak in a code and manner intelligible to us – then they would not be a subaltern. This signals that the marginalized may respond to their condition in ways that lie outside the channels and modes of political action contemplated by those who do not share their condition. (Mahmud 2010: 699)

This caution is particularly relevant to Applied Theatre practitioners working with marginalized communities. We should be wary of logocentric assumptions that participants desire change, or what they might consider a positive change, and we should not assume they cannot make decisions for themselves. These assumptions lead to grey areas when the participants’ decisions run counter to ideology of the visitors’ practice – as seen by the primacy given to English in this project. In a powerful essay entitled ‘Can the “Subaltern” Ride? A Reply to O’Hanlon and Washbrook’, Prakash (1992) makes the powerful claim that the subaltern’s lack of mastery of a skill held in high esteem by the colonial powers, in this case horse riding, pointed to a crucial lack or deficit on the part of the subaltern themselves. This lack drew attention to the difference between the subaltern and the colonial English rulers, who were skilled horsemen (ibid.). It could be argued that by using Applied Theatre to teach English we were also playing into this deficit mode of thinking, which implies that the lack of English language skill is a deficit in the knowledge of the participants. Bhatia and I were clear from the start that our aim was not to teach English but to make theatre. In reality, the acquisition of English language skills became a by-product of the co-devising project and never a primary intention of the work. In the first year, as a group of thirty people in the rehearsal room (sometimes street, sometimes temple, sometimes shopfront), the team focused on the theatre-making process. My students shared their performance skills as facilitators, devisers and directors, and the participants shared their performance skills and traditions, thus creating dialogical theatre. Nobody in the room talked about teaching English or worked towards that goal strategically, but by the end of that year, and each year since, the students have learnt some Hindi and Marathi and the participants used some English and their confidence to do so grew each

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year. The young Dharavi participants are free to use English – or not. The work is translated from English to Hindi to Marathi and back again. The decision to ‘learn’ English, or Marathi or Hindi, is one for each participant to make whether they are from Mumbai or Central. In this way, we met and worked through the impasse. Staying with the discomfort and not teaching English would have inadvertently aligned the students and me as colonial withholders and reinforced a deficit mode of thinking and teaching. Working in an atmosphere where some participants could choose to use only their language of comfort or not helped us to avoid a grey area. To work in any other way would undermine the sense of the ‘pluriverse’ that was at the heart of the work. Working without a preference for one of the three languages was a political decision; to do otherwise would leave no ‘room for the otherness and resistance that was not determined by Western logic’ (Prakash 1992: 184). For Mahmud, the continued presence of the residents of Dharavi, their squatting on land in opposition to the local government’s development plans, constitutes resistance, so too does the sub-city’s thriving industry: ‘You in the West so easily see slum as a negative concept. Yes, it is beset by deep poverty and neglect, but Dharavi has also been mirroring India’s economic revival and it has done so largely by rejecting a local government that has long ignored it and by recycling its own resources’ (Mahmud 2010: 704). Mahmud is right. Dharavi’s continued existence is a form of resistance. However, for some of its young inhabitants, resistance manifests as the desire for change. For some, our long-term project created room for resistance to the idea that there are no alternatives. This resistance was not prescribed by the project, but it may have invited the participants to resist the idea that change is not possible, for each participant what this change was may be different.

Embedded integrated investment During the first year we worked with twenty-five to thirty participants between the ages of 12 and 22. Each year saw a growth in both



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numbers of participants and age ranges, such that in 2014 we worked with sixty participants between the ages of 8 and 60. It became clear from conversations with participants of all ages that they viewed the performances as a way to share concerns about a range of issues affecting their communities. Performances focused on domestic and sexual violence; gender, sex and caste inequality; and education, health and sanitation issues. Over the years I have come to see the work as a sustained, deeply embedded practice, one that is relatively brief each individual year, but which develops year-by-year and is of value to those involved. This sustained involvement is a long-term commitment and has become embedded in the rhythms of Dharavi, the NGO and Central, as well as each of the staff members involved. It is embedded in the yearly cycle of the young people who make space in their routines of school, work and chores to take part. The project has also become part of the cycle of student life at Central where students are offered the opportunity to be placed on the project team. Each year, the work happens at the same point, just as the heat builds and the monsoon breaks; the project has become as reliable as the annual rains and is as anticipated, so the young people tell me. I have begun to think of the project as a practice of ‘integrated investment’ (Busby 2017: 97) in that it pulls together a diverse group of people to combine their skills as a unified and temporary but continuous community that generates mutual benefit. Throughout the early years of the project, the young people talked with the students via our translator, Saatish Deembe, or those from Dharavi who had English language skills. Both groups of young people shared stories about everyday life, school, families, friends, work and aspirations and these conversations found their way into improvisations. It became apparent that the Dharavi youth saw little prospect of change in their lives. They were curious about life in England and other places but talked about settling down and raising families in Dharavi. The theatre they wanted to create concerned Dharavi life and the issues they wanted debated there. The first year’s work was about family violence; the next year focused on homophobia.

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Their lives, like those of many young people, were centred on the place in which they were growing up. In the second year of the project, when working on a mapping exercise that created an installation depicting Dharavi, they created a path through sculptures made from newspaper, plastic bottles and strips of material, filling the space with found items, but they left small spaces in which they sat alone or in groups of two or three. When talking about the piece, one of the young women, acting as spokesperson for the group, described Dharavi as ‘madly busy, always moving, loud, dusty and yet safe, with secret moments of calm and peace’; it was, she said, ‘home’. That year the group was keen to polish their performance skills and wanted to perfect some Bollywood dance routines. They talked about their dreams of escaping through being discovered as a Bollywood star. One young woman told us that she had been waiting for us to come back because she knew she wasn’t good enough to dance in films yet and wanted another chance to practise. That same year a popular Bollywood film contained a sort of ‘hand-jive’ of rhythmic slapping and clicking that a group of the boys had perfected and were keen to teach us. They too talked of wanting to be in films. Here the participants were imagining a sort of utopia, a fantasy of a luxurious Bollywood career and lifestyle. They were indulging in a dream of a better life. In this project we have perhaps opened ourselves to accusations of exploiting this fantasy – perhaps even of encouraging it – while at the same time affirming the English language as a means to economic improvement. But it is also possible to see utopic potential in this work. In that second year, as the two groups of young people talked, devised and played together, exchanging puppetry, games, dance and songs amid much good humour and pleasure, a sense of optimism was tangible. As the participants worked together to create theatre that celebrated samesex relationships, the young Dharavites improvised stories about their lives and devised theatre that was utopian. Ricoeur comments that ‘the result of reading a utopia is that it puts into question what precisely exists; it makes the actual world seem strange … The utopia though, introduces a sense of doubt that shatters the obvious’ (1986: 299–300).



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The sense of optimism each year as we work with the young people arises through a process of devising theatre that questions ‘precisely what exists’. Over the years, the young people have ‘made their world seem strange’ by raising questions about patriarchal social structures, the caste system, gender equality, education rights, domestic violence, faith and gang violence, and women’s health. This long chain of shortterm interventions is utopian perhaps because while they talk and devise, the young people critique the social order, and this critique creates the potential for alternatives to be conceived. It is worth pausing to consider Ricoeur’s (1986) notions of the second and third levels of utopia. Here, a better power replaces the one that exists. At the third level, ‘utopia is the exploration of the possible’ (ibid.:  310). This level is the most pertinent here. Ricoeur sees the third-level utopia as being concerned with the possibilities of ‘living without hierarchical structure and instead with maturity’ (ibid.). It was his conviction that ‘the only way to get out of the circularity in which ideologies engulf us is to assume a utopia, declare it and judge it an ideology on this basis’ (ibid.: 172). At this point, it is possible to be within the ‘ideological circle’ but not entirely conditioned by it. And it is here that change becomes possible: the circle becomes a spiral which allows for reflection and alternatives to be conceived. The spiral stretches the ideological circle so it is possible to be within it but still able to reflect on the circle itself. It is a utopia that causes the circle to stretch out into a spiral or a circle with space, or gaps, in which the reflection takes place. In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch outlined his own stages of utopia, arguing that once a utopian dream moves beyond abstract fantasy it may become a ‘concrete utopia’ (1986:  158). Although the participants in the Dharavi project have moved beyond the level of the fantasy stage of utopia and now work at the second level, I suggest they have yet to reach a ‘concrete utopia’. The performances they create are constructing possibilities of alternatives. These performances question what is, and the young people involved dream of a society that is more just by presenting lively and engaging theatre on a range of social topics they would like to see discussed, and changed, by the community.

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Cultural invasion or concrete utopianism? If, as Ricoeur comments, ‘the thrust of utopia is to change reality’ (1986: 289), a utopian theatre practice and a pedagogy of utopia can be interpreted to confront the challenge of creating change by exploring what could be, by questioning social reality and by challenging the assumption that there are no alternatives to the lived present. A utopian theatre reflects Ricoeur’s view that a utopia is ‘fundamentally realizable’ and it is ‘only when it starts shattering order that it is a utopia. In this sense it could be argued that a utopia is always in the process of being realised’ (Ricoeur 1986: 273). The thrust of the Dharavi theatre project is also to change reality, or at least to create an environment that invites the kind of reflection in which change may be both desirable and conceivable. To explore the critical distance required for such questioning, Ricoeur usefully draws on the original meaning of ‘utopia’ as being ‘no-where’ or, in Thomas More’s terms, as ‘no real place, a ghost city’: We start from the kernel idea of the nowhere, implied by the word utopia itself. From this ‘no-place’ an exterior glance is cast on our reality, which suddenly looks strange, nothing more being taken for granted. The field of the possible is now open beyond that of the actual; it is a field, therefore, for alternative ways of living. (Ricoeur 1986: 16)

From a position of no-where, the observer ceases to take for granted the present reality. So, no-where is a space where we can become reflexive. Borrowing this notion of the reflexive no-where and applying it to the Dharavi rehearsal room positions it and the cultural exchanges in a place distanced from the everyday realities of both groups of young people, a place and time where reality looks strange. Each June as I work in Dharavi, with all my qualms and questions about being there, my unease with one-off, short-term projects that might have no effect (not to mention the danger of aiming to have an effect at all), I  again experience the tensions surrounding this work. I  have become more comfortable, however, over the course of this



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lengthy relationship. In 2012, during a chai break, a participant brought me a square of chocolate as a gift and thanked me in English for visiting and making theatre with the group each year. This fleeting moment made me reflect on the students and participants who had taken part in this exchange. I  recognize that the Central students change each year, as do the places and the communities in which we work, but that many of the Dharavi participants return each time. Twelve of them, in fact, have consistently worked with us each year. These twelve have often returned to work on a new play and they bring friends who also create theatre with us. Over the years we have created issue-based  – but funny, moving and entertaining – performances. During this chai break, I reflected on the remarkable nature of that commitment to an annual four- or five-week project and on the increase in our numbers from thirty to sixty. Bhatia informs me that this is the only long-term arts partnership involving participants who are not Indian nationals to take place in Dharavi. There are many questions that still linger for me when thinking about this work. It is clear that the participants value the experience, but it is difficult to understand the impact of the work or their motivations for continuing. I can hazard guesses about this, and the ‘effect’ and ‘affect’ of the work, and readers can too as the conclusion to this book contains the reflections of these twelve long-term participants. Although I am more comfortable about the ethical stance of the work now, I am still troubled by it. There is, nevertheless, something about this long-term relationship of short-term interventions that is clearly enticing to the people we work with and the NGO that stopped asking for English lessons to form a part of the work and in the latter years of the project we were simply asked to create theatre. I  also know that these same funders have raised money for other theatre and performance projects. The Dharavi Biennale, a festival of the arts, is now being taken seriously by Mumbai residents and in 2015 some of our participants performed at this festival. The young people do not just talk about Bollywood as their dream of escape now and they are looking directly at the changes our translator has made in his life as a source of inspiration

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for developing their own performances and theatre. The Dharavi participants work in what I  call ‘a nebulous utopia’, a utopia that is unfixed and ever changing as people change their own aspirations and those they have for the world around them. Our translator, Deembe, moved through this stage to reach his own concrete utopia. Deembe moved from participant/assistant to apprentice facilitator, to translator, to running his own Applied Theatre projects in Mumbai and Pune and is now making a living out of doing so and supporting both himself and his family. By 2015, the project consisted of a co-facilitation team made up of six students from Central, six Dharavi students, a translator, an Indian practitioner, me and other participants. With this work we then moved into Ricoeur’s second stage of utopia, where it becomes possible to imagine a better future, a more positive alternative. Through this process some of the Dharavi participants are training to be facilitators alongside the Central students and not merely exchanging skills.3

Finding a nebulous utopia I find myself asking about the third-stage utopia, the ‘concrete utopia’ that constitutes a possibility of change and ‘opens up the ideologically unobstructed view of human hope’ (Bloch 1986:  158). With this extended project, the NGO has demonstrated a change: the work has helped the organization be in a position of ‘no-where’. Its members can be observers who cease to take the present reality for granted and imagine an alternative. Ricoeur asks, ‘may we not say then the imagination itself – through its utopian function – has a constitutive role in helping us rethink the nature of our social life?’ He wonders if ‘utopia introduces imaginative variations on the topics of society, family, religion’ (1986:  16) or, in this case, the use of theatre and English. The NGO is supporting a theatre project in which Dharavi young people facilitate a performance with younger inhabitants. The play produced in February 2015 by, for and with the young people of Dharavi, working independently, and without the Central



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students, suggests that these participants have moved towards a thirdstage, concrete utopia. They are testing out possibilities. Here, the transition between level two and level three utopia is more nuanced than Ricoeur asserts and there is a more phased progression. For the young people to achieve concrete utopia, they must navigate through a testing period of a nebulous utopia. From 2018, the team, now working in another area of Mumbai, have included two of the original participants as apprentices, translators, co-facilitators and co-researchers who are employed to work on the projects as part of a teaching and tutoring team. The role of the social imagination, activated by utopian endeavour, is to ‘impassionate society … to move and motivate it’ (Ricoeur 1986: 296). The training of these theatre practitioners and the theatre they create is a nebulous utopian endeavour that realizes a radical performance: a pedagogy of utopia. But how radical is this intervention, this pedagogy? Perhaps what is radical here is the suggestion that a utopia might be glimpsed and that the field of the possible might only just be visible. As such, the project sits on a cusp between cultural invasion and radical intervention. The Dharavi project, in its offer of simply making theatre, provides the dialogue, reflexivity and dreaming that Ahmed (2002) wishes for and through this, it may offer more than just a dream of the impossible:  a glimpse of an alternative future. James Thompson, drawing on Jacques Rancière, states that ‘working in any space through the arts can make no automatic claim to be a disturbance of the broader organisation of who speaks, has a part, or is visible’ (2009:  174). Art does, however, create a possible ‘ripple of affect’ and this ripple can create a disturbance and be part of a political act. Thus Applied Theatre can disrupt the sensible. I would suggest that the Dharavi project does this by disturbing the normality of the participants’ precarious lives for one month of the year when they make room to create theatre. The normal organization of everyday life is disturbed by our arrival, and during June they create theatre that asks political questions. Thompson asks, ‘How do we sustain a particular disruption of the “disruption of the sensible”? … How does the patchwork practice of Applied

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Theatre bring … reconfigurations of the world into new alliances with each other?’ (ibid.: 183). The response from the Dharavi project is its longevity, the integrated investment of the young people, the NGO, Bhatia, the extended India team, Central and me, all creating theatre that ‘disrupts the sensible’ in a precarious sub-city.

3

Aspirational thinking: Social justice and critical pedagogy

The longevity of the theatre work that Bhatia and I have undertaken in India is the result of a mutual partnership between the organizations we work with and our participants. This partnership is key to our sustained and deeply embedded community theatre-making as working in partnerships is one of the foundations of a pedagogy of utopia. While working with Bhatia and developing other long-term partnerships, I  recognized the second pedagogical foundation in my work: the cultivation of aspirational thinking, which invites a desire for participants to seek change in themselves or their communities. My practice, like a good deal of what is described as Applied Theatre, has within it a sense of change, but it is worth noting that the concept of change is one of many troublesome areas within the discipline. Although I am sympathetic to warnings about the terrible temptation to do good,1 other disciplines, such as critical pedagogy, are not so fastidious in renouncing claims to effect change. Writing in 2018 I stated that people looking to create concrete change to institutions or people should look to means other than theatre to make those transformations (2018a: 365). While I stand by this observation, I have begun to consider whether we might learn more from critical pedagogy’s approach to inviting change. There is kinship between a pedagogy of utopia and critical pedagogy as, according to Joe Kincheloe, a leading academic in the field, the latter ‘is interested in the margins of society, experiences and the needs of individuals faced with oppression and marginalisation’ (Kincheloe 2008:  23). Critical pedagogues accept that all education is political and aims to reveal and disrupt forms of oppression that marginalize

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and exclude, while developing critical thinking, social responsibility and self-agency. Critical pedagogy encourages the analysis of the relationships between education and politics, focusing on critiquing the hierarchies of power in everyday life, social institutions and education. In this book, I draw on critical pedagogy’s more brazen approach to change, while fixing the concept of change to the notion of aspirational thinking. Analysing the difficult moments allows me to demystify the processes of change and ask difficult questions about my practice. Does my prison theatre practice really contribute to a radical questioning of the criminal justice system? Does my work with homeless youth invite change or reinforce hopelessness? I heed Ricoeur’s warning that utopia must clearly see the circumstances that surround us now, in order to plan for the not yet. In this chapter, I consider a range of theoretical approaches: social justice using the theories of Nancy Fraser; the value of aspirational thinking; and the ability of theatre to invite forward thinking. Crossing Bridges and The Children’s Theatre Project, two unrelated and problematic projects, are examined through the lenses of these concepts. Crossing Bridges takes place in a shelter for homeless youth in the United States, and The Children’s Theatre Project is in prisons in the UK and Malta. I am dealing with two very different theatre-making projects as they connect to my application of ideas around ‘bare citizenship’ and the potential problems in applying ideas around ‘aspirational thinking’. Both projects work with participants who are seen to have limited rights as citizens through their positions as homeless or incarcerated individuals and, in the words of Arundhati Roy, who do not matter because they do not consume (Roy 2010: xxv). These ‘bare citizens’ have no disposable income and in our neoliberal, capitalist, market-based economy where worth and value are related to spending power they are ignored and sidelined as being worthless. In this way both their economic and social positions strip away their ability to participate in society and mark them as bare citizens who lack access to social inclusion and justice. Nancy Fraser uses the word ‘justice’ to mean ‘parity of participation’ (Fraser 2005: 277), and expanding on this concept, she argues that ‘justice



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requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalized obstacles that prevent some people from participating on par with others, as full partners in social interactions.’ If such dismantling is possible, then it follows that bare citizens will cease to be bare and will have full citizenship restored with their ability to fully participate on par with others. In Fraser’s view, there are three types of obstacles that prevent people from participating:  economic, political and cultural. The economic barriers to participation refer to the lack of resources experienced by some which stop them from interacting with their peers; in this case they ‘suffer from distributive injustices’ (ibid.). This issue is exacerbated by the class-based structure of society. Fraser outlines the cultural barriers as resulting from institutionalized hierarchies that deny people the required status to participate, or are the injustices of recognition. She explains that the problem is related to a status order, which she divorces from class structures while admitting that the two are interrelated. The third dimension, political, refers to injustices of representation or ‘issues of membership and procedure’ (ibid.:  278), which occurs when people are denied the possibility of participating by political boundaries or rules and are thus unrepresented or potentially misrepresented. This third injustice, like the first two, can occur in isolation, but often all three are entwined. Overcoming injustice requires parity of participation and ‘dismantling’ the structures that inhibit or prevent this and places them on the margins. This understanding of injustice and the resulting bare citizenship underpin the concept of a pedagogy of utopia that I am establishing. The utopia searched for in my practice is one of justice and full citizenship.

Neoliberalism and social exclusion It is difficult to think about rebalancing justice without referring to the ideological structures which underpin the lack of distribution, recognition and representation for those bare citizens living on the

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economic, cultural and political margins. These ideological structures underpin the ideology of neoliberalism, which is succinctly defined by Henri Giroux as an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests. The attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization around free trade, deregulation; the celebration of self-interest over social needs … the insistence that exchange values are the only values worthy of consideration, the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship. But even more than that, neoliberal ideology upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social life. (2015: 125–6)

Neoliberalism is, then, a fierce form of individualism or social Darwinism; it is a market-driven definition of the social, which posits that a person’s worth is determined by what they can purchase. Elsewhere, Giroux outlines a ‘culture of cruelty’, the concept through which he examines the consequences of neoliberalism for young people. He observes that populations that were once viewed as facing dire problems and in need of state intervention or social protection are now seen as problems threatening society. He states that what was once the war on poverty is now ‘a war on the poor; young people are viewed as problem people not people who face problems’ (2015: 5). Neoliberalism normalizes and legitimizes the humiliation and punishment of individuals who were once aided by the state – the homeless, the unemployed, the addict, ‘problem’ youth. Appadurai (2013) states that the urban poor who have become our cities’ ‘bare citizens’ thus become an ‘impersonal mass’ who are the object of public policy rather than ethical concern. These neoliberal public policies criminalize and marginalize these so-called ‘undesirable elements of society’, which, Giroux argues powerfully, positions these groups as disposable; in a culture of cruelty, they are problems to be dealt with, rather than helped (Giroux 2012). Neoliberalism is thus associated with austerity, deregulation, privatization, the erosion of the welfare state and with precarity.



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Arjun Appadurai (2013) links poverty to deprivation, desperation and a lack of both security and dignity. Theatre cannot easily address deprivation, desperation and insecurity in a direct and meaningful manner, but it can work towards creating a sense of dignity. One of the three key elements of social justice, as discussed above, is recognition. A  lack of recognition and a lack of dignity are closely connected. To withhold recognition is to ignore or dismiss a person’s or a group’s views, beliefs or culture. It is difficult to maintain dignity when you do not feel recognized or valued as recognition brings a sense of dignity. The removal of state support for those in need places them in an undignified and precarious position. A  decade ago, Guy Standing argued that precariousness was becoming so common that a new class – the precariat – was emerging. Today the situation has worsened. Standing’s precariat is now recognized as an under-class in the UK and the United States as those who are not so much unemployed as under-employed. They are on short-term or zero-hour contracts, and while they may have jobs, they do not have enough money to live on or they occupy positions in which they feel insecure. They (and we, arguably) are accustomed to their lack of security, to their precarious lives (Standing 2011). As Isabel Lorey (2015) points out, as a result of neoliberalism, precarity has shifted to the middle of society and has become normalized. Lorey adds:  ‘The conceptual composition of “precariousness” can be described in the broadest sense as insecurity, vulnerability, destabilization and endangerment. The counterpart of precariousness is usually protection, political and social immunization against everything that is recognized as endangerment’ (ibid.: 10). To describe this ‘state of insecurity’ Lorey draws on Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality (ibid.: 23). In Discipline and Punish, Foucault identifies a transition of government of the individual through the fear of, and the spectacle of, corporal punishment to a more subtle training of the individual. This is a development from an external form of government to an internal form of power that leads to selfregulation and self-government, or what he later calls ‘governmentality’; we are now living through an age of governmentality through insecurity.

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Foucault sees such governmentality as the modern way in which the law is implemented: ‘governing people is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or modified by himself [sic]’ (Foucault 1993:  204). Governmentality produces a docile population through the constant threat of surveillance leading to self-regulation. This is how society’s values become naturalized and normalized  – and how government becomes internalized. Foucault uses the metaphor of Bentham’s Panopticon to explain how disciplinary power functions in society: prisoners live in isolation, under the threat of constant surveillance from an unseen but omniscient and omnipresent figure who has the power to punish them for misdeeds. Thus, through the spatialization of bodies, surveillance and a hierarchical figure, individuals are ‘threatened’ into self-regulation. Today, this form of self-governance sees the individual strive to counter their precarity. This leads to a ‘political culture of danger’ in which others are seen as likely or possible threats to one’s security. Those who are, for example, claiming benefits, are living with alcohol or drug dependence, are homeless or are at risk of offending become a possible (or likely) danger. In what Lorey describes as ‘biopolitical immunization’ (2015: 59), these supposed threats are rendered harmless, either through integration into the system of Darwinian survival or rejection or exclusion from society. This leads to injustice in all three of Fraser’s dimensions – economic, cultural and political – and therefore exclusion from parts of society. Social exclusion has become a generic term to describe groups of people with no access to one or more of the dimensions of social justice and who lack parity in participation. Those socially excluded commonly include indigenous people; immigrants and/or recent arrivals; people with disabilities; black, indigenous and people of colour or people of the global majority; people who are not fluent in the official language of a country; offenders; those ‘at risk’ of offending; people with a perceived lower class and/or caste; those living in poverty; non-binary individuals; those who practise a variety of



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religions; and women. However, there are many more groups who may be stigmatized or stereotyped as being less worthy by the culturally, socially and economically dominant sections of society. Exclusion often works across several intersecting dimensions, for example, unor under-employment, lack of education, poor access to health care and a lack of access to social opportunities are interlinked and result in multifaceted exclusion. It is important to recognize that people occupy a range of socioeconomic positions simultaneously, and individuals can be excluded due to some aspects of their identities but not others. According to a 2013 report written for the World Bank, social inclusion can be defined with reference to three spheres  – markets, services and spaces  – in which all people aspire to be included and, accordingly, exclusion functions in relation to these spheres (World Bank 2013: 553). The report focuses on exclusion that prevents people from capitalizing on opportunities to obtain a better life, noting that social exclusion has ‘disastrous consequences for human capital development’ (ibid.:  451). The authors of this report view access to education and health as directly linked to access to employment and wealth, but they fail to consider Fraser’s cultural inequalities. The report does, however, note that exclusion also ‘robs’ people of their dignity (ibid.: 303). Such thinking follows a redundant deficit model of education which implies people need to be repaired, or they do not suffice, and they must be given the relevant tools to remedy their deficiency. This thinking is in line with neoliberalism’s construction of societies’ issues as resulting from personal deficits. It obfuscates the power dynamics at play with policing the margins and the centre. Critical pedagogue Joe Kincheloe claimed that this deficit model of judgement constitutes a ‘paternalistic’ approach to education that reinforces the status quo rather than interrogating and opposing it (Kincheloe 2008: 25). If those applying theatre adopt this paternalistic approach and endorse a deficit thinking pattern towards participants, then the practice becomes a tool for Foucauldian docility, rather than resistance. ‘Deficits’ commonly relate to lack of education or social skills and these are the very skills that lead to employability and wealth, but

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deficits can also refer to a lack of cultural capital. This concept was first articulated by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1960s based on his observations that those who had access to cultural events were given access to knowledge that enabled them ‘to generate relations of distinction which are instituted as social or status hierarchies’ (Bourdieu 1984:  13). In other words, through a combination of family and education, young people are introduced to a range of cultural behaviours, artefacts and activities which may be turned into a form of capital that may be traded for social and career opportunities. This access consistently reproduces social stratification and is ‘one of the most effective means of perpetuating the existing social pattern, as it both provides an apparent justification for social inequalities and gives recognition to the cultural heritage’, that is, to a ‘social gift treated as a natural one’ (Bourdieu 1984: 32). Although the concept of social capital has been critiqued by some sociologists (Durlauf 1999; Poder 2011), academics working in the field of health studies and urban development consider the impact of cultural capital in low socio-economic groups (Khawaja and Mowafi 2006), and educational theorists debate the effect of cultural capital in the school system (Angerame 2017). So, the concept of cultural capital still held some currency when we were planning the Crossing Bridges project, which first took place in 2015.

The bridge to cultural capital Crossing Bridges was a theatre project that worked with those living in a Covenant House shelter for homeless youth in New York, aiming to use theatre to foster confidence and to enable participants to challenge and disrupt the ‘homeless youth’ label in constructive ways, and counter the way the negative identities attached to this status had become internalized. In addition, it also hoped to challenge how this label is viewed by the privileged citizen group. In doing so, the project hoped to invite aspirational thinking from the youth. We used theatre as a tool by creating a positive experience that would potentially open new



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personal and social identities that allowed participants to envision an alternative self. Providing access to cultural spaces and contact with the cultural elite was vital to Crossing Bridges, but awareness of these access issues was also problematic; too much attention to previous (and, it turns out, subsequent) exclusion from elite cultural spheres could have reinforced the identities that the project attempted to disrupt. Crossing Bridges brought together two groups: young people with no access to cultural capital or spaces (and whose social identities are partly shaped by this scarcity) and the more culturally and economically elite. It aimed to create an integrated community, at least for the duration of the project. Together, shelter-dwelling youth and professional theatre workers undertook a series of workshops which culminated in a twenty-four-hour devising process and a public performance in an off-Broadway theatre. Crossing Bridges was designed to encourage aspirational thinking and disrupt the youth’s perception that they occupied a space diametrically opposed to that of the culturally elite professional theatre-makers who were also part of the project. We did so by bringing them together to collegiately devise theatre. The performance practice was premised on dialogue and exchange, with guest artists coaching the youth in their own theatre specialisms and the young people conveying their own abilities, cultural tastes and experiences. It enabled two groups of people, unlikely to meet, to work together creatively. The project team hoped the ensemble would enable participants to learn together in a working method that did not privilege either group and in which all participants remained autonomous. Vocal techniques for musicals were exchanged with rap; street poetry was exchanged with script writing; puppetry was exchanged for graffiti; street performance like breakdance used as a busking technique was exchanged for chorus line routines; children’s stories and structural narratives were infused with tales from the streets. The final performance retained elements of both lived realities and ‘cultures’. We worked with a range of professionals who identified as being LBGTQ, Latinx, African American, white and South East Asian, and those from low socio-economic backgrounds, in the hope that the

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young people would start to reconsider the relationship they had with the ‘elite’ by viewing these artists as role models. Crossing Bridges was designed and led by Cathy Han. I  was an advisor to the project and facilitated students from Central to assist with each version of the project. These students worked on the project as part of a placement required for their BA degree. Crossing Bridges piloted in March 2015 and was delivered in November of that year, and then twice in 2016 and once in June 2017. Each incarnation of the project was tweaked and adjusted through evaluation processes, but the primary tenets of the work did not alter and, to date, sixty residents of Covenant House New York have participated in Crossing Bridges projects. The aims of the project were to enable shelterdwelling youth to challenge the notion of their disposability, give them access to cultural capital, promote concepts of social justice, restore dignity and develop aspirational thinking about their futures. Grand claims for a theatre project, but such claims are frequently made about projects that fall under the umbrella of Applied Theatre due to the intentionality of the work of changing the status of marginalized communities. In a 2018 article examining this project, I  suggested that Crossing Bridges had the potential to counter the values of cultural capitalism by inviting the young people into spaces and aesthetic practices to which they are usually denied access. I  considered if this potential is, ultimately, negated, because after the project’s completion, their exclusion from elite cultural spaces resumes (Busby 2018a). Applied Theatre practices that happen with marginalized youth can reinforce these values of mainstream culture as being superior, or they can challenge this notion – but the line between the two is not always easy to define. John Smyth, in his book Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice, cautions:  ‘An emphasis on fixing, refurbishing and restoring according to some largely invisible middle-class standard of the way of lives ought to be led creates considerable difficulty. No amount of consultation is going to conceal the fact that judgements are being made about the fundamental dysfunctional nature of such communities’



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(Smyth 2011: 109). Crossing Bridges was at risk of appearing to make such ‘judgements’ of its participants. Endorsing, and then embedding, community cultural wealth into this project was paramount, as it is when working with marginalized groups if the work aims to raise self-esteem and aspirational thinking. Crossing Bridges sought to integrate shelter-dwelling youth and professional theatre makers into a temporary creative community. In so doing, was it inevitable to make judgements of the participants from Covenant House while attempting to fix their lives? The project had intended to raise aspirational thinking by inviting the participants to cross a bridge into areas of society from which they are marginalized, but in doing so it potentially reinforced dominant forms of culture and highlighted the young people’s dysfunctionality.

Cruel optimism and aspirational thinking Those making theatre with marginalized youth need to be vigilant to avoid assumptions about cultural capital and the deficit thinking that comes with it as baggage, and we can usefully look to critical race scholars for guidance. Critical race theory (CRT) calls for a rethinking of the deficit model of thinking, particularly with regard to ideas about cultural capital. Originating from legal scholarship, CRT examines race as a social, not biological, concept that privileges and maintains the interests of the white population; as such it recognizes that racism is inherent in the term race itself and is omnipresent. An early exponent of CRT, Derrick Bell, writes that ‘critical race theory … embraces an experientially grounded, oppositionally expressed and transformative aspirational concern with race and other socially constructed hierarchy’ (Bell 1996: 32). Bell petitioned for a social justice that recognizes the value of non-dominant cultures and knowledges. The idea of ‘social capital’ outlined by educational theorist Lyda Hanifan in the 1910s is useful here. ‘Social capital’ recognizes the value of ‘community as capital’, that is, capital in the form of the support, knowledge and

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advantages one develops through daily contact with peers (Hanifan 1916). Tara Yosso and Daniel Solorzano echo Hanifan when they argue for the recognition of ‘community cultural wealth’ across five areas: aspirational, familial, social, navigational and resistant cultures. In discussions of education and cultural capital, Yosso argues, the capital at stake is ‘narrowly defined’ and, in fact, more limiting than wealth (2005: 77). The established order, or a cultural hierarchy, is reinforced by education systems that value cultural norms and positions those without this knowledge as being at fault or in deficit. Yosso states that CRT finds that racism is often well disguised in the rhetoric of shared ‘normative’ values and ‘neutral’ social scientific principles and practices (Yosso 2005:  74). In Expelling Hope, Christopher Robbins (2008) considers how zero-tolerance policies in the US education system have systematically led to the expulsion (often permanently) of youth of the global majority from schools. He examines how these ‘neutral’ principles and practices, or the so-called ideology of ‘colour-blindness’, labels racism and racial inequality as private and not societal problems. Students of the global majority are judged in terms of their supposed deficits, a process which limits their life choices, fails to recognize and wastes their potential, and makes them disposable. In these ways, the educational system is ‘expelling hope’ (ibid.: 115). Robbins (2008) and Yosso outline the way schools in the United States and their model of ‘deficit thinking’ employ contemporary forms of institutional racism. Their systems are ‘based on a judgement of what cultural possessions young people should have and assumptions about what they haven’t had access to’ (Yosso 2005: 75). More recently, Lisa Angerame (2017) has suggested that by ignoring or disregarding the cultural capital of those from the global majority, the white power holders have been able to discount the cultural capital of others. In school settings, for instance, children from the global majority learn to hold the mainstream culture in higher esteem than their own, which is viewed as somehow inferior. Aspirational thinking is one of the five areas that Yosso (2005) outlines within the concept of community cultural wealth; it is also a cornerstone of a pedagogy of utopia.



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Appadurai identifies the ability to aspire as being unequally distributed whereby the rich have a ‘more fully developed capacity’ for it due to their greater exposure to experiences, relationships, opportunities and options (Appadurai 2013: 188). He describes the capacity to aspire as being a ‘meta-capacity’ due to its navigational qualities, or its forward imperative, that allows those with privilege to thrive. Those living in poverty struggle to utilize this meta-capacity because their poverty results in a lack of experiences and the ‘opportunities to practice’ and experiment with it, and without this capacity he states that their futures are limited to what they know and have experiences of (ibid.). Crossing Bridges aimed to broaden the experiences, cultural wealth and therefore aspirations of the young people, but this is a potentially dangerous strategy. Inviting young people into a theatre project that aimed to embolden aspirational thinking may have encouraged participants to believe that they were potential stars, or celebrities in the making. This is also true of the Dharavi project, discussed in the previous chapter, in which the participants were initially attracted to the project as an imagined way to access Bollywood. In this sense, both projects could be accused of attracting and attaching youth to the fantasy of a potentially unobtainable future. Lauren Berlant (2011) uses the term ‘cruel optimism’ to describe the condition where people fantasize about the good life when this concept is not obtainable in their real lives. She argues that people are conditioned into believing what this ‘good life’ is, and that a fixation on achieving it permits people to repeatedly damage themselves in the attempt to attain it (Berlant 2011). She counsels that ‘optimism is cruel when the objective/scene that ignites a sense of possibility actually makes it impossible to attain the expansive transformation for which a person … risks striving’ (ibid.: 2). Crossing Bridges offered participants brief access to cultural capital and possibly invited the youth to entertain fantasies of becoming a celebrity, like some of the project’s professionals. The youth did not fully appreciate the precarity faced by the professional, jobbing actors or even that of those with more celebrity status. They focused on an image of the ‘good life’ that may stop them from concentrating on improving their

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education and may, in fact, be stifling any tangible transformations in their current circumstances. Crossing Bridges attempted to breach these ‘walls’ and bring those with economic and cultural capital together with those who might be described as ‘disposable’, but was this an instance of invoking ‘cruel optimism’ despite the carefully thought through intentions of the project? I  consider Crossing Bridges to be part of a pedagogy of utopia in that the participants were invited to consider the ‘nebulous utopia’, as outlined in Chapter 2. As such, it enabled young people to imagine an alternative future as they occupied a middle space between abstract and concrete utopias, that is, somewhere between fantasy and actual change. Crossing Bridges and the Dharavi project both invited participants to critique the present, test alternative versions and move to a position where change might be possible. Applied Theatre practices would indeed offer nothing more than a version of Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’ if they did not acknowledge reality. Encouraging the youth to believe that Bollywood or Hollywood careers are available to them would be a form of ‘cruel optimism’, the concern being that fantasies of stardom may cause them to fixate on the unobtainable and reject more valid opportunities. For Berlant, the sense of the possible that may lead to transformation is not necessarily cruel if it is realistic and recognizes the impediments to realization. For Giroux, cruelty involves expanding the number of categories of people who are redundant or ‘disposable’ and uses the term ‘culture of cruelty’ to define the discourses that enable some lives to be more valued than others, building walls between communities (Giroux 2017:  8, 7, 17). During this project it was possible to see that a wall existed between the two groups of participants and it was a wall held in place by both sets of people, each regarding the other as stereotypes. Critical pedagogues Smyth (2011), Mayo (2013) and Kincheloe (2008) all caution their readers to focus on the individual and not their stereotype or label, to create a space which enables rather than marginalizes, to invert the hierarchical power dynamic by valuing the knowledge of the participants and to work with them not for them. In Crossing Bridges many of the young people believed strongly that there



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was an unbridgeable binary between the two groups. They perceived themselves as the dispossessed, the homeless who were at one end of the spectrum and the creative professionals at the other end. While these two extremes are not a simple polarization of who has access to cultural capital and who does not, the young people themselves perceived the differences as a simple binary and were firmly committed to this idea. The youth had fully invested in the power of the labels that had been assigned to them, such as ‘homeless’, ‘shelter-dweller’, ‘single mom’, ‘gang member’, ‘user’, ‘reject’. In their initial relations with the guest artists they were deferential, anxious and, in some cases, belligerent about their incapacity to interact with the professionals. Their perception of the binary made the complex task of encouraging aspirational thinking particularly challenging. Our initial use of the term ‘guest artists’ was problematic in two ways: first, it reinforced the binary for the young people, and second, the label of ‘guest artist’ is one that depersonalizes the professionals, making them appear onedimensional and uncomplicated. As mentioned in the introduction, labels do not fully define individuals or automatically generate actions; there are many causal factors that affect identity and behaviour. These classifications, do, however, have a flattening effect that may reduce people to being perceived as a homogeneous group, such as homeless or shelterdwelling youth. Continuous repetition of negative identity markers over time can become internalized and therefore affect a young person’s self-confidence, self-belief and aspirational thinking. In the Crossing Bridges sessions, rehearsals, workshops and performances, in an attempt to reduce the label effect, the terms associated with youth homelessness and guest artists were discarded. Everyone became part of the Crossing Bridges ensemble; all were simply artists, actors, dancers, directors. While this is good practice, the issues surrounding the labelling of the participants was not as easily removed as that. The labels of ‘homeless’, ‘sex trafficked’ and ‘abused’ are used to define the young people at Covenant House. In fact, the youth need to use these labels to seek and receive support, so the labels become their passport

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to the shelter. Conversely, the professionals also trade on their labels as performers, stars and artists to gain access to spaces, people and opportunities. The young people lack these labels and lack the passports of racial and cultural privilege that would give them access to cultural and aspirational capital. Within Covenant House, a privately funded charity, these labels are used to raise money for the shelters, educational programmes and political lobbying for the rights of street dwellers. The Broadway artists donate their time to Crossing Bridges because it is for ‘the homeless youth’. In this respect, the young people benefit from the labels bestowed upon them. Appadurai (2013) identifies this as a process of compliance with societal norms that enable bare citizens to survive. Crossing Bridges endeavoured to challenge internalized negative selfidentities by inviting the youth to be artists through the devising and performance processes, and conversely it also required the professional artists to confront their own assumptions about homelessness. Such aims are buttressed by troubling assumptions. I  would argue that encouraging marginalized youth to access representations of dominant culture as a means to improve their lives reaffirms the value of (narrowly defined) cultural capital and evidences a deficit model of thinking. I may then ask whether Crossing Bridges was more of a culde-sac than a bridge, if it indeed reproduced sociocultural inequalities by positioning theatre spaces and theatre professionals as a gold standard that our young people should venerate. One participant commented that the project was ‘like a dream but then I woke up, and this beautiful dream just come to life’. He explained that for him, the ‘dream’ was meeting the professionals, which implies that he perceived an enormous (insuperable) gulf between his milieu and the cultural elite. Teona, a young Latinx2 participant, firmly believed that her accent and background meant that she was excluded from cultural venues and activities. She told us: ‘I thought that I couldn’t even be in theatre with my accent and where I was from.’ The narratives used in the project may also have helped support the opposition between the project’s constituent groups. Teona’s group



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used Cinderella as a stimulus to create their performance piece. Her group, which included two youths who identified as African American males and two professionals who identified as a female white singer and a female mixed-race choreographer, cast her in the role of Cinderella. They contemporized the narrative to be the tale of a young woman, who despite impoverished circumstances achieved fame through her acting talents. Teona was strongly encouraged to play the lead by the group. Reflecting on the project several weeks later she said, ‘I didn’t think a lot of people was going to relate with Cinderella Garcia because she was Spanish, and I didn’t know how the audience was going take that.’ Teona based this on her assumption that ‘it would be wrong’ for her to play a traditionally white role; she observed that the Disney version of the character is ‘white and blonde and that isn’t me’. Stimuli packets provided a loose narrative structure that the participants adapted and contemporized through the devising process. Disney films were a common frame of reference for many of the participants who had not attended a theatre performance; they were referred to as a context during many of the pre-devising workshops. The stimuli packets contained the title and a range of visual items and included items of cross-cultural images, contemporary interpretations of the stories, and photographs and abstract images of possible characters and leitmotifs. The packets contained no specifically hierarchical cultural imagery, but we chose to overlook the inherent discrimination in the stories themselves. Although Teona played Cinderella Garcia, she was perturbed by the role. I  am troubled that the narratives we provided may have actually validated the youths’ assumptions about the roles they could play both in the theatre and in their real lives, and thus reinforced cultural hierarchies that we were hoping to dispel. Applied Theatre researchers Kathleen Gallagher and Dirk Rodricks examine their longitudinal project with shelter-dwelling youth in Canada, with reference to reflections on CRT. They examine the exploration of the lived experiences of youth through devising and improvised drama to identify how the young people use their own cultural knowledge to navigate a society that does not acknowledge the

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value of their community culture (Gallagher and Rodricks 2017). In Crossing Bridges, we did not use the participants’ stories and so we ran the risk of devaluing their cultural knowledge. By using ‘traditional’ hierarchal white middle-class cultural children’s stories we may have alienated our young people and confirmed their beliefs that they did not belong in white middle-class institutions such as a theatre. CRT calls for ‘drawing explicitly on the lived experiences of the global majority by including such methods as storytelling, family histories, biographies, scenarios … and narratives’ (Yosso 2005:  74). Although we imposed stories that can be seen to exclude and marginalize, all the participants adapted and changed the narratives, supplying their own cultural references, skills and knowledge into the frameworks we provided. The result was an eclectic mix of the personal, breakdancing, rap, puppetry, poetry, street dance and language, biting political satire, together with a unique view of the city that half of the audience are not exposed to. Each performance drew on the lived experiences of the homeless and the culturally elite, each drew on what Yosso describes as ‘community cultural wealth’. Gallagher and Rodricks’s work uses a ‘cultural wealth’ framework to ‘challenge dominant perspectives of shelter-dwelling youth as deficits and to recognize the ways in which these youths mobilize community cultural wealth to survive, thrive, and resist within institutions … not designed to see them succeed’ (Gallagher and Rodricks 2017: 10). Crossing Bridges, with its dialogic devising processes and public performance, used a form of ‘community cultural wealth’ that emerged by combining dominant forms of cultural capital with the lived experiences and cultural forms of the marginalized. It allowed those in the margins to access the centre and to explore ‘aspirational capital’ and ‘dream of possibilities’ (Yosso 2005: 78), which underpins the project. The utopic potential is that young people who take part in Crossing Bridges might be able to ‘glimpse the field of the possible’ while realistically acknowledging their present circumstances (Busby 2015: 415). Utopian scholar Darren Webb, writing about finding utopia in Sheffield in the United Kingdom, states,



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Utopian visions can do various things: they can inspire, mobilise, and give direction to a struggle. They can provide a critical viewpoint from which the inadequacies of the present become more starkly visible. They can call into question the existing order of things and render the present mutable and open to change. They liberate the imagination and make it clear that alternatives can be thought of and fought for. They make us uncomfortable – angry even – with the way things are, and they lead us to question whether things really have to stay this way. (Webb 2017)

I would like to think that Crossing Bridges achieves this and that it invited the young people and professionals to question whether things ‘really have to stay this way’, on the individual personal micro level and on the broader macro level, that is, the dominant hierarchical nature of cultural capitalism. But I question if this is enough. Smyth cautions that ‘ “disadvantage” is constructed, and as citizens we are implicated to some extent in making it that way and allowing it to continue that way’ (Smyth 2011: loc. 1739). I have to ask myself if this project perpetuated disadvantage. The stories were rudimentary, the performances were undeveloped, but there was something intensely exhilarating about witnessing shelter-dwelling youth performing on stage with award-winning professional artists in productions they cooperatively devised. It was deeply moving to see those who occupied the extremities of the cultural capital spectrum working in synchronicity to conceal the omissions, confusions and errors of a hastily prepared performance, and convey a coherent story, with both the youth and the artists making and masking the flaws in equal proportion. The results were Broadway musicals infused with stories from the streets, breakdancing, puppetry, slang, classical dance, rap, but in which all the participants had something to teach and perform based on their own experiences and where the youth did not feel alienated. During the performances the young people occupied a status equal to that of the artists and the Crossing Bridges performances were remarkable as a result of this equity.

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It is important to remember that although at first Teona was uncomfortable playing the role of Cinderella, she did take on the lead of Cinderella Garcia. In this sense, not only did she give Cinderella a surname, but she also shaped the character despite her qualms of how the audience may perceive this reworking. She and the whole cast of each performance of Crossing Bridges disrupted the status quo and in so doing enacted my concept of nebulous utopias. Crossing Bridges prompted discourse on social injustice, with reference to the participants’ lived experiences of homelessness. This dialogue began in the rehearsal room and continued as part of the performances in front of audiences. The final performances provided a commentary on contemporary New York, as lived by the youth. Drawing on Freire’s vision of people as being contained by their temporal–spatial conditions, Ivor Goodson and Scherto Gill (2014: 48–9) observe that change or action ‘must be connected to people’s situated preoccupation, doubts, hopes and fears – and not just discourse’, adding that ‘understanding our world and our situations within it, changing our individual and collective aspirations and taking a different course of action together in order to become fully human are the essences of Freire’s critical existential thinking’. To ‘become more fully human’ one must truly understand the world and our individual situation and privilege, or lack thereof, within it. Being ‘more fully human’ is central to critical pedagogy and, I would suggest, to a pedagogy of utopia.

Bridges crossed with critical pedagogy I incorporate critical pedagogy’s stance of aiming for a more fully humanness along with its openness and sense of non-mastery into the axiology of my pedagogy of utopia. In this way, neither the guest artists nor the young people living in Covenant House nor the students from Central were the experts in this project. They each brought skills, experiences and knowledge to the project. In this work there needs to be an openness about who the work is for, where each participant



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is open to the other, to learn together and from each other. Within this openness is a sense of non-mastery, or perhaps co-mastery from everyone in the workshop space, and this leads to a praxis of not being sure where the work will go or what the end performance will look like. This not being sure means that I constantly critique and question the axiology of the work and avoid assumptions about knowing best. In my projects I  invite my participants to deliberate on their present, resist conforming to the status quo and move to a new or even utopic vision of the future without a fixed concept of what that alternative future might be. Critical pedagogy presumes that all education is political as it cannot be neutral, because it either domesticates or liberates (Kincheloe 2008). It thus problematizes those things which appear to be givens, but which are in fact social constructs, and which can be changed (ibid.). As an extension of this, applying theatre can also either encourage acquiescence or disavowal. I  am not afraid to say that in my work I aim for the latter rather than the former in the neoliberal world that wages war on youth and reduces participants to passive consumers, rather than social actors who are capable of challenging forms of authoritarianism (Giroux 2009). This aim of working towards a disavowal becomes particularly difficult to conceive in theatre work that takes place within the walls of a prison where society and the justice system look for compliance from its inmates. In the next section I consider whether my own theatre practice in prisons has encouraged acquiescence or disavowal, limited or provoked aspirational thinking, or resulted in docility or liberation.

Resistance or compliance in prison theatre? I have been troubled by theatre in prisons since my early days as a newly qualified teacher in 1996, when my first paid job was to teach Shakespeare’s soliloquies to the inmates of a male category A prison, a maximum security prison, in the UK. I had been brought in on the whim of the governor, who believed that Elizabethan poetry would

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somehow soothe and civilize his volatile inmates. I  don’t think he envisaged the rapped and beat-boxed versions of Richard III and Macbeth that resulted from the residency, but the prisoners and I had a lot of fun rehearsing and recording them and I learnt a good deal about the power of the arts as a learning tool and a starting point for dialogue that could lead to change for both individuals and institutions. The intentional basis of Applied Theatre can be in support of the status quo or it can be an instrument for disrupting it. Prison theatre occupies a difficult position on this continuum. In this section I question where a specific project functions on the continuum of ‘radical intervention’ and radical containment. I  ask if the project in question succeeded in creating a space for social change that attempted to counter internalized negative identities and fostered aspirational thinking, or if it merely created a more docile prison population. In doing this, I am adapting Ric Knowles’s (2004) notion of intervention and containment as described in Reading the Material Theatre. Knowles’s description of radical containment is the control of transgressive elements in society in the interests of the reproduction of the dominant order. Much theatre practice that falls under the umbrella of Applied Theatre, including some of my own, could be described as radical containment, in that, rather than provoking questions and opposing oppression, it works to reinforce a hegemonic agenda by encouraging communities and individuals to be self-supporting, productive citizens. Projects that focus on literacy skills for migrants, confidence building for hard-toreach youth, anti-knife crime projects, diabetes awareness and many others all strive to contain or retrain individuals to be better, healthier, more productive and less dependent on the state. In this section, I am asking if my prison theatre practice is a pedagogy of utopia that has both social justice and critical pedagogy at its heart, or whether it serves the hegemonic ideals of inmate docility. In thinking through this continuum of docility and resistance, I am drawn to apply Foucault’s notions of power and the docile body. My own experiences as a drama teacher in the early 1990s helped me to understand that education can be a force for liberation or of social



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control and self-regulation. Drawing heavily on Foucault’s early work on the technologies of power and biopolitics, Nikolas Rose describes education as a ‘social mechanism for providing and regulating the subjective capacities of future citizens and as the privileged pathway for the fulfilment of individual wishes and hopes’ (Rose 1989:  155). This Foucauldian notion of the biopolitical is central to understanding how power is socially produced and maintained. Foucault argues that power is decentralized and highly dispersed: ‘Power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere’ (Foucault 1980: 93). He adds that power is ‘exercised from innumerable points’ and ‘relationships’ (ibid.: 94). As discussed earlier in this chapter, governmentality causes the population to self-regulate. Education, and potentially Applied Theatre, can be a part of the coercion process and the internalized monitoring processes that keep societies in check. Foucault’s framework for understanding power relations enables us to ask critical questions about the nature of education and applying theatre with instrumentalist aims by making apparent the power structures at play within and around them, or they can be used as a means for deploying biopolitics. The Australian theatre scholar Helen Cahill asks drama facilitators to question whether the techniques they use in the classroom ‘work to open or foreclose the possibility that things could be otherwise’ (Cahill 2014:  152). As a theatre maker and drama teacher who has worked in secure settings for much of my career, my aim has been to invite participants to consider that things could be different and not merely to create a docile prison population. I  see my practice in prisons as no different from the rest of my practice: a pedagogy of utopia which promotes critical thinking, questions the status quo and searches for viable alternatives. I am therefore troubled by the possibility that my prison theatre projects might be foreclosing possibilities as a form of radical containment, rather than offering a pedagogy of utopia within the criminal justice system. This is not a new concern in the discipline of Applied Theatre. In 2004, Baz Kershaw asked: ‘How do the practices of drama and theatre best engage with systems of formalised power to

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create a space of radical freedom?’ (2004: 36). It was a valid question then, and one that remains pertinent.

The (broken) criminal justice system At first glance it might be easy to assume that prison populations should not be engaging in theatre projects that promote radical freedom but should be populations of docile inmates quietly serving out their sentences. After all, they have committed crimes and have been incarcerated because they are deemed to be a danger to society and in need of punishment. Whether the UK prison system should or does include aspects of retribution and rehabilitation, and in what proportions, is a complicated and contentious issue. A brief look at the UK government’s security categories for male prisoners, as issued by the House of Commons, gives us a primer of the priorities of the prison service. The Ministry of Justice lists four categories of inmates. Category A are those ‘prisoners whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public … and for whom the aim must be to make escape impossible’. Category B are those for whom the highest levels of security are not necessary but for whom ‘escape must be made very difficult’. Category C prisoners ‘cannot be trusted … but do not have the resources and will to make a determined escape attempt’. Prison populations assigned to category D ‘can reasonably be trusted’ not to escape (Garton Grimwood 2015: 4). The categorization of UK prisons focuses on punishment. It may seem radical to introduce the concept of children’s theatre into this environment, and while true to some extent, the creation and performance of plays for children certainly does not obviously have the feel of theatre projects that directly address issues related to offending and rehabilitation, nor does it have ties to literacy and language acquisition that might be associated with theatre work in prisons under the auspices of the education department of prisons. Children’s theatre also introduces a sense of frivolity and fantasy in an environment aimed



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at containment. As with other areas of Applied Theatre the issues here are more complex than they first appear, and while bringing the joy of children’s theatre to prisons can be seen as radical, it can also be used to either reinforce hegemonic power structures or to resist them while questioning the social order and its inherent injustices. In 2010, the statistics referred to by Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow (2010) about who is imprisoned in the Global North and who is not, who is likely to be stopped and searched by the police in ‘random’ encounters makes it clear that there are issues of social (in)justice at play that radically influence the demographics of prison populations. In 2020, the situation has worsened. In the UK, the Prison Reform Trust (2019) stated that 27 per cent of the prison population, or 22,227 people, are from the global majority. They claim that if the prison population accurately reflected Great Britain’s population then over nine thousand fewer people would be serving prison sentences – the equivalent of twelve prisons. The Trust also pointed out the link between the likelihood of an offender serving a custodial sentence and their ethnic group, with Black and Asian people over 50 per cent more likely to be sent to prison than whites, and Black men over 26 per cent more likely to be remanded in a category C prison to await trial than white men who await their trial at home (Prison Reform Trust 2019). While I would not suggest that theatre should be used to disrupt these populations to the point of riot, it can and should invite a radical consideration of the criminal justice system and its bias. My own work in prisons has, at times, invited prison residents to question these statistics, their lives and their choices and has been used as part of the rehabilitation process; it has enabled them to imagine different futures. Has it therefore been a form of radical containment? Since 2008, I have been involved in several projects in prisons, both in the UK and Malta, that aimed to raise aspirations through making children’s theatre with incarcerated parents. In the UK this project is always undertaken in male prisons with fathers, and in the four projects in Malta, we did two with mothers and two with fathers. The last time I worked on this project in the UK was in 2016, a particularly difficult year for the UK

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prison service and its inmates. Examining this year in more detail provides some indications of the ways in which the UK prison system is broken. During the autumn of 2016, the prison service was the focus of media scrutiny due to several violent incidents. September and October saw prison riots in Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Lincoln and HMP Lewes, followed by HMP Bedford and HMP Moorland in November. At HMP Birmingham in December, the cross-country National Tactical Response Group – or riot squad, also called The Tornado Team – took twelve hours to reclaim the prison from its 260 rioting inmates. This last violent eruption prompted the Guardian (Travis 2016) headline ‘HMP Birmingham riot shows public and private jails are in crisis’. This was followed three days later by an open letter to the Times from three senior politicians, Nick Clegg, Kenneth Clarke and Jacqui Smith (2016), that called for a radical rethink of prison policy in England which would lead to the jail population being almost halved. The trio of politicians claimed that ‘to restore order, security, and purpose to our jails, ministers should now make it their policy to reduce prison numbers. We want to see the prison population returned to the levels it was under Margaret Thatcher.’ According to the Ministry of Justice (2020), the UK’s prison population in July 2020 was 79,557. The Prison Reform Trust (2016) stated that ‘at the end of October 2016, 77 of the 117 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded’. In 2019, 317 people died in prison, and over a quarter of these deaths were selfinflicted (Prison Reform Trust 2019). Rates of self-harm were also the highest on record with 58,600 incidents in 2018 (ibid.). There were also 2,462 serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults from January to June 2016 and the Tornado Team responded to over four hundred incidents between January and September of the same year (Prison Reform Trust 2016). This is more than in the whole of the previous year. The UK prison system is overcrowded. In May 2019, 62 per cent (i.e. 72)  of prisons in England were classified as having too many inmates (Sturge 2019). With nearly one-quarter of the prison population sharing cells designed for fewer occupants and with one in three people living in



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local prisons spending fewer than two hours a day out of their cells (ibid.), the high rates of self-harm and violence are hardly surprising.

The Children’s Theatre Project The Children’s Theatre Project ran each year from 2008 to 2016 with students from Central, sometimes groups of BA students and sometimes MA students, working in partnership with a small arts organization called Second Shot Productions, as well as the staff and inmates  – or ‘residents’  – of three privately run ‘local’ category B prisons in England. A similar project has also been run (independent from Second Shot) in a prison in Malta four times during the same time frame, and since 2016 with Unlock Drama in several prisons in the UK. A ‘local’ prison houses those who have recently been sentenced within the area in which the prison is based, and this may include men who are on remand before trial. Depending on the length of sentence, inmates may stay or be moved to another prison after sentencing. Local prisons are closed prisons, which means that their residents usually have to be accompanied by an officer or staff member of the Prison Service when they are not in their cells. Being ‘local’ to the area where the offender was sentenced means that prisoners are often living in the hometown of their families for several months or even years while they await trial. This makes the devising of children’s theatre for the inmates’ own children a possibility as the children are often living a relatively short distance from the prison. This section focuses on one of the prisons in which we ran the project between 2010 and 2014 in partnership with Second Shot and a group of six BA students. I will not be naming the institution for reasons of confidentiality, but this prison is located in the north of England and was built by Her Majesty’s Prison Service in 1994, and since 2003 it has been maintained and operated by a private company. It was one of eleven UK prisons run privately at the time (there are currently fourteen private prisons in the UK). It had the capacity to house 1,145

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male residents. The prison’s mission statement during this time stated that it aimed to ‘positively change the lives of prisoners by providing a secure and decent environment, in which staff can provide a range of interventions and services designed to reduce re-offending and thereby allowing a safe reintegration back into the community’ (Ministry of Justice 2010). The Children’s Theatre Project was part of the mission to run ‘interventions and services to reduce re-offending’. The project, as is usual in my work, involved students. In this case, six students in their second year of studies worked on a drama residency in the prison over fourteen days. The students prepare for the project at Central working with me and other tutors for several weeks before moving to live close to the prison for the duration of the two-week project. Their travel and accommodation are paid for from our Leverhulme Trust award, although they often subsidize the project with fundraising activities to provide money for costumes and props. Once at the prison, the project is supervised and mentored by a host in the prison, either from Second Shot or the education department, and tutored by me in partnership with the prison host. In this iteration of the project the students worked with between eighteen and twenty-five residents who were all under 25 years old. These residents were all new to this facility and were all fathers. This is the norm for this project, as the prison targets volunteers who are new to the prison and who have enrolled in few, if any, educational projects and activities. The project is open to anyone who is not remanded for sentences for sex crimes involving minors. The men volunteer and are vetted by the prison staff but no one is restricted from taking part in the project unless their behaviour on the project itself is problematic or detrimental to the process of producing a piece of theatre. During this period the students facilitate the theatre-making and workshops, working with the men to decide on a children’s story; sometimes a well-known tale with a modern twist, sometimes a children’s book was the basis, and sometimes they created and wrote their own story. They created a ten-scene storyboard of the plot and then devised each scene. The plays were never scripted, but specific lines were set for openings,



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entrances, exits, key plot points and scene changes. This way, those with low literacy skills were not disadvantaged by the need to read or learn set lines. Also, during this devising and rehearsal process, the men created sets, backdrops, costumes and decorated the performance space. At the end of the residency, the children, partners and extended families of the participants were invited into the prison for a family day to see the performance and participate in an extended, informal visit. With the backing of the prison governor, who was particularly supportive of arts initiatives, and in partnership with Second Shot Productions, an Arts and Media Department was set up within the prison. As noted by Marie Hutton (2012) in an unpublished evaluation commissioned by Second Shot of The Children’s Theatre Project, it was the first and only prison in England and Wales to appoint a permanent creative director, who also happened to be the artistic director of Second Shot. Establishing the post demonstrates a rare and serious commitment to developing the arts within the walls of a prison. In October 2011, Second Shot Productions began operating as a social enterprise from within the prison, offering local businesses and charities professional services, such as film-making, graphic and web design, and music production. During 2012, eight serving and two former HMP residents ran the production company. Second Shot offered several drama and media projects and produced several plays with subjects that included restorative justice, substance abuse, gang culture and bullying in prison. Hutton’s report notes that ‘a number of Second Shot’s participants won awards … for art created in prisons and secure settings’ (2012: 3), including one that recognizes when young people have challenged themselves and are building creativity. The Children’s Theatre Project is just one of the initiatives set up by Second Shot that were sanctioned as part of the prison’s efforts to reduce recidivism rates. They were optimistic that creating better opportunities for education and re-training within the prison would enable their inmates to re-enter their communities and find employment upon release. It could be suggested that this approach to drama in prisons enacts a form of radical containment that seeks to control transgressive elements

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in society – the offenders – in the interest of the dominant order – the prison staff and wider society. ‘Behave well and you can take part in a play project which will allow you to see your family and, as a by-product, may be the gateway to other activities, training and education, and that may aid your desistence and reintegration to society.’ The dilemma for me in this work is reflected in Knowles’s continuum of radical hope and radical containment. Aligning my practice with social justice and critical pedagogy means that I  believe the work should offer radical hope and resist oppression, and yet when working within the prison system the work is much more in line with radical containment. In our project, it was obvious that one of the main motivations for taking part was for the men to spend quality time with their children on the visit afterwards. The participants were being bribed with the promise of seeing family members; this kept the inmates compliant and contained via self-regulation, as opposed to explicit external force; to use Foucault’s term, it made the men docile. Looking back and reflecting on this work I am troubled by the possibility that the project engendered such layers of docility.

Radical containment – or just plain violence? A set of events that occurred during the 2011 version of The Children’s Theatre Project illustrates how this self-regulation was enacted during the project. In 2011, as in other years, the residents worked hard during the devising and rehearsal process. They regulated their behaviour throughout the intensive process to avoid the threat of being ‘sacked’ and removed from the project. They were model participants, arriving on time, only left on official breaks, and were polite and well-mannered with the students and each other. More than this, they also regulated the behaviour of their peers to ensure that no one stepped out of line. Here, I  think is a fine line between healthy socialization and a more coercive policing of behaviour. Seen in one light, the participants are learning the soft skills of teamwork needed for successful re-integration



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into society after prison, but in another, it could be more sinister behaviour management. This policing troubles me, as it is far from Kershaw’s outline of a practice of radical freedom that can reach ‘beyond existing systems of formalised power’ and create ‘currently unimaginable forms of association and action’ (2004: 360). It is actually closer to the territory of radical containment. In fact, it moved the project closer to something reminiscent of Foucauldian panopticons, authoritarian hierarchies, self-regulation and coercion. I am forced to wonder if it is ever possible to be free of such constraints when one is working within the very structures that embody these neoliberal values and characteristics. As with every other year, the 2011 Children’s Theatre Project concluded with the relaxed family visit. During this visit, the participants could move freely around the performance and audience areas, mingling with each other and their guests. The prisons usually provide a buffet tea with sandwiches, cake and ice lollies for the inmates and their families. The afternoon takes on the feel of a school fete or family day:  there is face painting, ball games, ice cream and family interaction  – all highly abnormal in the confines of a prison setting. There is a tension between the viewpoints of the Applied Theatre practitioners (my students and I) who view such a gathering as representing the relative normalcy of a family fun day, and the point of view of the prison staff, to whom it presents potential danger. While prison officers are visibly in attendance, the residents of the prison are under less intense surveillance than is usually evident during other, regular visit days. In 2011, the participants, as in other years, were acutely and accurately aware that this time is potentially risky or even dangerous for the security team within the prison compared to standard visits in terms of providing a greater opportunity to smuggle drugs or other contraband into the prison. As the day of the performance grew nearer, it became evident that inmates were collectively keen to make sure the day ran smoothly. The annual speech made by Second Shot Productions’ director made it clear that any illicit activity would result in the project, and therefore

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the visit, being cancelled. After the speech, one of the prisoners stated there ‘would be trouble’ if anyone attempted to use the project to smuggle drugs into the prison. The participants all made it clear that they were in agreement. At this point, it was apparent that they were making an agreement to regulate their own behaviour and to ‘police’ the performance day themselves. Hutton (2012) notes that this was a clear warning to others, and it was evident these participants did not take an optimistic view of their fellow inmates’ reasons for taking part in the project. In fact, they believed that some of their fellow performers specifically enrolled in the project as a means to bring banned substances into the prison. In the post-show interviews, Hutton discovered that there had indeed been a plan to smuggle drugs into the prison during the more relaxed family visit. One of the participants told her that, rather than report it, he took matters into his own hands. This resulted in one of our cast entering the cell of the intended recipient of the drugs and ‘giving him a thump’ as a warning that he would be subject to a more serious assault if he went through with the plan to use the performance as cover for smuggling drugs, thereby jeopardizing the whole production for everyone else. The perpetrator of the assault claimed he deeply regretted his actions, but Hutton notes that he was still adamant that ‘it was the only way it could have been solved’ (Hutton 2012:  10). He also acknowledged that he had hoped that his actions would act as a deterrent to any others with similar intentions. This incident is one of many troubling issues regarding how theatre practice might encourage participants to support and forcefully control the prison systems by creating a compliant or, in Foucauldian terms, docile prison population. As an Applied Theatre researcher and practitioner, I  am uncomfortable with the idea of theatre being used to encourage prison residents to police themselves and, moreover, to do so violently. I am troubled that this project, which started out with the aims of radical freedom that might transcend repression, oppression, exploitation and injustice, might reinforce the disciplinary apparatus. It might be argued that the ‘assailant’ was demonstrating commitment to the ideals



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of the process – the means used to enforce that commitment are to be questioned. We could also question if the project invited the man to exercise autonomy in an act of resistance to being placed in a position of pacificity by the prison. Realistically, I am fully aware that prison authorities do not let us into their institutions to create situations where radical freedom and free thinking are privileged. These are the by-products of theatre and the arts, but the soft and transferable skills like communication, teamwork, problem-solving and confidence-enhancing skills are what attract prison governors to projects like ours. Having worked in prison settings as a drama facilitator for several years, I know that arts projects within the criminal justice system enable participants to develop a range of soft skills. People creating theatre in secure settings know it demands hard work, technical skill and collaboration, which are precisely the behaviours Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, the UK government department responsible for prisons, claims offenders need in order to rehabilitate. We know that arts projects with concrete goals develop concentration, discipline, teamwork, self-esteem, listening skills, self-awareness, empathy and control and that they can be the gateway to continued education and can create responsibility and positive relationships. We also know that these things may not be sustainable and are not a guaranteed route to desistence or positive life changes. I  also believe that all people have the right to express their creativity and have access to the arts. This in itself makes projects like this one valuable. Maybe the arts do contribute to participants starting a change process that may lead to, or aid, desistence by inviting them to work together as a team and this might develop what criminologist Shadd Maruna describes as a ‘coherent pro-social identity for themselves’ (Maruna 2001: 7). This ‘pro-social identity’ is radical. If theatre invites inmates to think of themselves differently, to relabel themselves as something other than ‘inmate’, ‘offender’, ‘criminal’, ‘lag’ or ‘lifer’ then the work is founded in a radical freedom. If the prison residents can call themselves ‘artists’, ‘writers’, ‘musicians’, ‘actors’, ‘colleagues’ or ‘friends’, even just for the two-week project, then there is the hope that something

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else is possible; we are, as Cahill says, opening the possibility that things ‘could be otherwise’ (Cahill 2014: 160). But the challenge for me, as a facilitator and teacher, is to understand whether the acquisition of these soft skills and the possibility of relabelling justify docile conformity and even violent self-policing.

Is making children’s theatre in prisons a pedagogy of utopia? Freire outlines two stages in the process of educating to liberate: in the first ‘the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its transformation and in the second they expel the myth that created and sustained the “old order” ’ (1970:  54–5). These stages are centred on understanding the consciousness of both the oppressed and the oppressor; in other words, the way students, participants, teachers and facilitators view themselves and the world, and how this affects behaviour. Following Freire, participants need to see beyond the status quo that surrounds them and the social constructs that are taken for granted as the norm. This ‘unveiling the oppression’ is reminiscent of Ricoeur’s notion of gaining ‘distanciation’ from the obfuscating tornado of ideology in order to see social constructs. Once we see the tornado of ideology that surrounds us, the circle becomes a spiral. The spiral stretches the ideological circle so that gaps are created to allow for reflection on what is. We may conceive alternatives and, in so doing, change becomes possible. I  believe that The Children’s Theatre Project is a form of critical pedagogy and indeed a pedagogy of utopia. Freire’s concept of a pedagogy of the oppressed functions around four key areas: critical consciousness (conscientização), dialogue, action and praxis. Each of these areas relates closely to Applied Theatre. In critical pedagogy, critical consciousness is a critical reflection on the current ‘limit-situations’ within which people live (Freire 1996:  85). Such ‘limit-situations’, or set of conditions which inhibit the freedoms and



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privileges of some while benefitting others, are keenly experienced by the participants in The Children’s Theatre Project. For Freire, reflection leads to dialogue, which includes an explicit agenda for liberation from the ‘limit-situations’ and is central to the change process:  ‘through dialogue, reflecting together on what we know and don’t know, we can then act critically to transform reality’ (Shor and Freire 1987: 99). This dialogue leads to action, or change making, and the three together enable praxis, that is, the reflection on action that works for change. It’s a circular process that repeats. In The Children’s Theatre Project the men reflect on their current circumstances and this leads to much conversation about what they were missing. As the focus of the work was their children, they often identified that they were missing out on being a ‘dad’. This led to discussions about how they could be better fathers in the future. Hutton’s (2012) report focuses on one participant who had served many prison sentences during the previous five years. At the time of the production, his daughter was 2, but due to his time in prison, he had only lived with her for twelve weeks of her life. He said in his post-show interview, ‘I haven’t really been a dad, I can’t even really class myself as being a dad.’ He went on to say that the project was ‘only a little thing but it feels like I’ve given something back’. He added, ‘She’s only young now, I can stop now … I don’t want her to not have a dad like I did. All my life without a dad and I don’t want the same for her, I want her to have a dad there. There’s loads of things that this play has done for me.’ As part of the play process, he started to build a relationship with his daughter and could begin to see a role for himself in her life if he could change his behaviour and avoid further prison sentences; he could imagine a variation of his future. For me, the imaginative variations of the fathers are at the core of this practice. The stages leading to praxis have been described in detail with reference to critical pedagogy theorists earlier in the chapter and connected usefully to Applied Theatre by Kelly Freebody and Michael Finneran (2013, 2016). It is important to recognize that, in critical pedagogy, this process is achieved through facilitated dialogue. In

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Applied Theatre this dialogue is created through theatre and drama work that invites the exploration of social relations or the idea that through verbal and intellectual engagement with an idea or situation, the oppressed can find recourse to liberty and emancipation through that dialogue. This is a tradition and belief that educators working in the progressive tradition and artists working in the emancipatory tradition hold to be true. It is resonant with the democratic idea of ‘freedom of speech’ and the artistic idea of ‘freedom of expression’. In the intellectual and practical field of applied drama, dialogue is core. (Freebody and Finneran 2016: 99)

Critical dialogue is a complex feature of critical pedagogy. It involves facilitators and participants learning from one another and co-investigating by reflecting on what is known and what is not known. The complexity here is connected to power structures in the teacher/ student or facilitator/participant relationships. In both education and Applied Theatre contexts, it is easy to ‘teach’ students and participants to accept oppressive power structures. Education and Applied Theatre are well-equipped to produce a docile, well-behaved group of subjects, while reinforcing the power dynamics that create and maintain racial, colonial, gender and class inequality. In contrast, a pedagogy that is truly utopic will endeavour to develop equity and social justice, to use critical dialogue to question and reflect on the ways in which racism, colonialism, patriarchalism, heterosexualism, elitism and intolerance are inherent through the social structures, the media and the organizations on which we all rely and interact with on a daily basis. The aim of the Dharavi project, Crossing Bridges and The Children’s Theatre Project  – all informed by a pedagogy of utopia  – is to invite participants to develop a critical understanding of their circumstances and an invitation to think about how they might change these. In a pedagogy of utopia, making theatre in dialogue with participants creates moments of distanciation that allow participants to appraise their current situations and which open up the field of the possible, or their capacity to aspire, thus enabling them to imagine alternative



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ways of living. In The Children’s Theatre Project, the fathers create a play amid a great deal of laughter, and they also talk about their current circumstances and what they anticipate for the future. Throughout the project ‘authentic dialogue’ takes place, in which the men reflect on their world in prison, what brought them into the criminal justice system, and how it feels to be a father on the inside with children on the outside. In these moments, they critique what ‘is’ and plan for what ‘might be’, which is both forward and aspirational thinking. The performancemaking creates the metaphorical space for this dialogue. During quiet moments in rehearsals or while painting the set, the men talked about how they wanted to be better fathers and be available for their children. Some linked this directly to wanting to desist from criminal activities after completing their sentence. This is an aspirational moment where ‘utopia’ may be glimpsed. In Ricoeur’s terms, a utopia questions the current, allowing it to be one of a range of possible futures, rather than assuming that things have to stay the way they are (Ricoeur 1986: 299). The process starts from the realistic appraisal of one’s current situation. A pedagogy of utopia therefore allows participants to see the current situation clearly and invites them to imagine a new version of reality, or at least begin to see that a different way of living is possible. Utopia therefore may be triggered by prison inmates as they work on a drama project to create a piece of children’s theatre for their families. They question their relationship with their families and through critical dialogue the status quo can be challenged, and this may lead to change. Cultural and arts practices can create moments in space and time for this dialogue and therefore stimulate what Appadurai describes as the ‘navigational capacity’ (Appadurai 2013:  126) that drives people to consider possible changes.

An ‘unfinished’ work in progress This pragmatic assessment of one’s circumstances is also the start of the change process for Freire, who states that knowing the world

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is the first part of a longer process if change is to happen (Shor and Freire 1987: 99). For Freire, the aim of critical pedagogy is to change the world, to make it more just by reflecting on what is known and assessing the flaws and then to reinvent it. An ‘emancipatory possibility’ (Foster 2016) can only become an emancipatory act if we conceive of the person as changeable or, to use Freire’s words, as being in a ‘process of becoming’ (Freire 1993: 84). In his first book, Freire, like the utopian theorists discussed in Chapter 1, describes people as being ‘unfinished’. In his later writings Freire describes this fluidity as being central to his philosophy when he states that ‘because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I  can go beyond it’ (Freire 1998:  54). In 2007, the unfinished nature of human beings became the focus of this thinking in a text called Daring to Dream: Toward a Pedagogy of the Unfinished (Freire 2007). This notion of humankind as being unfinished is also key to utopian thinkers. Ernst Bloch describes people as being ‘unfinished’ or living in a state animated by dreams or desires of a better life, or utopian longings for another way of being. He describes this longing as ‘anticipatory consciousness’ and argues that it may move beyond the abstract fantasy or dream which is nothing but an ‘idle bed of contemplation’ (Bloch 1986: 158). Moving into this anticipatory consciousness is the basis of a pedagogy of utopia. And so The Children’s Theatre Project is instilled with a nebulous utopian spirit since it ‘functions as a social and political criticism raising questions about the present’ (Pinder 2005: 17). It can be seen to disrupt dominant assumptions and this allows for other possibilities to be imagined or known and then potentially acted on. Just as critical pedagogues and their participants question what is, they also introduce a sense of doubt that shatters this, to pave the way for what might be. Through dialogue, the participants questioned their roles as fathers and their pre-prison selves, at least providing a platform to talk about what they might do differently. The Children’s Theatre Project is utopian in its ability to confront the challenge of creating a better future by exploring what could be, by questioning social reality and by challenging the assumption that there



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are no alternatives. While acknowledging the damage a prison sentence does to the parent–child relationship, participating in The Children’s Theatre Project allowed incarcerated fathers to demonstrate tangibly that they are serious about parenting by creating something for their children. Hutton notes in her report that ‘what was clear was that for these fathers taking part in the play project was quite literally a labour of love and a way to express their love for their children in a manner that is rare in the prison environment’ (Hutton 2012: 12). This project presented the men with an opportunity to demonstrate they wanted to change and to find ways to participate in their children’s lives. As the fathers worked on the project, they were focused on their children. During the two-week rehearsal process, the group created invitations that featured the characters of the play and each father sent them in the post to their guests. The men shared stories about the play with their children and partners on the telephone. In workshops, they discussed these conversations with each other and the students. They stated that the play had become a focus for conversations with their families, commenting that often these conversations had been stilted as they did not want to talk about prison life with their children. When talking about the play they explained they became animated and their children curious – wanting to know the storyline and what character their father would be playing, and if he had a costume. The men revealed that their partners and mothers were amused about them learning a dance, with partners often expressing incredulity that they would have the skills or the patience to learn a routine. These conversations about the play became a vehicle through which they could re-establish relationships with partners, children and in some cases their parents. The rehearsal process was not always easy. The men were certainly not a ‘docile’ prison population in the sessions. The progress was always a contentious one at best. The men often struggled to remain focused and to learn lines and routines. The frustrations of learning new skills and cooperating as a team often became anger. Prison life infiltrated the rehearsal process, with medical, legal and educational appointments and visits rightly taking priority, but often leaving us missing key

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members of the ensemble for a day at a time. Our process was also often delayed by unexpected lockdowns and security checks that meant the men could not come out of their cells, or that we could not access the prison. However, in each iteration of the project, as the day of the performance drew closer, the men worked hard to meet the challenge. They would arrive at rehearsals in the mornings talking about how they had practised the ‘dance number’ in their cells and on the wing the previous evening because they wanted to give the best performance they could. Or they would share stories of how they had helped each other to learn their lines. Often, one would arrive with a poem or rap they had written in their cell to be inserted in the play. Each morning they would talk about how to give their children the best possible show. I often heard them say they nearly resigned from the project but that they ‘kept with it because it was for the kids’. In an early version of the project one inmate petitioned hard to play the pirate captain because his child was going through a ‘pirate phase’. In telephone conversations with his child, he told his son that he was playing a pirate but not that he was the pirate captain. The man undertook research into pirates in the prison library to ensure his character and language were accurate. In a post-performance interview, he described the moment when his son recognized that his dad was the lead pirate – he told us how his ‘face just lit up when he realized’. In the interviews, this participant said that this was an opportunity to show his family that ‘I am in here and I have done wrong, but I’m going to show you that I can do something good while I’m in here. I’m not just in here doing nothing, just serving my time. I’m doing something positive.’ Here the interview starts to reveal the hope in this work. The process was not comfortable for this man and during the rehearsal process he had often been frustrated. bell hooks tells us that her hope ‘emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives’ (hooks 2003: xiv). On this project I saw men struggle with the process of creating and performing a play. I also heard them talk about the struggles of being a father in prison, and the struggles with prison life itself, and in some cases there were some who struggled to come to terms with the crimes they had



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committed and the struggles they encountered when trying to think about and create change. In a quiet moment of set painting, one young man told me that he struggled to live outside of prison, admitting that he had been institutionalized to such an extent that he knew it would only be six weeks after his imminent release before he would be back inside again. I talked with others over the years who were trying to conceive a vision of their futures that would be different and who were attempting to make changes. Some declared in interviews that they wanted to be better fathers and to be there for their families. We are informed by hooks that ‘our visions for tomorrow are most vital when they emerge from the concrete circumstances of change we are experiencing right now’ (hooks 2003: 12). Some of the participants experienced concrete change during the project and used that to fuel visions of their futures. It might have been a fleeting change that only survived the length of the project, but in that concrete moment they were committed to it. Maruna states that ‘turning points and rational decisions … may serve as an important symbolic and psychological function’, but I am mindful of his warning that ‘their value to the understanding of desistance has probably been overstated’ (Maruna 2001: loc. 562). The project alone cannot be said to have been a catalyst for change in their lives, but it may have contributed to this aim and positively reinforced the notion that change is possible. During the final stages of each project many of the men were committed to the idea that change was possible and that they could be better fathers to their children. Anderson et al. observe that ‘arts projects might awaken belief in the participants’ capacity for opportunities to change their lives for the better’ (2011:  56). Maybe the project re-awakened participants’ aspirational thinking and a belief that change is credible, that they were in the ‘field of the possible’ and this is what makes the work utopic. I suggest that working on the project, without being coerced into thinking about their futures, making changes or imposing aspirational goals, may have raised their expectations and constructively challenged their self-identities. After the performance they saw themselves as capable people, who were skilled and who could,

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and can, be more than prisoners. These are difficult concepts to retain when you are within a prison system that reduces inmates’ autonomy and sense of self-worth as a means to keep them passive and controllable. Post-release interviews with Hutton (2012) demonstrated that some of the participants have made changes, some confessed to not making the changes they had wanted, and one had been released only to reoffend and to be back within the walls of the prison awaiting trial. Others, however, were looking for other courses and projects to take part in, and one had requested a transfer to a training prison. Two were continuing their work with Second Shot Productions and learning media skills. These few were trying to make long-term changes to their lives. One now runs a media company making training videos. Some did enrol in college and Open University programmes, while others hold jobs and have not been involved with the criminal justice system since release. Others I saw in different prisons over the years: some signed up for the project a second or third time after they had reoffended and were reincarcerated claiming that they wanted to take part again because although difficult, they had happy memories of it. Many of the men started to think they could make changes for their families and themselves by exploring the possibility of being there for their children in a way that they previously had not, and that our short theatre intervention was a starting point for this. Giroux tells us that for ‘hope to be consequential it has to be grounded in a project that has some hold on the present’ (Giroux 2013: 155). Here, the participants are grounded by the present opportunity to work towards giving their children something positive and to spend time with them. For a short amount of time, some of that ‘grounded present’ led to positive consequences.

Resistance or compliance? Smyth (2011) asserts that critical pedagogy involves the interrogation of the past, the current and potential futures. Applied Theatre also requires an investigation of these three areas of social relations. During



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this project the participants considered their histories, how that led to their involvement in the criminal justice system and they imagined potential futures where they could be better fathers to their children. To do this, they must acknowledge that their world is not static but changeable. For them to act critically and make the changes required, they must critique their past and current actions and think through how things can be different. Working on a play for their children does not provide the answers to these questions, but it can start a process of critique and of utopian thinking and planning for that alternative future. The utopian thinking involved in this process is grounded in understanding reality and then considering what could be. Critical thinking and critical action do not encourage docility in participants; they invite resistance – to historical and current practices – which may produce an alternative future. This is not a form of resistance that leads to prison riots but a soft revolution that resists the neoliberal impulse to claim that change is not possible for those living within the margins or those who are marginalized by oppressions and conditioned into thinking that there are no alternatives. Inviting utopian thinking is itself a form of resistance. In ‘Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness’, bell hooks (1989a) states that for people whose lives have been diminished and impoverished, their very ability to live ‘depends on [their] ability to conceptualize alternatives’ (ibid.: 149). She claims the margins as a ‘space of radical openness’ where it is possible to construct counter-hegemonic practices or a space of refusal (ibid.). I  claim a pedagogy of utopia as a ‘space of radical openness’ that stimulates the ‘capacity to aspire’ and where it is possible to imagine things differently, and then to articulate these differences. This makes the third principal of a pedagogy of utopia articulation, and so articulation is the theme of the following chapter.

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The third element of a pedagogy of utopia centres around articulation, the amplification of voice and representation. Appadurai identifies voice as being vital to any engagement with ‘bare citizens’, claiming that ‘one of the gravest lacks is the lack of resources with which to give “voice” that is, to express their views and get results directed at their own welfare in the political debate that surround wealth and welfare in all societies’ (Appadurai 2013:  183). Nancy Fraser and bell hooks both emphasize the importance of representation in the formation of a just society and for both women, voice is a central component to this concept. In Talking Back hooks (1989b: 5) writes about the importance she attached to being able to ‘have a voice’ that could be identified as being hers and the damage done to her in the active silencing of her voice. Fraser describes the injustice of being denied full participation in social interaction, or being denied a voice, as being one of the key injustices that prevent social equality and equity (Fraser 2005:  113). Fraser, hooks and Appadurai all discuss the connection between having a space to give voice and be heard and social justice. Considering the effects of living without such vocal opportunities leads Appadurai to ask a pertinent question: ‘How can we strengthen the capability of the poor to have and to cultivate “voice”?’ (Appadurai 2013: 183). Although theatre is often cited as a means to cultivate voice, the very nature of the theatre as a platform or stage from which some speak and others listen makes this connection a simple one. Projects that fall under the umbrella of Applied Theatre talk of ‘giving voice to’ those who have otherwise been silenced. This expression is troubling. At worst, it exhibits the use of ‘top-down’ cultural teaching methods and



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may well reproduce and reinforce the hierarchies that produce silences rather than interrogate them. Theatre scholar Asif Majid interrogates this concept when it is used by Western practitioners with communities from the Global South. He highlights the manner in which the phrase reinforces the model of deficit thinking, suggesting that the ‘subaltern cannot speak’. He concludes that this is problematic, first in that it positions the Western practitioner at the centre of a hero narrative in which they give voice to the silent, and second that it obfuscates the voice already present, while offering Western theatre practices as a solution (Majid 2017: 72–3). I would suggest that when making theatre with people in the Global North or South, in our own communities and in those where we are guests, rather than focusing on ‘giving’ voice to others we must recognize that participants already have voices. Even those who are ‘bare citizens’ have voices, before our work starts. Their voices may well have been silenced, but they are voices nonetheless; theatre does not need to give them a voice. Furthermore, some participants may have chosen silence as their form of unconscious or conscious resistance, and we need to respect that. Joe Kincheloe writes of amplifying ‘the voices of those who struggle to be heard’ (Kincheloe 2008: 24). This sense of amplification, rather than that of giving a voice, is an important distinction. The amplification of participants’ voices is clear in theatre work where devised work privileges their voices, but it is also possible through theatre work that uses play texts that purposely create spaces for the participants to voice their ideas and opinions and to be heard doing so.

The politics of articulation Stuart Hall’s concept of ‘the politics of articulation’ underpins and informs my thinking as I seek ways to amplify voices in my own practice. Hall uses ‘articulation’ in two senses: in one sense it literally means ‘to speak’, but he also uses it with reference to an ‘articulated lorry’, that is, a vehicle comprised of two parts: the front part, the cab, and the rear

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part, the goods-carrying section. While these two parts can be linked, they can also be uncoupled at will. Their connection is useful but not permanent (Grossberg [1986] 1996: 142–3). Hall’s articulation refers to a means of connecting ideas to specific concepts to produce discourse. The theory of articulation invites us to ask how ideas become connected and how they become attached to specific political ideas, as well as recognizing where they need to be disaggregated. Hall explains:  ‘the theory of articulation asks how an ideology discovers its subject rather than how the subject thinks the necessary and inevitable thoughts which belong to it; it enables us to think how an ideology empowers people, enabling them to begin to make some sense or intelligibility of their historical situation’ (ibid.). Hall’s theory is reminiscent of a utopia in that it invites us to examine how ‘ideology empowers’ or disempowers people and declines to passively accept hegemony. Hall’s theory of articulation prompts analysis of the relations between things and people. It draws attention to similarities and differences between related parties, and to the dynamics of dominance and subordination between them. It does so in full acknowledgement of the interconnected nature at play beyond socio-economic, class and social positions (Grossberg [1986] 1996:  115). It also voices these connections and their potential disaggregation. In my practice, these connections not only are explored through dialogue or articulation in Hall’s first sense of the word but also are kept at a distance through the theatre-making process, when it is articulated to those outside the participant group. When performed theatrically the exploration of the connections and their uncoupling are articulated through the fiction of the drama, either devised or scripted. The fiction keeps the discussions at arm’s length from the participants’ own lives, thoughts and opinions and allows them a degree of anonymity, a shield through which to voice that which may be difficult for their communities to hear. Attention to the ways ideas connect has a significant impact on how we understand identity dynamics in the workshop space. As such, the theory of articulation can play a useful part of a pedagogy of utopia. Social scientist John Clarke has written at length about the value of



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‘articulating the subordinate (or subaltern) groups’ in the classroom in ‘such ways that they can come to identify themselves’ as leaders (Clarke 2015: 279). This was one of the aims of Crossing Bridges, discussed in the previous chapter. We hoped that the youth would develop their understanding of their world  – particularly the oppression within it  – and reconsider their potential. For this to happen, we actively prioritized certain voices within the group  – a mix of ‘bare citizens’, the shelter-dwelling youth and professional artists, or the culturally elite. While we needed the expertise and voices of the professionals, as teachers and potential role models, we needed to avoid silencing the young people. To do this at times we needed to purposefully mute the artists. Clarke describes this process as ‘the selective mobilisation’ and ‘selective demobilisation’ of some voices. He argues that it might even be necessary to render some voices ‘silent, ridiculous’ and ‘unrealistic’ (ibid.:  280). We did not wish to make our respected guest artist ridiculous, but at times perhaps we needed to heed Clarke’s advice and actively silence the professionals more, to better amplify the voices of the young people. During the second run of Crossing Bridges this was made clear during a particularly difficult rehearsal the morning of the day we were to perform at the theatre. One of the guest artists responded to the situation in a way that demonstrated his lack of understanding of the lives of shelter-dwelling youth and by vocally asserting his authority. It was a Sunday morning and we were using the gym space at Covenant House which the staff had closed to all but the Crossing Bridges ensemble. This was not a popular decision with the shelter’s residents who usually played basketball on a Sunday morning. A group of them congregated noisily outside the door and refused to move. It was a tense half hour. Some of those participating in the project refused to pass the group for fear of aggravating the ‘gym gang’, who were a powerful faction within the shelter. Those participants already inside the gym were anxious about the possibility of violence erupting. A  security officer locked us in ‘for safety’ and radioed for support to help disperse the crowd. In total we were missing seven participants and everyone

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was on edge. The white, male, guest artist paced the room, angered by the young people who were late for the rehearsal and interpreted their behaviour as disrespectful of him and the theatre process, rather than fear of the gang outside. He stated loudly and clearly, ‘Don’t they realize what an opportunity this is, don’t they know people would pay a fortune to do this workshop and they are just wasting my time? Don’t they get it? In the theatre if you’re late, you’re out.’ Gallagher notes that those with cultural capital, and those who are white, have different, less negative experiences of authority figures (2014: 237). In this situation, a white participant with cultural capital firmly asserted his authority and reinforced the polarization of the professional artists and the youth and created an atmosphere of anxiety for some of the participants who had learnt to fear white authority figures. This moment revealed the precariousness of the project and of the metaphorical bridge. The project invited the participants to amplify their voices and their cultural capital through the levers described by Appadurai as metaphor, rhetoric and public performance (Appadurai 2013:  186). These aims proved to be precarious when in one moment of tension, one man effectively silenced the room and made every young person acutely conscious that they were in the presence of a cultural elite who moved in worlds they had, until now, no access to. In doing so, he reinforced the forms of cultural capital and elitism that ‘have been used to silence, marginalize and render people invisible’ (Yosso 2005: 70). Real dialogue happens when learner and teacher work together to understand what is happening around them, and that the world around them is always in process and never static (Freire 1970: 71). In practice, it is facilitated by the teacher or workshop leader initially, but during this process the facilitator invites challenges to their viewpoint and also is actively self-reflecting and rediscovering their own position. So, the whole group works together as co-investigators as they reflect and critique the structures and ideologies that surround them. This atmosphere of shared inquiry needs to be nurtured by the facilitator through their fallibility and humility, which enables participants to comfortably challenge and question them. This process requires a great deal of trust



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and mutual respect, if not equality, if both participants and facilitator are to learn together and from each other. The guest artists, students and I get to return to our own worlds each night, just as those working in Mumbai return to the UK and those working in prisons go home, while the participants in each of these projects remain in the sites where the projects take place, their worlds, which are very separate from ours. The students are assessed as part of the process, but their behaviour, language and demeanour in the workshop are not policed in the same ways that our participants’ behaviours are monitored by the shelter, NGO or the prison authorities. We are guests in these places, while the participants are residents. There is an explicit inequality in the workshop room throughout these projects. I  make the same demands of these students as Kincheloe demands of teachers: they need to admit their authority and support their participants. As facilitators, the students renounce authority as ‘truth providers’ but must assume responsibility as facilitators of participants’ enquiry and problem-posing. During this process the participants may rediscover their world exploring it as ‘self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge about the societies in which they live’ (Kincheloe 2008:  17). As they look at their world anew, they may be able to see alternative versions of those worlds, or glimpse what Ricoeur describes as ‘the field of the possible’ (1986). A pedagogy of utopia should strive towards being ‘a conversation and process of collective discovery’ (Clarke 2015: 281). In the gym that morning, with his display of authority and cultural capital, imposing a hierarchy we had worked hard to dissolve as well as his own ‘charitable act of giving’, our director showed he did not approach the work with a spirit of discovery. He demonstrated that he was unprepared to truly engage with the young people on their terms and partake in what Les Black has described as the ‘art of listening’ (2007), which is required by any ‘process of collective discovery’. A dialogical devising process is a collective discovery which seeks to provide opportunities for both perspective giving and perspective taking. Perspective taking allows participants to hear and take on

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the viewpoints of another participant or character – or as the saying goes, to walk in their shoes, to develop an understanding of what it feels like to be someone else. Perspective giving enables participants to tell their stories, voice their opinions and be heard representing themselves. In doing so, they address some of Fraser’s concerns about lack of representation and offer the opportunity that hooks desired as a young woman. For both perspective taking and giving, the ‘art of listening’ is central to success. The combination of perspective giving and taking during the devising process prompts the growth of empathy and mutual understanding. Devising theatre is a collaborative activity and working with under-represented groups prompts us to recognize whose stories are usually told and whose are usually not, and to amplify the latter. By drawing attention to the politics of articulation, Hall seeks to encourage people to understand that identity is not a fixed state but rather a mesh of fragments that are forever changing. He views identity as ‘a “production”, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation’ (Hall 2003: 222). Perspective giving and taking, by enhancing empathy and mutual understanding, may change identities; however, this did not happen with our frustrated director in Crossing Bridges. While the project attempted to use the participants’ voices as part of their cultural capital, so that it both engaged with social and political issues and could be shared with the culturally and economically elite, in this moment the project failed to do this. The behaviour of the director worked to close down or mute the participants’ voices and demonstrated his inability to listen, or our inability to facilitate perspective taking and, therefore, his behaviour demonstrated that the project did not fully constitute a ‘pedagogy for change’ in the sense of Helen Cahill’s definition: A pedagogy for change will have accomplished its educative work if it generates or augments the capacity, commitment, critical imagination, and collective sense of possibility that people need to work effectively in service of a social justice agenda. It will have produced its political work when the people themselves act in alignment with an ethic of care



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that recognises that human rights should be afforded to all, regardless of age, location, colour or creed. (Cahill 2014: 199)

This ‘ethic of care that recognises that human rights should be afforded to all’ encourages people to explore their potential without oppressing that of others; such an ethic is central to a pedagogy of utopia and any theatre practice that seeks to effect change. While in New York in 2018, I witnessed a rehearsal at Irondale Theater that prioritized the giving and taking of perspectives in a devising process that brought members of the New York Police Department and the citizens of Brooklyn together to make theatre.

Walk a mile in my shoes: Irondale Theater I was invited to observe a rehearsal of the Irondale Ensemble Project’s To Protect, Serve and Understand, in November 2018, as a result of having two BA placement students working with the company for eight weeks. The project, directed by Terry Griess, started in 2015 when Irondale invited the New  York Police Department (NYPD) to work with them to develop ‘a community program that would use theatrical improvisation to build communication and empathy between officers and the communities they are charged to protect and serve’ (Irondale Theater 2020). The website for the project tells us that each week for ten weeks, seven police officers and seven community members meet at the theatre, eat dinner together, talk together and play together. By improvising and telling their own stories, at the end of the process they perform a devised, half prepared and half spontaneous ‘show’ to an audience of community members and the police force, after which the performers participate in a question and answer session for the audience. The tagline for the work and the performances is that the participants ‘will step into each other’s shoes’. The aim of the project is to foster empathy and understanding between two groups of people who are perceived to view each other

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with suspicion, hostility and fear and where the power dynamic vastly favours one group over the other. The project was initiated by Griess after watching the video footage of Eric Garner’s death where he was heard to plead for his life eleven times with the phrase, ‘I can’t breathe.’ On 17 July 2014 Eric Garner, an African American male, was killed by a white NYPD officer, Daniel Pataleo. Pataleo was suspended but not fired until August 2019 and no criminal charges have been brought against him, despite the officer’s use of an illegal chokehold. Garner’s last words ‘I can’t breathe’ became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement and activist protests across the United States. Having watched the arrest footage, Griess, rather than protest on the streets, took a different path and working with the Collaborative Policing Division of the NYPD devised a theatre process that would explore the animosity, prejudice, racism and violence palpable on the streets of New York between the police and the community. Griess explained in an interview with Peter Hedges (2019) of Broadway World: Simply put, we are losing the ability to talk to each other … There is so much we can take from our theater training to help people communicate more effectively and listen dynamically. The stakes are high. As an actor, if you miss making a connection with those around you while on stage, you might get a bad review from an audience member or critic. If you miss a connection as a police officer or as a civilian out there on the streets, somebody’s life and safety might be at stake.

Before I  arrived at the rehearsal, I  knew tensions were high between police officers and community members in New  York and across the United States, and that institutional racism was systemic within the police force. I also knew that the community members, or civilians as they are referred to during the project, were there because they had volunteered, while police officers were there because, in Griess’s word, they had been ‘Volun-toldedly’ drafted into the project as part of their rostered duty, with the NYPD committing them to Irondale one evening



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each week for the duration of the project. Before they were rostered onto the project they were told very little about it and no one ascertained if they were interested in theatre or had any experience of it, or even if they had a desire to perform in public. One of the police officers, Jesse Trap, explained that he ‘was told to come to Irondale’, that he ‘didn’t really have a choice’ and that he did not know what to expect, while Officer Lisa Prezzano stated that she came into the project expecting it to be ‘a bunch of cop bashing’ and that it was going to be a rough nine weeks where ‘we would have to defend ourselves’. When I arrived in the theatre space, the participants and facilitators were eating dinner together and discussing the previous week’s session. Griess had already warned me that the workshop had been a difficult one in which an argument had developed about abuse of police power. Over dessert Griess made us play a game where I had to guess who was a civilian and who was a cop. I was looking at a group of men and women of various ages, some African American, some Latinx, some white. I guessed the white woman in her seventies was not a cop but beyond that it was impossible to tell, until I caught a glimpse of a holstered side arm. The fact that the officers are often armed in the sessions, because they are on duty, was the cause of the argument the previous week. After I  failed miserably at the guessing, much to everyone’s amusement, Griess changed the tone of the meeting and asked the ensemble how they had felt after the last session. One of the female NYPD officers reflected that the session had been like a typical day patrolling the streets in which she expected to be verbally abused. One of the male civilians said he had been bothered by the argument all week. One of the male officers said it was just work and that he did not take that home with him. A silence ensued and Griess let the group sit in an uncomfortable silence before asking: ‘So this here, what we do in this space is just work to you?’ The officer said yes and again the group grew silent for a few minutes. Griess directed the question to another officer. At first he declined to answer, but then he said he had been bothered, and the sessions weren’t like work. He said that ‘breaking bread together’ made it ‘more like family’, adding that the people in the room were his ‘brothers and sisters’. He then confessed that he had been hurt by the

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discussion and he felt misunderstood and had misunderstood in turn. He was wiping tears from his eyes as he said this. Again, the silence descended on the group. After a minute or so, an African American woman in her twenties got up, walked around the table and hugged the emotional white officer, also in his late twenties. I  instantly felt like a voyeur who had stumbled into a personal and private moment. Within seconds several others, both officers and civilians, joined them for a group hug. Griess quickly broke the moment up by calling them all into the performance space with the words, ‘Come on then, let’s play!’ The ensemble moved and instantly went into a clearly familiar and physical game that involved tag-like rules. I watched, sometimes joining in the game, sometimes not, as the evening unfolded into a series of drama rehearsal room games, high-energy competitive exercises, mirroring, storytelling, imitating each other’s walks, standing positions, all punctuated with moments of song, lots of laughter and often serious discussions that would arise out of a game, about injustices or power prejudices, and then just as quickly dissipate and move back to a song or a game. The storytelling was difficult; they were telling real stories. The moment a mother’s son was arrested in front of her for having fun in a subway station, the moment a man stood over an officer pointing a gun in his face at close range, the moment a woman had been sexually assaulted by an officer as his partner turned a blind eye and she froze in terror, the moment where an officer had someone spit in her face and call her trash. They told their own stories with a partner, a civilian working with an officer; they then swapped and told each other’s stories. This was part of the rehearsal process that they knew as they had heard and performed the stories before. This section was to be part of the scripted element of the performance. The perspective giving and perspective taking were not easy:  they were hard stories to listen to, but in the telling a bond had developed. Several of the officers offered a hand of comfort to the civilian telling of her fear for the life of her son; several civilians offered hands of comfort to the officer as he talked about the moment he thought he would die. It was powerful and emotional work that was exhilarating to watch and utterly exhausting for the participants to perform.



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The last exercise of the evening brought the ensemble together to sing The Beatles’ song ‘Come Together’ (1969) with members of the group singing lines or verses solo, and other sections as duets or in threes and fours and then as a whole ensemble. This too was to be in the final show and was a rehearsal rather than the group discovering it for the first time. Some had beautiful voices and knew this; others less so. Many of them were not confident, but in this moment of harmony it was breathtakingly beautiful. It also marked the end of the evening. The group had been together for over four hours and it was a weeknight, approaching 11 pm, and yet the group did not disperse until nearly midnight; they felt a connection they did not want to break. The eating, sharing, listening, playing and singing all centred around perspective giving and taking had created a bond between this group of people, and is one of the most remarkable things I have seen in a theatre. I can’t say if this connection will last beyond the tenweek process they are involved in, but giving voice to deep injustices through the semi-fictional frame of theatre games and a dialogic performance process had created a bubble of profound understanding between these groups, at least for now. One of the civilians, Jophrane Ligonde, said she joined the project because she ‘was more intrigued in being able to have a … conversation with police officers in a different element’. If the project achieves nothing else it gave her this platform and it gave Juan Sanchez, who said, ‘I always saw the police force as a threatening, menacing force in our society’, a chance to challenge and, at times, outright confront that menacing force in a space in which it was safe to do so, unlike the streets where such confrontation could easily lead to his arrest or death. The officers also started the process with negative expectations and experiences of the civilians. Officer Celena Nicholas explained that at the start, ‘I looked at them like I don’t like them, because they were looking at me like they don’t like me.’ It was like being on patrol on the streets, but after just six weeks on the project she said to a civilian in the ensemble, ‘Now I see your point – you don’t know where we are coming from and we don’t know where you are coming from.’ The relationships

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built for giving and taking of perspectives allowed her to see that mutual suspicion existed and enabled the creation of a sense of understanding. She claimed to see and understand why civilians may behave with suspicion, aggression and fear when they see an officer on the street. This empathy was created through the civilians having time, space and a platform in which they could tell their stories and in which they could have honest open dialogues. Civilian Juan Sanchez and Officer John Palmero had a tempestuous relationship throughout the project. Griess says, ‘in some ways they were the most hurtful to each other’ but adds ‘at the same time they have bonded the most’. Palmero describes this process as ‘butting heads a lot’, while acknowledging, ‘I’ve grown closer to him than anybody else here because we butted heads a lot.’ This image of them butting heads is a good metaphor for these two men of strength who came together from very different positions and places. In their normal routines these diametrically opposed men would not have been able to debate, argue, and give and take perspectives from one another, without the power dynamics of their positions within the community playing out and making it highly unsafe for Sanchez to confront a police officer in the manner in which he was able to do in this project. Sanchez said of Palmero, ‘He has just challenged every anti-police thought that I have had. And I have challenged every pro police thought that he has had.’ He talks about this process as being one in which each helped the other ‘to understand’. Of the project, Palmero hopes the civilians in the room ‘see me as not just a police officer but a person’. It was clear from the hugs and backslapping at the end of the evening that to these civilians he was very much seen as a person. That is not to say that the ten weeks of theatre work will ensure a concrete change in the attitude of the police officers to the civilians they encounter in the future. Sanchez confessed: ‘I can’t say my relationship with police officers is going to improve tomorrow, but I do say that I can at least empathize with them a little bit more than what I probably did when I first started.’ The same is true for the attitudes of the officers. Officer Jakia Morton stated: ‘I have more of an understanding of civilians I see more where they come from knowing the experiences that they have had with police officers



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… just seeing that and what certain people go through, I have a better understanding of why they feel the way they feel.’ Prezzano, who expected to be experiencing an ‘ugly’ nine weeks, said that as a result of the project, ‘Me, personally, I am pushing myself towards being even more community oriented … try to break the barrier.’ Each of the members of the ensemble, to some extent, demonstrated that evening that they were developing an understanding or an empathy for the others in the room. Freire (1993) argues that to become more empathetic is to become more fully human. Humanizing empathy is central to his pedagogy of the oppressed as oppression, he argues, is a dehumanizing process that prevents people from being fully human. For Freire, a pedagogy of the oppressed should affirm one’s humanity, arguing that this process must be undertaken in solidarity with others as to attempt to do it on one’s own would deny others the opportunity to do the same. An individualistic approach to becoming fully human undermines the project; individualism eschews empathy and solidarity and is, then, dehumanizing. An individualistic approach requires the oppressed to become the oppressors of others to enable their own liberty. A  pedagogy of the oppressed seeks to humanize the oppressed and the oppressor. In Freire’s terms, Applied Theatre practitioners help participants to become more fully human by enhancing empathy and mutual understanding. Gallagher, Freeman and Wessels (2010) argue that performance can generate these positive effects when the young people devise the work themselves. Devising clearly offers more opportunity for sharing perspectives, but text work in Applied Theatre contexts may also offer the opportunity for participants to re-examine the world and their place in it.

Becoming fully human and Edward Bond Devising offers opportunities for giving voice to real-life experiences, but working with a playscript may also offer the opportunity for participants

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to re-examine the world, their place in it and amplify their voices by doing so. Playwrights who create work that strives for social justice might also be valuable material for a pedagogy of utopia, especially if their call for participants to empathize and walk in the shoes of others to become more ‘fully human’ is central to their work. Throughout his working life, playwright Edward Bond has been preoccupied with the question of ‘What does it mean to be human?’ He explained this view in an interview with Ulrich Koppen for New Theatre Quarterly:  ‘My basic message remains the same, but it has developed. If you want to live in an inhuman world and accept it you become inhuman’ (Koppen 1997: 104). He continues that accepting the ‘inhuman’ world causes the repression of voice and aspiration, although he refers to aspiration as human potential. Bond’s examination of the frustration and injustice associated with the ‘inhuman’ world chimes with the work of Paulo Freire and critical pedagogies and therefore a pedagogy of utopia. This can be seen through the structure of Bond’s plays, in that he consciously creates spaces for the participants to be heard. Throughout his career Bond has used theatre to examine social injustice both in the themes of his work and in the working practices he sets up in his plays. His work is driven by a core belief that the purpose of theatre is to question what it means to be human and to explore alternative ways of living. Since 1993 he has explored these issues in the UK with a series of theatre-ineducation companies and youth and community groups. Within these performance contexts Bond believes that it is possible to ‘take young people back to important basic situations and enable them to question what it means to be a human being’ (Bond 1997a:  101). Through a dramatic technique that creates a series of pauses in both the narrative and structure of the plays, Bond’s young audiences are required to make meaning from what they are shown and reflect on the position of the characters within the performances and ask, ‘What would I do in that situation?’ The audience is encouraged to fill in the gaps and consider alternatives. Bond invites a shared ownership for the meaning-making by creating porous texts that are filled with gaps, in which young people



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can place their own thoughts, ideas and voices by exploring common situations. By having young central characters with whom young people can identify, Bond creates Ricoeur’s sense of ‘distanciation’ or ‘understanding at and through distance’ (Ricoeur 1991: 84). In Bond’s case, ‘distanciation’ works by inviting reflection not only on familiar settings and contexts through the safety of a fictional frame but also on how that situation may play out in the real world. Bond’s plays invite audiences to reflect on what the situation produces, what it does to his characters and how these might relate to their own lives. By focusing events on young central characters and often in family and school settings, Bond invites young people to engage in a critical questioning of the institutions with which they are familiar and how these institutions interact in the development of their identities and codes of behaviour. When I  used his texts with young people living in a number of secure settings throughout the mid-2000s, in brief workshops each of a couple of hours a week, for three or four weeks it became possible to enter a dialogue with my participants about their own identities and use the text as a basis for this discussion and in turn for them to devise their own scenes that offered both a reflection and a critique of their lived experiences. We created still images of moments in their lives where frustrations escalated to violence, exploring through a sequence of images where the origins of the frustrations lay and ways they could have altered the course of action. Using Bond’s texts as a starting point the young men were able to physically demonstrate and describe how frustration and violence were the manifestation of their sense of powerlessness and injustice. Unlike the officers and civilians in To Protect, Serve and Understand, they could not butt heads with those who they levelled this frustration at, but they could perhaps come to understand themselves more. Using Bond’s plays as a stimulus enabled the young men to experience the giving and taking of perspective, just as Griess’s To Protect, Serve and Understand does, only in text work the characters are fictional and therefore difficult and challenging subject matter can be dialogued through the safety of a fictional frame. Anderson and

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O’Connor discuss the value and safety of the fictional frame at length in Applied Theatre: Research: Radical Departures (2015), in which they suggest that fictional frames can simultaneously provide spaces to consider ‘current realities’ and provide the opportunity for ‘imagining different futures’ (ibid.: 70), precisely the aims of a pedagogy of utopia. They also make a convincing argument that such imagining from within the safety of a fictional frame can be an active form of resistance and a way to amplify marginalized voices (ibid.: 70). To maximize this dynamic of critique and imaginary futures in his plays for young people, Bond poses difficult questions in his work through a series of theatrical techniques he describes as ‘theatre events’ (TE). Bond describes TE as being periods in the performance when ‘time may be experienced as slower, as in a car accident. TE can be understood by comparing it to a whirlwind or cyclone. The centre of the cyclone is calm and quiet. In a TE the spectator stands in the still centre. It is the site of the TE. In it everything is seen with great clarity’ (Bond 2000a: 17). In other words, in one of Bond’s TEs, the development of the plot is suspended to allow the young people the time to consider the central question being posed by the drama and imagine how they might react in the same situation. They are not distanced from the characters and situation as in Brechtian verfremdunseffekt, but distanciation is created while the audience are still within the story, or in the ‘cyclone’ of events. Educationalist David Davis describes Bond’s use of TE as ‘a temporal distortion … the integrity of the story is not broken, but crucially … there is no “right way to respond” … Here, in Bond’s TE we are genuinely provoked’ (Davis 2005: 37–8). In this moment the young people are invited to use their imaginations and voices to respond to the situation, and the possibility of change is found in the TE, which is the source of social optimism. This technique is clearly seen in Bond’s play At the Inland Sea, written for the theatre-in-education company, Big Brum, and first performed in schools and colleges in the UK’s West Midlands in 1995. The plot of this play centres around a boy as he prepares for school exams. His mother fusses over him in his bedroom and pressurizes him to do well in the tests. When she leaves his room The Boy is confronted by the



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historical figures of The Woman and her baby, and soldiers who are trying to take them away to their deaths. The boy struggles to intervene and to save them, but fails. One of the most powerful TEs, or moments of reflexivity, in the play is centred on a cup of tea. As his mother frets and fusses, the figure of The Woman rises from The Boy’s bed, unseen by his mother. When she emerges carrying her baby, ‘The Boy starts to tremble slightly. He steadies the mug with both hands and wedges it against his chest’ (Bond 1997b: 2). As The Woman approaches him, telling her story of how she is hiding from the soldiers who are taking people away in lorries, The Boy’s ‘arm straightens’ and ‘he holds out the cup to The Woman … The tea starts to drip from the cup and then slowly spill’ (ibid.: 3). As she tells her harrowing story the boy is frozen as the tea drips and his mother is oblivious to what is happening, as The Woman begs The Boy for his help. For Bond, it is in moments like these that the performers and the audience are ‘invited to create the connections’ (Bond 2000a: 48). Once these connections have been made, Bond believes that the young people, as meaning-makers, ‘must take responsibility for them’ (Bond 2000a: 48). In other words, once understanding has taken place, social responsibility becomes undeniable. As The Boy listens to The Woman’s desperate pleas for help and her story of waiting in the gas chamber for death, he understands the events of history and feels responsible for the events that occurred before he was born. TEs such as this, these reflexive interstices, enable young people to read the situation and reconsider history in its contemporary context. Bond hopes that young people will understand the past and take responsibility for actions that occurred historically, because through playing or watching these events they are invited to feel the weight of history or, more specifically, the lack of humanity exhibited in the past that allowed atrocities to take place. Bond’s work is utopic because it invites a questioning of social injustice and engages the social imagination in such a way that it becomes possible to see the present from a distance and thereby consider possible positive alternatives. The young people performing in his plays are being invited to reject social injustice. This sense of young

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people needing to turn their back on injustice is most clearly expressed in the optimism at the conclusion of The Children first performed by Classworks in February 2000 at Manor Community College in Cambridge, UK. In this play, the character of Joe is manipulated by his mother into burning a house down. After committing this act of violence she disowns him and he is forced to flee from the police. He and his friends leave their homes and go in search of a place they can be safe. In the final scene Joe is alone, his friends having been murdered by a man they have helped on their journey. The stage directions describe his isolation:  ‘Joe come[s]‌on. He carries nothing’ (Bond 2000b:  52). He has nothing left, yet claims: ‘I’ve got everything. I’m the last person in the world. I must find someone’ (ibid.). Through facing dilemmas and learning to accept responsibility for himself and others he has finally left behind the puppet he has carried throughout the play and he has learnt ‘to be on his own’ and is now ready to ‘change the world’ (ibid.:  6). This was unthinkable at the start of the play. His utopian urge to change the world is only possible because Joe is stripped of everything, including the constructs of family and education. The naturalized social structures have been removed so he can rebuild alternative forms that do not conform to conventional social ideas. Having learnt to take responsibility for himself, he now ‘must find someone’ so he can find alternatives with a reinvigorated sense of social responsibility, which, for Bond, means creating a more humane society. The play ends here, allowing the young people space to envision what form the alternative social structure might take. What will Joe’s utopia look like? The play potentially challenges young people by asking them to contemplate the possibility of change and providing optimism by recognizing that change may be both desirable and possible. This play is particularly pertinent because the text actively leaves gaps for the young people’s own voices in performances. Bond states that the words of the two adults who perform in productions of The Children should be ‘performed as they are printed’. In contrast, the young performers should improvise some of their words:  ‘[The children] perform their roles, as they are printed in Scenes One, Two, Four, Eleven and Twelve.



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In all other scenes they should create their own parts, guided by the situations and words given to them in the text’ (Bond 2000b: 4). This enables the young performers to improvise the roles and think about what they might say if they were in similar circumstances. Bond thus amplifies the voices of young people, inviting them to take the perspective, position and circumstances of other people and to give their own perspective. Bond invites empathy and understanding for others and self-representation. Young participants must draw on their imaginations while exploring possibilities. Bond believes that drama work will engender a long-lasting attitude or disposition – he envisages that young participants will continue to take an imaginative approach to the world outside the theatre, in the same way that Griess envisages the officers and civilians carrying their newfound empathy into streets outside Irondale. In the ways described above, drama, be it scripted or improvised, can be a means to examine the human condition and to discover the ways it is constituted by power relations and the technologies of domination established through disciplinary techniques and regulatory controls. Having recognized these dynamics within the rehearsal space or devising workshop, participants are invited to imagine alternatives and subsequently to enact them. Cush Jumbo, British actor and writer, combines separate elements of Bond and Griess in her play The Accordion Shop, a play for young people that draws on real events that have touched the lives of young people living in London, giving them a platform from which to explore inequality and violence through the safety net of fictional characters.

An accordion shop, a riot and change In 2015 I  had the privilege of witnessing a group of schoolchildren from a North London school work on a production of The Accordion Shop by Cush Jumbo. The play was performed as a part of the National Theatre’s Connections for young people (discussed in Chapter 5). The

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play’s action focuses on a riot that has been orchestrated via social media, with an anonymous text arriving on hundreds of mobile phones during the course of the night. It simply says ‘RIOT – THE ROAD – 7 PM TONIGHT’ (Jumbo 2015: 307). The Accordion Shop is written for an ensemble cast of any size, with seven named parts, two of which, Boy and Girl, are played by multiple actors. There is no characterization marked in the script itself for Boy and Girl, and the director and cast must interpret how many people are present, or who these people are and what their context is. This gives the play an open structure that requires the director and cast to be active meaning-makers, breaking down the sense of the lines and distributing them to specific actors, giving the play a porous and fluid structure. The clear but non-linear narrative involves the death of an old lady during the riot, a news reporter, policeman and teacher as well as Mr Ellody, the owner of the accordion shop at the centre of the riot. The school I  worked with had twelve students playing the parts of Boy and Girl. I followed the progress of the school production for a three-month research process. This school, based in North London, and which wishes to remain anonymous, is a secondary school with 1,190 students aged between 11 and 18. During the 2015 rehearsal process the London borough in which the school is situated, Hackney, was the second most deprived local authority in England on the Government’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation with ‘approximately 36.8% of children affected by poverty’ (London Borough of Hackney 2014). The UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) noted that the school had a high percentage of students who were eligible for the pupil premium (Ofsted 2015), which is additional government funding provided for students known to be at risk of poverty. The report records that 64.8 per cent of the school body are eligible for free school meals and that the national average for this is 28 per cent. Ofsted also observes that ‘the vast majority of students are from minority ethnic groups, and the proportion is much higher than the national average’, that the ‘proportion of students who speak a first language other than English is high’ and that ‘the proportion of disabled students and those who have special educational needs is well



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above the national average’ (ibid.). The community at the school are therefore marked by socio-economic disadvantage, a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds and a higher than average percentage of disabilities and learning difficulties. The student cast and crew of the performance of The Accordion Shop was a statistically average cross section of the school population. Some of the ensemble had been members of the drama club for some time, others were taking part for the first time. Many told us that they had not seen a theatre performance apart from those performed in their school, while others had been to the local playhouse with their families or caregivers. The Accordion Shop represents a situation the participants recognized, that is, a riot that had taken place in London. The London Riots occurred in August 2011 after Mark Duggan was shot and killed by the police. The police officers who shot Duggan, a biracial British man, claimed that they believed him to be carrying a gun. The subsequent inquest revealed that he did not have a gun on his person or in his car at the time he was stopped and ruled his death to be unlawful. In August 2020 a demonstration was organized by Black Lives UK outside the police station in Tottenham to protest about the lack of change within the UK police force with regard to institutional racism. During the six nights of rioting and looting five people were killed. Throughout the rehearsal process of the play, the cast and director played with the various possibilities for staging the play and discussed its central issues, including the social factors that contributed to the London Riots: racial tensions, racism, class, economic pressures, unemployment and austerity. Jumbo, during a Skype interview for the National Theatre, said the play was about the ‘clash between the old and the new’ and ‘rationalizing the recent outbreaks of youth violence’ and suggested ‘that we must change the way we think before these things will improve’. She also talked a great deal about the ‘hope for young people and the future’ at the centre of the play. Such ‘hope’ is not immediately apparent in a play about violence, young people out of control and the death of a bystander. For Jumbo, the play’s hope is contained in the dead woman’s final monologue: ‘Becoming invisible is something you get used to as

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you get older. You begin to watch others instead. Families moving in, families moving out, the area changes, but other things never do. The world we live in might be different but the kids don’t change, not really’ (Jumbo 2015: 328). Together, the form and content of the play create opportunities for discussion. The structure of the play, by providing interstices and referential frames, allows space for the cast to imagine themselves in the same situation as the characters. They are given the opportunity to discuss and consider what they would do in a similar situation and to think about creating alternatives. This was an aspect of the work that particularly appealed to some of the young people I witnessed working on the play. One said, ‘I enjoyed that it was realistic because it was something around something that had already happened in Hackney. And it kinda fit into our characters.’ Another noted, ‘There was a riot in Hackney and this play remade that and we talked about that and what it meant in rehearsals.’ This play and the rehearsal process I witnessed went some of the way to creating circumstances in which social imagination could be activated. The rehearsal process provided the cast with opportunities to reflect on fictional circumstances and compare these with circumstances beyond the theatre. In doing so participants are encouraged to think beyond the familiar and to imagine alternatives. These students were starting to see the potential for different lives by engaging with the themes of the play. During their involvement in the production, the young cast learnt to work through issues and problems as a group. One participant recalled that ‘Sometimes in the rehearsals you felt like some people were putting in more than others and that was very annoying! So we had a group discussion and that person was confronted.’ This discussion allowed them to understand that the ‘stress’ of a production makes people react differently. As one participant said, ‘I think people put less effort in because they was nervous … I worry when I get close to the show I am going to forget my lines. When she said she was nervous and that made her not want to come, I got why she didn’t work as hard.’ They began to work as a team who supported each other through the difficult patches and acknowledged and celebrated that they had ‘to put everything in



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and saw the progress that was being made’. In post-performance focus groups the students were articulate about the benefits of participating in the production. One said it had given her the opportunity to be ‘creative and experience new things’, while another said, ‘I think it’s important because, like in life you’re not just going to need maths and English, you need to know how to talk to people and if you have drama you’ll be able to practise that, so drama helps people to have the confidence to practise speaking.’ A third explained: I think it can lift you up as a person and it makes you stronger, it brings out a different you. If like you are shy person when you are on stage you can release yourself, it brings you out. You can talk about the world, how it has changed, how it needs to change. You can think about what you want to happen.

This third student is articulating the central tenets of my pedagogy of utopia in action. Through working on this play she considered the circumstances that created a riot, both a fictional riot and a real riot, discussed the inequality and social injustice that started the real riot, and discussed how she would like to see things changed. She named her world, the social injustice that blighted it and imagined a different future. Drama education researcher Jonothan Neelands observed how his own students ‘learning how to act together in the drama classroom was also shaping their social actions as a community beyond the drama class and also, possibly, beyond school’ (Neelands 2009:  181). There is some evidence to suggest that the young people working on The Accordion Shop were doing just that, although a lengthier research process would be needed to see if this group dynamic has the potential to impact constructively for the next school year or in their lives ‘beyond school’. Bond and Jumbo intentionally place the possibility of social change at the heart of their work, positioning young people as the agents of this change. Bond and Jumbo, unlike many other writers producing work for young people, tackle very serious concerns and are not afraid to confront difficult subject matter. Perhaps more importantly, both

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writers leave space in the text for young people to contribute to the theatre-making process in an engaged manner. These gaps in the text are vital to the process of making a text suitable for a pedagogy of utopia in that they allow the space for the participants to fill the structural gaps with their own visions and voices. In this way, play texts can amplify the voice of the ‘bare citizen’ in equal parts with the devising process. Devising as in To Protect, Serve and Understand, play texts such as Bond’s and Jumbo’s enable dialogue around difficult subjects and amplify the voices we may not hear enough of, but this can only happen if the space in the workshop or rehearsal room is one in which the participants feel secure. Therefore, the fourth aspect of a pedagogy of utopia is one that focuses on spaces where such work invites ‘bare citizens’ to engage in aspirational thinking and articulation. To explore this, in the following chapter I look at the physical spaces that invite utopic visions.

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Finding a thirdspace

The fourth element of creating a pedagogy of utopia concerns the space in which the practice occurs. The practice by its nature is adaptable and flexible, but the effect of the space needs to be considered. In Crossing Bridges, the atmosphere of the workshops depended on the three spaces we used: the rehearsal studio on 8th Avenue, New York; the offBroadway theatre; and the basketball/gym area at Covenant House, with each producing its own particular tensions and opportunities. In the various India projects since 2005, we continue to work in a variety of spaces, which include temples, garages, community halls and the streets. In the prison-based Children’s Theatre Project, rehearsal spaces and performance areas are often a chapel or prayer room; occasionally the football pitch or a classroom in the education wing. The success of my practice depends on adapting rooms and spaces into rehearsal and performance venues. This is the nature – and a strength – of theatremaking in community and non-traditional theatre spaces. While we should celebrate our ability to slot into a variety of architectural contexts, we must recognize how each of the spaces we use affects our work. The characteristics of each space inflect the drama work created within it. There is an interplay between the space that is occupied as a rehearsal space, despite its original designated use, and the way this affects the work that is created in it, resulting in each project being a unique product of the space in which it is created. It is nothing new to state that space is a social construct that is neither fixed nor neutral. It is flexible and capable of stimulating oppression and liberation, and of maintaining or resisting the status quo. Henri Lefebvre (1991) asserted that all social relations depend on space,

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while geographer David Harvey (2000) makes the claim that space is central in all social interactions and that it, therefore, conditions any potential change. Cultural theorist Eric Kit-wai Ma describes space as ‘a container of power through which people’s biographies are constrained and enabled’ (Ma 2002:  132). As such, space is a seat and means of power and is highly political; therefore, in a pedagogy of utopia which invites participants to see that change is possible, we must carefully consider the nature of the space in which the practice takes place. The spatial turn in theatre, particularly with regard to site-specific performance, is well documented (Birch and Tompkin 2012; Pearson 2010; Solga 2019; Solga, Orr and Hopkins 2009). Sally Mackey’s work on the ‘performance of place’ is particularly relevant in regard to community theatre-making (Mackey and Cole 2013: 46). Mackey uses this term when referring to planned performances, informal performances, and various interactions and interventions with sites that interrogate perceptions of place. She states that creating performance or becoming involved with a performance can change participants’ and audiences’ relationships with a specific area. It can invite a sense of familiarity and even safety in spaces previously considered to be uncomfortable or hostile (Mackey and Cole 2013: 56). The potential for performance or theatre to change participants’ relationships to spaces and to provoke a sense of safety is one of three ways in which space is central to creating a pedagogy that invites utopic imaginings. The second is how the physical space can provide an equitable meeting of difference through which a hybrid culture or community may be formed, and the third is the way spaces can offer sites of resistance to injustice and the neoliberal hegemony that fosters social exclusion. The first of these two spatial capacities are discussed in this chapter and the third in Chapter 6.

The spatial turn and safety Sally Mackey’s reference to the ability of performance to render spaces of danger as spaces of safety is an important concept within Applied



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Theatre practices. Mackey, though, is referring to actual places the participants frequent or are forced to move through in their daily lives, rather than the notion of the workshop or rehearsal room being a ‘safe space’. Often in my practice, as in Mackey’s, the two become intertwined, and the complex, difficult or even hostile spaces of my participants’ daily lives become both rehearsal spaces and performance spaces and fostering them as places of safety is vital. ‘Safe space’ is a much-contested term in Applied Theatre. Mary Ann Hunter’s article ‘Cultivating the art of a safe space’ discusses the need for creating a space for drama that is both ‘physically and metaphorically safe’ (2008: 6). She asks if ‘making a space “safe” means making it risk-adverse’ (ibid.: 9) and explores the tensions between notions of safety and ‘risk-taking’ in the creative process. The space for a pedagogy of utopia needs to be one of safety in the sense that the participants need to feel secure enough to take risks. Sharing lived experiences, critical thinking, trust and making oneself vulnerable to the others in the room when making theatre together are all vital to the process. Examining what is and confronting the truth about ourselves and our world is painful, difficult and risky, but it is the start of imagining new futures. Issues about safety, space and equity abound in the Halfway House Project, the first collaboration in India between Divya Bhatia, Central and me which took place in 2005. The Halfway House Project was facilitated by two Central BA Applied Theatre students, with Bhatia and me mentoring them through the process. Analysis of this project helps me to understand the complex nature of space in the context of my practice. Such analysis, I argue, demonstrates the inadequacy of the term ‘safe space’ in the context of the discipline. In the Halfway House Project, we worked with women, mainly from the Dalit caste, living in a care facility for abandoned and abused young women. There are more than eleven million abandoned children in India, and over 90 per cent of them are girls. The project was intended to take place in the women’s shared living area. The NGO that financed the home wanted us to create a theatre project that would establish a bond between the women in the hope that this would enable them to face their traumatic experiences

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together, while building their self-confidence and self-esteem. The home in which we were working housed girls between the ages of 14 and 21 who had been neglected, abandoned, disowned and, in some cases, abused for a variety of reasons that included sexual activity, mental illness, physical disabilities, severe poverty or the remarriage of mothers whose second husbands refused to house their wife’s children from a previous marriage. The twenty or so girls in this home had shelter, food and were learning a trade to support themselves. Inside the home the women had their basic needs met and were given a refuge from abuse. Inside the halfway house they were, however, re-creating some of the conditions of their previous lives. They had established a domestic pecking order where the weak and different were bullied and victimized within the home. The space we were to work in was a women-only space, which excluded both Bhatia and Deembe, our translator, for much of the process. The space was used by the residents of the home as a living, sleeping, cooking and work room that changed its function depending on the time of day and the needs of the women, and during the project it had to become a workshop room. Henri Lefebvre’s argument that the social meanings of space are constructed through their social practices and that spaces impose an order is useful here. He argues that spaces are ‘tied to relations of production and to the “order” which those relations impose’ (Lefebvre 1991:  33). In other words, spaces are tied to established knowledge and codes and, as such, they support hegemonic processes. Lefebvre discusses the ‘representation of space’ as a process by which space is perceived through and defined by the routines or social production and reproduction that take place in a space. In Lefebvre’s words, spaces are ‘defined by what people are doing in them’. Spatial practices ‘embrace production and reproduction’ of space (ibid.) and they are practices in which people passively accept the signs and symbols that have been put on specific places. These practices may also resist social regulations, as people use and adapt the spaces they frequent. The room in the halfway house was a ‘representation of space’, defined by the daily activities of the women who inhabited it. The way people use a space makes it ‘alive



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… quantitative, fluid and dynamic’ (ibid.: 42). In this sense, spaces can be changed, and they can then, therefore, be a source of oppression and containment that supports the status quo, or they can be wielded as tools of liberation and solidarity. More likely, spaces can offer a mixture of these elements, but individuals, rather than technologies of power, inscribe meaning onto space. In this way, spaces always have the potential to become counter-hegemonic. This happens when users change the spatial practices usually associated with a specific location, such as the adaptation by practitioners and participants of a space into a rehearsal or workshop room by inscribing a new meaning. Our spatial practices etch play and creativity in a place that otherwise does not invite play. A theatre workshop can instil an axiology of equity into a space that otherwise produces or supports inequalities. And indeed, equity was the central theme of the Halfway House Project. When first working in the halfway house we found the refuge was a competitive and often dangerous space that harboured isolation, bullying and violence. The conditions reaffirmed the hierarchies of the outside world and constrained the women who lived there. Our assigned aim was to build a community spirit within the house where the young women could support and comfort each other and where they could gain strength in solidarity. We knew, however, such a goal was not possible in a meaningful sense during a five-week project. Beyond the unrealistic timescale, the project, as conceived by the NGO, had two further issues. The NGO had unrealistic expectations of the theatre’s power to effect change that were in line with a view of theatre that leads to the hero narratives and overblown statements as discussed in Chapter 1. The other issue was that the goals were not established following consultation with the people living in the home. Although the NGO was not mistaken to assume the residents desired change, the NGO dictated the focus of the work and in doing so denied the women agency within the decision-making process. With these factors in mind we skirted past the NGO’s aims when we started the project, telling residents that we would be exploring the arts and theatremaking each day for a month. We simply told them that they would

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all be welcome to make theatre with us. The practitioners and the women who volunteered to take part worked together for three hours every afternoon for five weeks. The sessions involved a range of theatre games, devising techniques and skills-sharing, often starting with a song and then some exercises to focus the women’s attention on the theatre-making process. In the first session, the women were wary of us, the visitors, and were often self-conscious and appeared withdrawn and introverted. Their lives, before moving into the halfway house but also within it, were often a struggle for survival. This demanded constant vigilance, negotiation and trading with others who were rightly regarded with suspicion. In these ways, their lives recalled those of the young people involved in Crossing Bridges, as they were filled with a lack of trust. It was not surprising that they were hesitant to ‘play’ drama games with the students. The students, who were also tentative, focused on storytelling games, creative writing exercises and some gentle performance skills for the first two weeks. A key part of this process was the chai break midway through each session. The exchange of food became integral in these crucial moments. Food became a meeting point, with the students bringing biscuits and sweets from the UK and the participants bringing mangoes that had been picked from the next door’s tree, the boughs of which stretched out over the home’s premises. These respective offerings were exchanged as gifts. Session by session everyone became more playful and some of the initial suspicions eased. The process of easing suspicions is largely one of developing trust in the space in which we work and in the methods we use. Part of this process is slowly getting to know each other, through chatting over chai, laughing together, often at the expense of the facilitators, and sharing food, stories, laughter and the space each day. Suspicions eased as the participants gradually understood that nobody was going to be asked to do anything which might make them feel uncomfortable. This amounts to creating the ‘safe space’ that is so often talked about in Applied Theatre contexts. In her analysis of drama spaces, Helen Nicholson does not use the term ‘safe space’ but argues that ‘creative spaces are those in which people feel safe enough to take



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risks and allow themselves and others to experience vulnerability’ and adds that ‘creativity is fostered through networks of social relationships’ (Nicholson 2015: 133). I would suggest that the easing of suspicions in the halfway house was a result of the social relationships, particularly around food rituals, that were developed in the room between the students, the women and me. As the days passed, and as the relationships developed between the students and the participants, the atmosphere in the room became more light-hearted, mischievous even. In response to British songs shared by the students, the residents shared Bollywood dance routines and songs. These became more risqué and riskier each session. The students in return raised the stakes. By the end of the third week, the song that opened and closed each session was ‘Big Booty’, with some explicit dance moves that had become a firm favourite for the women from the UK and from India. The space felt ‘safe’. The risqué nature of the songs and dance routines and the glee that was created as each group dared the other to go one better was part of this process; a trust or bond was created through this risky behaviour. Amidst the twerking and gyrating, the women discovered common ground that would not have been established with men in the room. As the weeks progressed, the young women decided they wanted their performance to be about the power of female friendship or sisterhood. Dance sequences were created, poetry was written, backcloths were designed on sheets and the room decorated with painted paper plates. The play became a series of skits: some funny, some based on real and distressing events, some in Hindi and some in English, some in mime and some with a strange mixture of languages unique to this group of women. A new conjoined group identity was being forged as a result of sharing the space. The participants’ confidence grew day-by-day and in the lead-up to the performance it was difficult to tell who was facilitating and who was participating. The women worked as a team to celebrate what they began to describe as ‘the power of sisterhood’. This is a complex term that does not necessarily translate across cultures, but here the women perceived it as a bond created through shared experiences and

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living space. One told me that ‘only women understand what women go through’, another that ‘for women it is the same everywhere’. The students agreed. ‘Sisterhood’ united women from different cultures, castes and classes. The residents of the halfway house recognized that they were united by their common experiences as women, even though they did not live together harmoniously. The students became a part of the ‘sisterhood’, albeit temporarily and fleetingly. The women found commonalities in experiences of being women, across, or perhaps despite, the geographical, cultural, economic and social divides that would usually keep them apart. Together, they could celebrate the commonalities they found in their womanhood or ‘sisterhood’ as they preferred, as a group. The NGO’s aim of developing a community spirit within the home appeared to be working. The women appeared to onlookers as a confident friendship group who supported one another as they taught each other difficult dance moves, worked on harmonies, helped one another to write poetry and script scenes. More than this, the women, like the men of The Children’s Theatre Project, started to plan for a future for continuing to work together, writing and dancing once the project was over. They talked together, looking back over the past and the project, and began to move forward, imagining the strength the bonds of sisterhood might manifest in their collective futures. There was an optimism here in this newly found friendship group and a sense of equity between the women of the halfway house, both the stronger and suppressed, and between the women and the students. For a brief while, the women could conceive of a future where they resisted the hierarchy of dominant social systems and lived in a mutually supportive space. This was potentially a utopic space in which contemporary conditions can be questioned and in which an alternative future could be imagined, one which resisted hegemony. It was an instance of a nebulous utopia. In these ways, the halfway house was a simultaneously represented, contested and inverted space. This was possible because of the nature of the halfway house: a secure environment designed to keep vulnerable women and women perceived as at risk to society, apart from the



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outside world, separated from society. The multipurpose space in which we worked, and in which the women lived, became a womenonly transgressive space in which the rules of the outside world could be disavowed, and power structures could be ignored and inverted. It was a real place and yet a space of the imagination, a counter-site that physically existed and yet was elsewhere, a ‘no-where’ utopic space. We may alternatively understand this rehearsal space as a ‘heterotopia’, to employ a concept introduced by Michel Foucault, describing these places as being ‘outside of all places’ (1986: 24). Heterotopia are ‘sites with no real place’; they are ‘fundamentally unreal spaces’ (Foucault 1986: 25). Such statements demonstrate that Foucault uses the rather narrow, traditional definition of utopia as a kind of blueprint for a perfect place, rather than seeing utopia as an iconoclastic means of effecting change, as I  do within my pedagogy of utopia. In contrast to ‘unreal’, he conceived heterotopia as real spaces that contain unreal notions of utopia. In other words, heterotopia are real spaces in which utopias can be momentarily realized and where power structures can be disrupted or inverted. In this way they become ‘simultaneously mythic and real contestations of the space in which we live’ (ibid.).

Heterotopia and the Halfway House Project Foucault states that heterotopias exist in all societies, either as ‘crisis heterotopias’ or as ‘deviant heterotopias’. The former are ‘privileged or sacred or forbidden’ and reserved for those living in a state of change or crisis, such as adolescents or pregnant women. And so examples of these might be boarding schools, nursing homes, mental health facilities or perhaps youth theatres. Emerging in recent times, ‘heterotopias of deviation’ (Foucault 1986: 25) are spaces in which people considered irregular, wayward or dangerous are placed, such as rest homes, prisons and psychiatric hospitals. The halfway house in India is perhaps at the intersection of both types. Like the crisis heterotopia, it is cordoned off from the rest of society. The women living there were in crisis due

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to their homelessness or abandonment, while at the same time many were considered deviant due to their sexual experiences, abuse and tactics of survival sex. The home contains these ‘deviant’ women, for both their own safety and that of the outside community. Foucault explains that heterotopias ‘have a function in relation to all the space that remains’ outside, in that they create a space of illusion that exposes real space partitions as illusory, or social constructs (ibid.). Once we see and acknowledge them as constructs, they can be deconstructed and re-envisioned to be spaces that give us opportunities to create Ricoeurian gaps in the ‘ideological spiral’ and invite people to see that change is possible. In the halfway house, some of the short scenes depicted violence perpetrated by men on women and some focused on women-on-women abuse within extended family spaces, particularly between mother and daughters-in-law. The final performance showed these acts of aggression happening outside the walls of the home and also within it. These scenes were juxtaposed with songs and poetry about the solidarity and strength of women and they raised questions for the participants and audience about equity, inequality, race, gender, class and caste. The performance which took place within the closed heterotopic space of the halfway house demonstrated that, although segregated from the rest of society, these women were no different in many respects than women outside the home. They were preoccupied with the issues that women face everywhere. By bridging the spaces within the heterotopias to the outside world spaces, the performances demonstrated that the spatial partitions created to keep these women apart are illusory. I have argued that, in the context of a pedagogy of utopia, theatre can provide the means of stretching ideology’s spiral so we can identify the workings of hegemony while residing within it. Such enhanced perception and analytical capacity is made possible by the Foucauldian heterotopia. Foucault writes that heterotopia are ‘capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible’ (Foucault 1986: 25). He gives the examples of the cinema and garden – and, indeed, the theatre. In these heterotopia it is possible



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to bring several locations into the same space simultaneously. The contiguous placement of incompatible sites invites inhabitants to question the similarities and differences between them and critique the way they function, thus giving heterotopia an ‘analytical edge’, according to geographer Arun Saldanha (2008:  2091). Kevin Hetherington observes that heterotopias ‘reveal the process of social ordering to be just that, a process rather than a thing’ and function as ‘spaces of alternate ordering’ (Hetherington 1997: viii). In the halfway house, the women re-ordered their tiny society to allow the most marginalized in the group to teach the others a poem they had written about suffering, which they would perform in a choral section of the show. In this way the social order of the home was deconstructed and questioned, and the drama invited an ‘alternate’ or at least fluid ordering of the social norms. In The Children’s Theatre Project, a less popular prison inmate helped a gang leader learn the moves for the pirate dance in their cell at night. And in Crossing Bridges, a shelter-dwelling teenager directed a well-known actress in a scene he had written. Foucault claimed that heterotopias are real places ‘that have the curious property of being in relation with all other sites but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize or invert the set of relations they happen to designate, mirror or reflect’ (Foucault 1986: 24). In a pedagogy of utopia, projects like these appear to enact heterotopic space by using theatre practices to question what is, in order to invite imaginings of what might be, while remaining grounded and searching for social justice. In the examples discussed in this book, multipurpose rooms, multifaith rooms and homeless shelter gyms are heterotopic spaces in which theatre workshops unsettle social relations, allowing participants to ‘suspect’ and ‘invert’ the hegemonic structures. The qualities of the physical spaces we used in these projects re-order the feeling in the room, via the so-called ‘safe space’. ‘Safe space’ is not quite an adequate term here as it belies the risky nature of the activities undertaken in these and other Applied Theatre spaces. In a pedagogy of utopia that pursues social justice, the spaces in which we fashion equity, negotiate, disagree and create in fact rarely feel safe. Recently,

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the term ‘brave space’ seems to be gaining traction with academics and practitioners and it is not difficult to see why this tweaked version of the term is gaining popularity. In 2013, Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens suggested the notion of creating a safe space is too simplistic for complex situations that require the acknowledging and sanctioning of difference while challenging ‘entrenchment in privilege’ (2013:  140). By introducing the alternative term ‘brave space’, they acknowledge the courage it takes to open oneself up to the other, to make oneself vulnerable and to listen to that which is, to quote Alison Jeffers, ‘hard to hear’ (Jeffers 2012: 1).

Not safe space or brave space, but a thirdspace I am as uncomfortable with the term ‘brave space’ as I  am with the term ‘safe space’. ‘Brave’ seems to contain an inherent idea that everyone in the space is able to step up, without acknowledging that people in the room start from different, and unequal, positions. Spaces as we have seen are not neutral and seeing them as such implies a sense of privilege that not all participants enjoy. Both adjectives oversimplify matters because a workshop room is always dynamic, in flux and volatile. It is a space away from the outside world and yet inextricably linked to it. It is a space where participants need to feel safe enough to take risks and challenges, where they can be brave enough to speak, act or move, and yet also be strong enough to let others do the same. Brave is too narrow and too loaded to describe what this heterotopic space could be and what it should feel like. Over both of these terms, I employ another more neutral term: ‘thirdspace’. The term ‘thirdspace’ is chiefly associated with Edward Soja, who employs the term in work that responds to Foucault’s heterotopia. Soja describes thirdspace as a space of ‘extraordinary openness, a place of critical exchange … a space where issues of race, class and gender can be addressed simultaneously without privileging one over the other’ (Soja 1996: 5). Homi Bhabha’s use of the term is also relevant to the present discussion. He uses it with



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respect to intercultural thinking in The Location of Culture (1994) to describe the hybridization of culture. When two cultures meet, they produce something new, a third perspective created in the thirdspace between the first two. I also draw on the social science use of the term, where it can more literally be a third space, two words, not one, as in not the first or second space. This thirdspace is different from the domestic, usually more relaxed, but still regulated space and the more intensely regulated work or education spaces. This does not imply that people only occupy and move through two spaces. There are many differently regulated spaces that individuals traverse:  places of worship, sports clubs and other spaces where people are under surveillance. In ‘The Street as Thirdspace’, cultural geographers Matthews, Limb and Taylor describe the perceived ‘progressive retreat from the street by urban children’ in the UK (Matthews, Limb and Taylor 2000: 63). In this sense the thirdspace of the street is neither the school nor the home, both sites of regulation and control, but a third space where children were once free of surveillance. Their essay laments that the widespread use of CCTV means the street is no longer unsurveilled, and thus no longer qualifies as a thirdspace. Other thirdspaces could be football pitches, playgrounds and disused buildings, unsurveilled spaces in which groups can construct their own environments, and formulate and test their developing identities. Hillman, Adam and White-Legg in 1990 observed that ‘More of our lives are now spent in cocoons of house and car, and the outside world has become impersonal. As the streets fill with traffic, they tend to empty of people, and as street life retreats … the world outside also becomes more menacing.’ Writing five years later David Sibley expanded on this idea in The Geographies of Exclusion, arguing that there is a spatial binary that results in people remaining within the ‘safe’ boundaries of the home, the school and other institutionally organized spaces where they are subjects of the technologies of discipline, and he suggests that there is a perceived withdrawal of people from unregulated spaces. More recently it has been argued that there are no unregulated spaces that youth can inhabit in the Global North. Henri Giroux observes that young people are victims

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of a ‘punishment-and-control complex’ that pervades every aspect of young people’s lives through ‘surveillance and criminalization’ (Giroux 2009:  14). In a society in which youth have become demonized and in which the streets, parks and libraries are observed through CCTV cameras, loitering in public places has become a crime. Matthews et al. support this observation, writing that young people are ‘increasingly confined to acceptable “islands” by adults and so are spatially outlawed from society’ (Matthews, Limb and Taylor 2000: 63). The participants in the Halfway House Project had been removed from the public sphere and effectively detained within the home. While  the space in the home had become these women’s ‘acceptable island’, the drama workshops turned this space into an outlawed space where the young women could meet in less regulated conditions. Matthew, Limb and Taylor assert that spaces like these are ‘an important part of [adolescents’] everyday lives, a place where they retain some autonomy over space’ (Matthews, Limb and Taylor 2000: 64) and the Indian women enjoyed this kind of autonomy in the rehearsal space in this project. They made the rules, they decided what was to be included in the performance and what was not. In these ways, the multipurpose room became a thirdspace: a space in which the young women could ‘gather to affirm their sense of difference and celebrate their feelings of belonging’ (ibid.). It was a ‘lived space’ where they developed their own identities and challenged hegemonic interests by contesting social conventions and asserting their independence. In terms of a pedagogy of utopia, it is also important to note that the young women also wanted to perform their narratives, to witness each other’s stories and to have them witnessed by others. Not only did they have autonomy in this process, but they wanted that autonomy to be visible. The workshops provided a temporary reprieve from the routines of the home, hosted in a thirdspace in which Ricoeur’s third stage of utopia could be enacted. In the workshops, albeit only for a brief part of the day, this group of young people explored the ‘possibilities of living without hierarchical structure and instead with maturity’ (Ricoeur 1986:  310). They were still living within the ideological, and thus



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hegemonic, circle of Indian patriarchy, but within these workshops and during performances, they were not entirely conditioned by it. Nobody in the room talked about creating a community bond or worked towards that goal as a strategic aim, but by the end of the project the sense of community spirit was tangible in the room, in the content of the performance and in the care the performers took of each other. It was a brief interlude and a short pilot project, and without returning to the home, which has not been possible, it is impossible to know if there are any long-term effects or if the community in the halfway house retained this sense of unity and sisterhood. Although the work may not have had long-term consequences for the participants, the project created a thirdspace, different from that referred to by social scientists; it created a meeting point between two cultures, that of the women who were residents there and that of the students and myself from the UK, making it a thirdspace in the sense that Homi Bhabha uses the term, that is, to signify an intercultural meeting point.

Thirdspace as intercultural meeting point Homi Bhabha uses thirdspace when describing the interaction of two cultures, and the new ‘positions’ that arise as a result of such interactions. These new positions can only emerge if neither culture is privileged during their interaction – they must meet in a thirdspace that is neither the space of one culture nor the other, but a space in between. Bhabha says that ‘hybridity to me is the thirdspace which enables other positions to emerge’ (1990:  211). The thirdspace is a means to avoid cultural polarity and undermine binaries. The thirdspace resonates with the kind of space, or ‘pluriverse’ Bhatia and I  wished to create with our work in Dharavi, in that we sought to bring young inhabitants of the sub-city together with the students from Central without privileging the knowledge or skills of either party. By ‘exploring this third space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of ourselves’ (Bhabha 1994: 56); putting it even more clearly, he

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writes that it is ‘precisely about the fact when a new situation, a new alliance formulates itself, it may demand that you should translate your principles, rethink them, extend them’ (Bhabha 1990:  216). Creating thirdspaces, then, is central to a pedagogy of utopia, which elides or at times collides communities together to make theatre. It can be seen in the Halfway House Project and the extended Dharavi project where the young people from London and Mumbai encounter each other, forging a new and unique community that leaves neither the same as when they started. I am not alone in identifying Bhabian thirdspaces within Applied Theatre practice. Janinka Greenwood uses the term, directly referencing Bhabha, when she describes her work on a cross-cultural project in New Zealand that brought together indigenous people and migrants, claiming she ‘was working in the intervening space between cultures’ and that this space was ‘an emerging rather than a fixed space’ (Greenwood 2005: 4). Greenwood describes the ‘emerging’ space that ‘opens up in the interactions of different cultures’ (ibid.: 13) specifically as a thirdspace, that is, as a metaphorical space that emerges through intercultural interaction of theatre workshops. Dirk Rodricks (2015) also uses the term in this sense in his article ‘Drama education as “restorative” for the third space’, in which he draws on Bhabha, Soja and hooks. Similarly, Young Ai Choi draws on Bhabha’s concept of thirdspace when writing about her work with the National Theatre Company of Korea describing it as a safe environment in which youth working in theatre can create a new space of their own in which they ‘risk exploring the unfamiliar’ (2018: 43). I concur with these scholars that the thirdspace invites new positions to evolve, and risks are part of this evolution. In my own use of the term, I am also referring to the actual physical space in which the workshop takes place and in this I am influenced by Edward Soja (1996) who makes the claim that the concept of the thirdspace is one that crosses both the imagined and the real world. I would argue that Soja provides the most comprehensible and, for me, useful discussion of thirdspace in which he brings together Lefebvre, Foucault, Bhabha and



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a range of other post-modern thinkers including bell hooks, Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said. For Soja, the thirdspace offers an invitation to enter a space of openness and exchange which allows for a variety of perspectives that eliminate privileges connected to race, gender and class. Soja’s thirdspace includes a kind of imaginative forward thinking that is commensurate with a pedagogy of utopia. Soja states that ‘Thirdspace too can be described as a creative recombination and extension, one that builds on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the “real” material world and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through “imagined” representation of spatiality’ (ibid.:  6). Since thirdspace builds on the real and the imagined, it is akin to a nebulous utopia. The workshop space, the prison chapel, the multipurpose living and working space in a halfway house or the street outside a temple in a sub-city invite a critical dialogue on what is, in order to imagine what might be: these are all thirdspaces. It is the intersection of physical space and the imagined future, and a powerful site of resistance of what does not have to remain in the imagination. In Crossing Bridges this became a tangible real-world invitation when the young shelter-dwellers crossed the street in New York en route to the rehearsal studio and then again as they took up temporary residency in the Helen Mills Theatre. This was only a temporary thirdspace for these young people, but theatre spaces can, and do, present the opportunity to develop more needed long-term thirdspaces for young people. For many young people the private sphere of the home offers a space with limited agency and if Matthew, Limb and Taylor are correct in their view that young people are being encouraged to remove themselves from public spaces, and Giroux’s opinion that youth are demonized when they are in them, there are few places where young people have agency. Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson caution that ‘as we move into a post-normal world, the sector of the population at most threat are young people who know of no other time than the post-normal. They are at the greatest risk of harm’ (2015: 17). I believe that youth theatre can offer a valuable thirdspace which is less regulated than other spaces available to young people. The artistic director of London-based youth

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theatre, Company Three, Ned Glasier, draws directly on the company’s offering of a thirdspace to the young people involved in the company and highlights it as being one of the company’s strengths.

Youth theatre as thirdspace: Company Three I have been involved in various forms of youth theatre as a practitioner since 1995 and, like other forms of community and Applied Theatre, it hasn’t always been treated with a great deal of respect by the wider theatre and professional world. Although still often dismissed as lacking in artistic quality, in recent years the perception of youth theatre has started to shift with the work of a few companies reaching mainstream audiences. Writing in The Guardian in 2015, Matt Fenton noted that There’s something exciting happening in British theatre. Innovative shows made with and by young people, for the most part in their teens, are receiving mainstream attention. Companies such as the Liverpoolbased 20 Stories High, Bradford’s Common Wealth, Islington Community Theatre and our own Manchester-based Contact Young Company are performing at high-profile venues and festivals, and getting widespread public acclaim and, importantly, serious critical coverage which discusses the work as intended: as art. (Fenton 2015)

Youth theatre is an underrepresented form of theatre in both theatre criticism and academic research. In 2004, Jenny Hughes and Karen Wilson undertook the most extensive research into youth theatre in the UK to date. In their report they comment on the lack of recognition of youth theatre and note that it has ‘attracted little interest from the research world and there is a scarcity of publicly available literature’ (Hughes and Wilson 2004: 61). While this is the case, they also note claims that involvement with youth theatre can change its participants and that it has benefits for young people’s personal and social growth (Hughes and Wilson 2004). One such claim is found in the Arts Council



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England’s Boyden Report which stated that youth theatre develops both ‘creativity and self-confidence’ (2000: 38). The notion that youth theatre can be the starting point of transformation is not novel. Hughes and Wilson (2004) recognize that youth theatre is perceived to have both personal and social effects on participants who have been marginalized by their socio-economic circumstances. The impact of youth theatre and Applied Theatre on participants has been contested, and I am mindful of researchers who counsel restraint when making grand claims about the instrumental value of participating in theatre, discussed in the introduction to this book. These cautions should however not prevent us from considering ways to engage with these difficulties by offering young people opportunities to explore the world and their place in it through theatre. We do need to be mindful of making the claim that drama changed and transformed them, as it is unlikely that theatre alone can do this; however, it can become a contributing factor for young people to re-examine their surroundings, the injustices at play in their worlds and to imagine ways in which they can resist the assumption that change is not possible. It can allow young people who are participants, co-creators and performers to glimpse a utopic vision of how things might be different as a starting point to imagining a different future. Youth theatre could, and I  would suggest for some does, provide a thirdspace which invites forward thinking when it offers young people a place to explore who they are in their world. That is not to say that all youth theatre spaces operate in this way. In their study, Hughes and Wilson describe youth theatre as ‘a broad term used to describe a whole variety of organizations that engage young people in theatre-related activities. It takes place outside of formal education and is founded on the voluntary participation of young people’ (Hughes and Wilson 2004: 58). They go on to describe a range of activities that fall under this umbrella heading and name four models for youth theatre: theatre/ arts, community, youth arts and Applied Theatre (Hughes and Wilson 2004). Each of Hughes and Wilson’s models has the potential to provide youth with a vital thirdspace. To explore this, I turn to Company Three,

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a youth theatre whose aims are consistent with much that Hughes and Wilson describe. Company Three seek to provide ‘access to professional quality drama and theatre processes’, ‘to reflect and represent concerns of specific communities’, in this case the youth themselves, and ‘to support the personal, social and political development of young people’. Applied Theatre is the only activity on Hughes and Wilson’s list that Company Three do not actively support. In Hughes and Wilson’s model, Applied Theatre seeks to ‘address specific issues and deliver non-arts related outcomes using theatre as a tool’ (ibid.:  62). Company Three do not intend to deliver non-arts-related outcomes; in fact, they aim to ‘make theatre for adult audiences’ (Company Three 2020). I  would argue, however, that Company Three engage in, albeit on an unconscious or unintentional way, a pedagogy of utopia through their practice. At the same time as producing theatre that is creative, engaging and with high production values, they amplify the voices of the young members through long-term, deeply embedded partnerships. Matt Fenton is correct when he says that Company Three are pushing the boundaries of what youth can do in mainstream theatre venues. On 23 July 2015 at 6.45 pm I  was in an auditorium waiting for a piece of youth theatre to start. What was out of the ordinary on this occasion was that the theatre was fully packed with people of all ages. I  was sat next to a secondary school drama teacher and her elderly mother, and in front of me was an excitable group of schoolchildren. I could see middle-aged men in suits, teenagers, children and a wide diversity of people; what was more extraordinary still was that this was the auditorium of one of the spaces in London’s National Theatre (NT). The piece, Brainstorm, created by Company Three, then called Islington Community Theatre, was being performed in the NT’s Temporary Theatre. This space seats 450 people and the night I  was there Brainstorm was midway through a sold-out run. On their website, the NT describes the Temporary Theatre as ‘a brand-new theatre celebrating adventurous, ambitious and unexpected theatre’ (National Theatre 2016). Brainstorm was indeed adventurous, ambitious and unexpected, and I would say that the NT’s decision to programme the



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piece in July 2015, and again in March 2016, is also all of these things, and much more. Brainstorm was initially a forty-five-minute-long scratch performance of theatre devised by Company Three in 2013. The piece drew on the life experiences of young people in the cast and was inspired by a TED Talk on the working of the adolescent brain by cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. This short piece was then developed into a full-length play in partnership with Blakemore and her colleague Kate Mills. Company Three were invited to perform Brainstorm at the NT twice (21–25 July 2015 and 29 March–2 April 2016) – not as a part of a youth theatre festival, or run of community performances, but as part of the main programming. The play was also produced for BBC iPlayer as part of BBC and Battersea Arts Centre’s Live events broadcast from Television Centre in November 2015.1 The script (or blueprint as Company Three prefers) was published by Nick Hern Books in 2016.

Brainstorm As a piece of theatre, Brainstorm was vibrant, energetic and highly original. It was performed and devised by young people who clearly were not trained writers and performers; nevertheless, their performances were engaging, professional and delivered with a brutal honesty that was impressive to watch. Kate Maltby, theatre critic for The Times, wrote of the production:  ‘this is everything youth theatre could hope to be … there’s a deep honesty matched by an artistry and creative format that puts many of The National’s recent projects to shame’ (Maltby 2015). With Brainstorm, youth theatre was brought out of the school and community hall, and into the mainstream. Matt Fenton (2015) observed: Traditionally, work made by young people within main-house theatres has been the domain of education, creative learning or outreach departments, often slightly side-lined within the public programme,

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and not really concerned with the core business of commissioning and producing. The tendency has been to mirror and, in a benign way, educate young people to appreciate rather than challenge what is happening on our main stages. The audiences for the resulting shows have often been mainly the friends and family of those taking part.

In this case the piece had been ‘commissioned’ by the NT and the audience were not merely the friends and family members of the cast – and it challenged rather than mirrored mainstream work. In this way, Fenton argues, young people’s theatre was ‘tearing up the script’ for British theatre. The play conveys two primary messages: first, that the teenage brain is not a dysfunctional version of the adult brain and that it has evolved to generate behaviours that facilitate development, such as risk-taking and self-consciousness; and second, that during adolescence, the limbic system, the part of the brain region that makes risk-taking rewarding, develops far more quickly than other areas of the brain, making risk taking extremely attractive to young people. The young people, as part of the process, learnt about neuroscience in ways that made sense to them, helped them to understand their emotions and behaviour, and then communicate that to their parents and caregivers and then beyond to a public audience. One 18-year-old male cast member said in a focus group, ‘Biologically, I’ve learnt why we are like this and telling this to my mum, we both understand things now, so it’s helped at home.’ Another said, ‘Brainstorm is like something that is different, the meaning to it and what it’s about definitely interested me … I wanted to learn and experience it … I learnt that the reason I am like this is that my brain is not fully developed.’ Another described how her mother responded to a scene in which teenagers hold up placards with the things that they feel they cannot say to their parents’ faces. ‘After my mum saw that scene’, the company member reported, ‘she was crying to me, saying, “Oh I’m so sorry, sorry I treated you this way” ’ (Behrmann 2015: 3). One of the 14-year-olds in the cast explained, ‘Brainstorm is a way of telling adults that teenagers are like they are because that’s their brains, it’s not bad it’s supposed to happen … it’s true that teenagers are treated differently



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and I  really want to change people’s minds.’ He continued to explain the difference being in Company Three had made to him, telling us that he valued the sense of community spirit and collegiality that being in the company engendered. For bell hooks, when one knows ‘extreme estrangement and alienation … home is no longer just one place. It is locations’ (hooks 1989a: 19). Many of the young members of Company Three have certainly felt such estrangement and alienation. hooks describes home as a place that encourages and supports different and changing viewpoints that form part of the ‘construction of a new world order’ (ibid.). They are spaces of ‘radical openness’ and ‘without such spaces we would not survive’ (ibid.). This sense of home, and of survival, is echoed in the young people’s words when they talk about Company Three. They are echoed in the way Glasier has conceived the space of the company and the ethos of their working methods. When Glasier opened our conversation in 2016 with the words ‘I have this story about how youth theatre saved my life’, he is only partly joking. Ideas of ‘radical openness’, of home and of survival are also implicit in my thinking about thirdspaces and a pedagogy of utopia. It is clear when talking to the participants that they relate the quality of the work to the atmosphere created by Glasier and the rest of the company and that this relates to trust in the process, each other and Glasier, and the ownership they feel over the work. One of the female cast members stated, I like the atmosphere and I feel like I can be myself when I am here, anything I  want to express I  can express … I  feel like I  can express myself here more than I  can at school … If you want to develop yourself and find out who you are you should come here … At the start I was like, I don’t know how this is going to be … I didn’t know how it was going to talk to parents. I didn’t know it was going to have that effect. It was everyone’s idea, it came from all our heads. I have changed, I  still got my politeness, I  have changed in a good way … I  have found my confidence, I  am more open to challenges since I came here … we explore things we wouldn’t know, you wouldn’t get asked these questions you wouldn’t know you could write … even if

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you are having a bad day, its good here … I am studying business … you have to get your head in the books, but I would like to continue with drama … the way things go to people … it helps me with my English … maybe I think I have to be committed, it shows me that you have to be committed and show commitment.

Brainstorm is undoubtedly ‘art’, but it is also a product of a pedagogy of utopia. Glasier and Company Three’s methodology provided a longterm, deeply sustained engagement in a thirdspace that invited the young people of the company to co-create art while developing critical thinking and confidence. The young people talk enthusiastically about the confidence Company Three has enabled them to find: It’s made me really confident, I  am able to speak my mind and say whatever I want now, I used to be a bit shy and hold back … I respect other people’s decisions and skills … it’s given me a different eye to things. The research and development is the best bit, my favourite bit is the start of the process because there are so many possibilities.

I would suggest that Company Three are opening up Ricoeur’s field of the possible  – both in artistic terms and also within the lives of the young people they work alongside, and potentially for the audiences who see the work. This field may also be opened up for those who use the Company’s ‘blueprints’. These blueprints provide a structure to follow and ideas for script development. The nature of the blueprints means that no two productions of the play will ever be the same as new casts in different places will incorporate their own stories. As of November 2020, there have been over eighty productions worldwide; Glasier told me there had been three happening in three different parts of the world in the week prior to our conversation. Brainstorm, like the other productions Company Three have made, is a piece of art. In 2019 the company had a quote from the renowned theatre critic Lyn Gardner on their website’s landing page:  ‘What Company Three is doing is not social work but art, art that stands shoulder to shoulder with some of the most inventive and high quality theatre currently being made in the UK.’ She was right, and I would say that through this



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work the Company also engage the social imaginations of its young members, and that their approach to ‘integrated investment’ allows them to configure a nebulous utopia. They are now sharing the means of creating a nebulous utopia through their director workshops and the publication of the blueprints by Nick Hern Books.

The Company Three methodology Ned Glasier, the artistic director of Company Three, describes the ‘den’ of the Company’s offices as a vital space the young people of the theatre can use as they see fit:  as a hangout space, a space to do homework, to gossip, to read. He describes it as a space over which they have ownership. He also cites this concept as being important to the formulation of the Company and its ethos. In the last eight years he and the Board have changed the company’s name from The Islington Youth Theatre, to Islington Community Theatre and finally its current name, Company Three. Glasier says they settled on this for several reasons. He jokes that it was because it is the Company’s third name, but aside from this, Glasier explains that the name relates to the way the theatre space and its office in a nearby library function as a thirdspace for the company’s young members. It is a thirdspace in the sense that it is unregulated; that is, not school or the family home (Glasier 2019). As a thirdspace, it is one in which young people ‘can gather to affirm their sense of difference and celebrate their feelings of belonging’ (Matthews, Limb and Taylor 2000:  64). This thirdspace is a ‘lived space’ where young people develop their own identities and challenge hegemony by contesting social conventions and asserting their independence. Glasier also says the name represents the three rules that this youth theatre operates on:  be kind; be brave; be yourself. The name deliberately excludes the words ‘youth’ and ‘theatre’. The removal of the term theatre, Glasier says, reflects that they wanted a name that the company could ‘morph’, a name that does not require them to make theatre but which ‘has allowed’ them ‘to make theatre for all the right reasons’. Having

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‘company’ in the title also carries a good deal of weight; the young people work as a legitimate theatre company in which they are given credit as creators of the work alongside the creative team. According to Glasier, adults sometimes say that seeing the work is like spending time in the company of teenagers (Glasier 2019). Through their creative work, the young members of Company Three are able to create alternative versions of themselves and imagine different futures. This is made possible through the practice of ‘integrated investment’, as described in Chapter 2. This methodology pulls a diverse group of young people together into a unified and sustained creative community. They pool their skills and invest their time for mutual benefit and, in the case of Company Three, produce high-quality theatre for audiences of all ages. The Company Three website proclaimed in 2018 that it was an award-winning ‘permanent company of 75 theatre makers, aged 11-19’ based in Islington, London. This statement tells me two important things for the context of this book: first, that it is a ‘permanent’ group of 11- to 19-year-olds, that is, there is a reciprocal long-term commitment between the young people and the Company, and second, that they are a theatre company. The second statement on the website at that time told us that ‘we make theatre for adult audiences that speaks deeply of what it means to be a teenager, through long-term collaboration between our company members and professional theatremakers’. Teachers, youth workers or social workers nominate Glasier’s team’s young members who they believe would benefit from long-term and in-depth training and guidance. Company members attend weekly workshops during term-time and intensive projects during the school holidays and the core company members make public performance work. In addition, Company Three provide a programme of satellite projects which enable them to engage with a wider cohort of more than five hundred young people each year. These projects are thematically linked to the core company activities and vary in length from one-off workshops to a year-round programme of weekly, open-access ‘drop-in’ classes. Satellite projects also provide an additional referral route for young people to access the Company. Glasier explains that in recruiting



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for the core Company he is not ‘looking for talent’ but that he is looking for ‘young people who want to tell their story but may not have the space, confidence or platform to do it. Or perhaps who do not even know they want to. We look for young people with the capacity to be kind and brave, but who may not always be able to do both yet. We are looking for people who can grow and develop and change and young people who have a bit of spark and who are a bit weird … in the nicest way. And curating a group that aren’t all the same … it’s a balance. It’s a mixed group: ethnically, class experiences and school – difference is great’(Glasier 2019). Glasier frames the opportunity to join the company as something exclusive, something to be valued and he talks about it being like getting an invitation to the guest list of a really good party. The young company members all live in the London Borough of Islington,2 and the company’s demographic reflects that of the borough in which it is housed. Long-term commitment allows Glasier and other Company Three artists to get to know the young people well. He believes that this deeply embedded and integrated investment offers stability to those who may be lacking this in other areas of their lives. This long-term engagement is emphasized when a new young person joins the group. When they are introduced to the company, they meet the older members and, in Glasier’s words, ‘they see the journey ahead of them’ (Glasier 2019). This is a long journey. Some of the youth are as young as 11 when they join and may stay until they are 19. One young person, describing her first meeting with the group six years earlier, recalled Glasier telling the group that ‘the newest member is the most important member of the company’ (ibid.). The end of a young person’s experience with the company is as important as that first day. Glasier is adamant that the end of their time with the company is age bound and that the moment is marked with a ceremony called Bonfire, described as When they leave they get burned on a bonfire and ascend into adulthood, and the gesture of that is that they should be sad that they are leaving their teenage years rather than celebrate that they

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are leaving their teenage years. But they also talk back, the point of being burned in the bonfire is that you do a two-minute performance solo, back to the whole company and part of that is that you are saying goodbye to the company … the heart of that I think is about saying goodbye and proper endings, but it’s also about showing the youngest what the future is and the youngest all talk about what they are going to do at Bonfire. (Glasier 2019)

In this way the newest members can see that they are part of a longterm project. Company Three, though, do not keep all seventy-five of its members for the whole nine years. Glasier talks candidly about those who leave sooner but emphasizes that they do this in negotiation with the company, citing examples of people who have left for a short while to concentrate their energies in other places or who are looking for a more traditional youth theatre environment that perhaps favours working on scripts rather than devising. He also discusses how hard the company fights to keep its young people: We spend a load of resource and energy on looking after people, I think that’s really important and if you are not there a week you’ll get chased and if you’re not there two weeks you get a massive chase because that’s danger zone, and we try and have some kind of holistic approach, we have a member of staff … whose job is making sure people are all right. (Glasier 2019)

Company Three’s long-term commitment to its young people is described by Glasier as being ‘love’, not in the romantic sense, but a deep, caring approach to the young people as individuals, as who they are now and for the creative process. The physical thirdspace that the company provides is an integral part of this embedded engagement. He states that their first mission is to ‘create space … physical space that people have ownership over’. Glasier asserts that one such space is the ‘den’ which he describes as ‘a space which is entirely theirs, which they can come to any time, which isn’t ever hired out to adults … that they can break, that they can move around, where they can come and have genuine agency’ (Glasier 2019). The den is an extension of Glasier’s interest in



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‘play work’. In such work, the agency of those who play is central. He states that this is the concept behind the artistic work the company makes, and this philosophy extends to the den space. That the company has a space specifically for its young people to take complete ownership over, to decorate, use as they wish, to experiment in, to retreat into, to seek refuge in or even ‘to trash’ (ibid.) is an index for the ethos at the heart of the company. The young people have complete agency over this space and to a very large extent the subject matter and devised contents of the theatrical work the company produces. The den, like the company, operates within the three cardinal rules, that the young people need to be kind, brave and true to themselves. In focus groups the young people quote these rules back and explain their importance. One 17-year-old male participant said, ‘I live by those rules … every human should. I live by them not just at [Company Three] but outside … it’s like you’re not judged … make[s]‌you believe that you can do it … it makes me want to come back … I think I am more aware of things, how I treat people’ (Holt 2015). An 18-year-old female, almost at the end of her time with Company Three, expanded on this point by adding that Company Three ‘is the place where I can be me, people don’t judge you that’s what makes me go back … the three rules keep me coming back’ (ibid.). The non-judgemental ethos pervades the creative work that the company makes. The three rules ensure equity in the room for all the participants and invites them to take creative risks and for them to have agency within the creative process. This agency and Glasier’s directorial skills combine to ensure that the company’s performances are both edgy and innovative. Theatre critic Lyn Gardner’s review highlighted this aspect of Brainstorm: ‘This is a very cunningly put together piece, drawing with unflinching honesty on material excavated from the young people’s own lives (the things that cannot be spoken are written; the things that cannot be admitted in public are gamified … capturing the hormonal rush and wild mood swings of teenage existence’ (Gardner 2015). As an audience member, the risks the young people are taking in the show are palpable and the teenage hormonal rush is infectious, or at least Brainstorm evokes powerful memories for the adult audience of

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that period in their own lives. The sense of exhilaration that the show produces for its cast and audiences is a result of the risks taken by the young people. The sustained engagement with young people produces a suitable environment for risk-taking and enables the youth to devise work with ‘unflinching honesty’. Glasier says, ‘If you want them to take risks … you have to make it really safe.’ He criticizes those who ‘assume that you can meet people for a short space of time and ask them to open themselves up in a really vulnerable way’. He talks of how he used to ‘contort’ himself to work with inappropriately short timescales, but is adamant that they cannot work (Glasier 2019). This commitment to long-term partnership aligns the ethos of the company with a pedagogy of utopia, as does its use of the thirdspace and its commitment to the amplification of voices less often heard. Company Three stages autobiographical material that has been fictionized. The work has a rawness and directness that comes from their experiences of being young Londoners. Their experiences are written into the work, sometimes their specific stories, sometimes as composite characters. The young people say that this aspect of the devising process allows them to share real feelings, thoughts and experiences. One of the 14-year-old young men said, ‘it’s a warming community we are like a small family, spending time together sharing personal experiences having a laugh and making things’. A young woman, aged 16, said, I feel the fact that we can be honest, I  can say it, whatever it is, it’s something to look forward to, you never have to do anything you don’t wanna do … so it’s not like school where there are rules that you have to follow no matter what. I  keep coming back because I  have great friends here; everyone is like a family, but better. (Holt 2015)

In this respect, the young people of Company Three were offering reflections on the work and the process that are remarkably similar to those members of To Protect, Serve and Understand at Irondale Theater in Brooklyn, discussed in the previous chapter. However, for these young people that engagement is often over a period of years rather than weeks, and so the company and its ethos become more



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deeply embedded in their lives. The young people also recognize the importance of the long-term engagement:  ‘It’s long term … till I  am nineteen and not just for six weeks, and so it gives you stability’ (Holt 2015). New pieces are often devised in the context of residencies which gives the company a chance to bond as a group and to explore ideas and issues in depth. One of the participants explained how a summer residential had affected both him and the piece they were creating: Nobody will ever forget it, it was amazing … we stayed for three nights and we wasn’t this close but now we are really close … It’s important because we know we have each other’s backs on stage, off stage, we understand each other, it’s a safe place, because when we was doing our R & D for the show it got into a lot of deep stuff … We used to record conversations we had … like [name] has epilepsy so we all know that we work with that and have her back and we will pick it up and not panic … We’ve spent a lot of time with each other and we have fun and do everything together. We are not the same, we are all different but we can all have fun … even if we are different there is always a way for us to be together and join in. Nobody is left alone, everyone is always thinking about each other. We put as much or as little input that we want. I don’t think all companies … if your teacher doesn’t like your idea they will change it but we do a compromise. It’s our words, its autobiographical and its 100 per cent true. They take everything we give them and it all goes in … you can take things out if you don’t feel comfortable with something in the play … so we can take things out whenever we want to. It’s always a safe place no one ever feels pressure. [Name] takes out personal info depending who from her family was in the audience. Or we didn’t say it was us, so as audience members we don’t know whose story it is … it’s anonymous. No one would ever know whose story is whose. (Holt 2015)

The trust enabled by the ethos of the company helped create Brainstorm, one of the most astonishing pieces of theatre I have seen in recent years. When asked how the cast felt able to share the aspects of their lives that went into the development of the script for the show, one of the cast simply said it ‘was easy [because] we knew each other … we could give

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so much but wasn’t forced to’. The conceptual and physical thirdspace that Company Three creates for its young people is key to all of this, as are long-term partnerships, the invitation to engage in aspirational thinking, and the articulation and amplification of the young people’s voices. In this respect, the work of Company Three meets the first four elements of a pedagogy of utopia. Company Three is a space that opens possibilities in individual young people, their families and wider audiences. As such, it is a theatre that challenges hegemony and demands change, helping it to meet the fifth element:  it is a practice that encompasses the notion of resistance and it enacts a pedagogy of utopia that is political, equitable and which resists the status quo. hooks calls on ‘those of us who would participate in the formation of counterhegemonic cultural practices to identify the spaces where we begin the process of revision’ to find spaces of radical openness and spaces of resistance (hooks 1989a:  15). For hooks, the margins offer such spaces and with them the ‘radical possibility of a new perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds’ (hooks 1989a:  20). In the following chapter, I  explore how a pedagogy of utopia can provide geographies of resistance which invite new resistant imaginings for participants.

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This chapter considers how the thirdspace of a pedagogy of utopia contributes to the aim of promoting social justice through the construction of spaces in which geographies and communities of resistance can be created. The chapter explores how the spaces in which drama workshops happen can resist hegemony. If Henri Lefebvre sees space as ‘alive … quantitative, fluid and dynamic’ (Lefebvre 1991: 42) then all spaces can become counter-hegemonic. Such fluidity allows people to change the way spaces are used, to reconfigure them in both the lived experiences and the imagination of those who use them. While working on a community or participatory theatre-making project, participants often change the use of a space and inscribe new meanings onto it. Via these means of (re)inscription, the places in which Applied Theatre plays out can function as utopic spaces of resistance or, to use the words of bell hooks, ‘geographies of resistance’. As she describes these geographies, hooks tells us that one’s mere presence in a space can be a disruption. She is specifically referring to people of the global majority or from ‘poor and underclass communities’ who enter universities and culturally elite spaces and who are unwilling to ‘surrender every vestige of who we were before we were there’ (hooks 1989a: 19). She describes how it is necessary for people from the global majority to either play the role of the other or to carve out spaces within the dominant culture where they can remain whole. In elite spaces, the presence of the non-dominant becomes a disruption of the hegemonic order; they are not safe spaces but spaces of risk for those marginalized and excluded by social injustice. Disrupting these spaces allows radical alternatives to the established spatial order

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to be imagined. I am reminded of Crossing Bridges and our presence as a company at the off-Broadway Helen Mills Theatre in New  York, disrupting the usual images associated with performance companies in this prestigious environment and disrupting the make-up of the usual clientele. I am also reminded of Company Three and their performance at the National Theatre (NT) and their presence on BBC iPlayer. Here, I explore the disruption of cultural centres and spaces via presence and will end with a consideration of street performances in an urban village in India. But first, I begin by considering presence as disruption within the context of the NT’s Connections programme.

The disruption of presence: NT’s Connections On 7 July 2014, I  sat in the auditorium of the NT, awaiting the start of Pronoun, a play written by Evan Placey and staged as part of NT’s Connections. I  tweeted, ‘Amazing to be in a packed Olivier Theatre for youth theatre. Imagine that, youth theatre on the main stage at the National.’ The auditorium of the Olivier stage seats 890 people and while it was not quite a full house, it was close. The play was about a young trans man and their relationship with friends and family as they begin to transition. It was being performed by a youth theatre from St Austell College in Cornwall. The audience was lively but respectful and was diverse in age, ethnic backgrounds and class  – looking more like the cross section of people you would see on the London underground than you would expect at the NT. I  suggest that this annual youth theatre ‘take over’ of the National creates a welcome disruption by means of presence alone even before the programme is performed. I have been loosely involved in Connections since 2006, Central and the NT have a partnership whereby teachers and directors who take part in the scheme can take a Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Theatre with Young People as part of their work on it. This means that I regularly see performances from Connections and discuss the work with the students who use their work with the NT as research for their assignments.



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The Connections Festival sees ten youth theatres perform their plays on the stage in the NT each year, giving the audiences of our cultural flagship theatre an opportunity to engage with youth theatre. The Connection Scheme was launched in 1993 by Jenny Harris, the former head of the NT Education department, and Suzi Graham-Adriani, who was then their producer of youth theatre projects. Since then, each year the Connections production team has commissioned ten professional writers to write a play for 13- to 19-year-olds.1 Over the years, the NT has commissioned and published over 160 plays from established and widely respected writers, including some of Britain’s best-known playwrights such as Winsome Pinnock, Bryony Lavery, Roy Williams, Mark Ravenhill, Denis Kelly and some from outside the UK, such as David Mamet and Dario Fo. This scheme gives young people, youth theatres and schools the opportunity to produce one of these plays and experience theatre-making in a professional environment. Each of the productions that result from the scheme are staged first in the youth theatre’s own venues and then transferred to one of the professional partner theatres in their region. One version of each play is then invited to perform at the NT itself. This is youth theatre on a grand scale. There has been little research specifically into NT Connections with the exception of John Deeney’s article in 2007 in which he considered the efficacy and ethics of the NT’s decision in 2006 to stage three professional productions of Connections plays in repertory at the Cottesloe (the NT’s studio theatre) and focuses on two plays written by Mark Ravenhill for the scheme: Totally Over You (2003) and Citizenship (2005). More recently, in 2012 Maggie Inchley considered the professional productions of Connections plays in her article, ‘Hearing Young Voices on the London Stage: “Shit Bein’ Seventeen Int it? Never Take Us Serious” ’. Inchley focuses on Enda Walsh’s Chatroom (2005) as well as Citizenship and several other UK plays that have young characters as protagonists. However, these articles focus on the plays themselves, giving close readings and detailed analyses of the texts, rather than the applied or participatory nature of their production.2 In 2019 I  wrote a short chapter on the NT Connection scheme that

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considered the value of the work for young people and draw on that chapter here. NT Connections invites large numbers of youth in the UK to actively take part in theatre. When it works at its best the young people involved are active agents co-creating a production with a director using a play especially written for young people. How much agency the young people have in the work is very much down to the individual director and the structure of the text they are working on. The aims of the scheme are to ●

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inspire 13- to 19-year-olds with high-quality new playwriting; give companies the knowledge, skills and confidence to bring the plays to life; involve a wide range of young companies, giving additional support where needed; encourage young people to get involved in all aspects of theatre making.

In an interview for the NT magazine, Rob Watt, the Connections producer from 2009 to 2015, explains that Beginning in 1995, Connections was born out of the idea that theatre for young people is rarely about their own world or experiences … The focus of Connections, then and now, is to give young people across the UK and the globe access to new and innovative writing that is solely for them and about them; giving their view of the world a voice. (National Theatre 2011: 11)

Commissioning writers each year is just the start of a process that then leads to youth theatre directors and drama teachers applying to the scheme in the early summer and discovering if they have been approved to take part by mid-July. By early September, each selects their first, second and third choice of script and the NT team assigns plays to each director ensuring an even spread of plays for each of the regional partner theatres’ own festivals. In October all the directors attend a weekend hosted by the NT where each works with the writer of their



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play and the other directors doing the same script and an NT associate director. They workshop the play and take part in skills sessions. After the weekend the directors and their cast and crew go into a rehearsal process between October and February and give performances in their home venues between February and March. The NT sends out a director of their own to watch the performance, meet with the cast and compile a show report before the partner theatre transfer. The transfer happens between March and May as part of a festival of Connections plays at the partner venue. For Watt this is the ‘exciting’ part of the process because the young people ‘watch other young people’s work – they’re all treated as professionals and there is a real festival atmosphere’ (Khan 2014). After this, ten companies are invited to perform at the NT festival in what the NT website describes as ‘an exciting celebration of all the hard work which has taken place throughout the year’ (National Theatre 2015). Deeney describes the Connections Scheme as a ‘sustainable venture of some considerable magnitude’ (Deeney 2007:  331). In his fifty-year history of the NT, Daniel Rosenthall discusses this magnitude in terms of both participant numbers and economics when he states: By 2013, more than 50,000 young actors had taken part in Connections in the UK; more than ten times that number had watched the home performances and region showcases, giving the project an immense educational and community impact, which explains why it regularly attracted six-figure support from a title or lead sponsor:  British Telecom from 1996 until 1999, Shell from 2003 to 2006; Bank of America from 2007-2009. Hytner and Nick Starr’s commitment to Connections is evident in their allocating requisite funds from the central NT budget whenever there has been a shortfall in Connections’ sponsorship. (Rosenthall 2013: 757)

This investment has been continued since 2015 by the current director, Rufus Norris, as discussed in Chapter 4 of this book. Connections, undoubtedly, engages large numbers of children and young people giving them access to scripts written specifically for them, and to

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professional theatre venues; it also provides training and support for drama teachers and youth theatre directors who take part in the scheme. The plays themselves vary a great deal in scope and theme and in their ability to foster a pedagogy of utopia that invites creative, critical and aspirational thinking, articulation and a thirdspace in which social injustice can be resisted.

Disrupting cultural spaces In her review of the Connections Festival at the NT in 2004, Lyn Gardner asked:  ‘Who does the National Theatre belong to?’ Her response is: ‘Us, of course. But it doesn’t always feel like that. Even with Nick Hytner in charge, the National often feels as if it is for them. But for one week of the year it feels genuinely national and truly ours when young people from schools and youth groups from all over the country take over the Cottesloe’3 (Gardner 2004). In the same year, Nick Hytner (then the director of the NT) declared that Connections is a ‘model of what theatre should be, and of what I hope the NT will be in years to come’ (Rosenthal 2013: 754). This celebration of youth theatre in the NT is certainly extraordinary in terms of the usual NT programming and audiences. Although the scheme is to be commended, there may be a more pragmatic position for its scheduling: ‘As the name suggests, Connections links the National to thousands of young people and their families, who might never have visited the South Bank, and, in the process, generates considerable positive coverage on local radio and television, and especially, in small-circulation newspapers that would seldom, if ever, cover NT productions in London’ (ibid.: 756). By giving three hundred schools from across the UK the opportunity to participate in theatre-making and then to perform in professional venues, NT Connections encourages access to publicly funded culture, reaching a wider demographic of the UK’s population than is the norm. NT Connections also provides access to professionals and professional venues that are beyond the scope of most school drama



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departments in the UK. Rufus Norris, the current director of the NT, like his predecessors firmly supports Connections and the schemes’ ability to introduce young people to theatre. After the performance of The Accordion Shop that was chosen to showcase this play on the main stage at the NT in 2015, Norris took to the stage to tell the audience that Connections is the most important work we do, he said, ‘It is what we are most proud of.’ Having started at the Swan Youth Theatre [Worcester], he went on to say, his experiences there have been the bedrock of his career, teaching him empathy, cooperation, creativity and courage. (Godwin 2015)

The activity involved in the programme may amplify the qualities Norris talks about here; they are not what makes Connections radical. Broadly speaking, the young people have relatively little agency within the productions; the programme itself does not enact a pedagogy of utopia. Instead, I would locate the radicality of Connections in that it facilitates the insurgence of young people, physically, into the National’s auditoria. I do not intend to minimize that impact. I agree with hooks when she claims that mere presence is resistance and the Connections Festival enacts such powerful resistance-by-means-of-presence on an annual basis. The year 2015 was Norris’s first year as head of the NT; when taking up the role in an interview with The Guardian given in that year he said that the National Theatre has to be a broad church, I would love it to be a broader church and I think it is very important that we reflect the city and the country we are in. We have to be national in terms of what we are debating, the subjects we are looking at, and particularly the people and stories we are presenting. (Crompton 2015)

In 2018, the launch of the Public Acts project can be viewed as part of this mission to broaden the demographic of those directly involved with the NT and is one that also generated a breed of resistance. Public Acts is a ‘nationwide initiative to create extraordinary acts of theatre

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and community’ (National Theatre n.d.). In 2018, the project produced Shakespeare’s Pericles (26–28 August) in the Olivier Theatre with a community cast of two hundred, coming from a variety of organizations that focus on health and medical practices, youth services, childhood adversity, vulnerable children and young people, elders, Asian welfare and homelessness. The director of the Public Acts programme, Emily Lim, worked with Company Three and its director Ned Glasier on the creation of Brainstorm, discussed in the previous chapter. Lim cites Company Three as one of her inspirations for creating community theatre (Queen’s Theatre 2019). Like Connections, Public Acts brings to the main stage of the National casts who are not the usual and invites community groups to occupy a space that they would not usually inhabit. This potentially changes their relationship with the National Theatre and awards them ownership, as Lyn Gardner’s words suggest. Sally Mackey’s work on performance and place, and how the first changes our perceptions of the second, is seminal. In 2019, Mackey’s Performing Bexley was the latest in a series of projects that disrupted public spaces ‘to draw attention to the importance of “place”, the people in that place and the caring for strangers there’ (Royal Central School 2019). Mackey states, ‘Our practices can trouble the meaning of place, destabilising suppositions of locality, dwelling, inhabitation, territory, indigeneity, community, residence, belonging, connection and ownership’ (Mackey 2016:  107). She affirms that performing in places can ‘interrogate’ and change participants’ relationships with those places. I would add that a pedagogy of utopia that interrogates performance into places also interrogates how participants view their ‘place’ in their world and invites changes in self-perception. On a small scale, the previously discussed Children’s Theatre Project has the potential to ‘disrupt’ its participants’ self-perceptions and develop their aspirational thinking by means of manipulating space. The project temporarily changes a space within the prison (a faith room, a classroom or a football pitch) into a theatre space, potentially creating different associations and feelings for the men about those spaces. Changing the space from a drab prison with grey or green walls, to



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the setting for an imaginative story involving woodland animals, pirate escapades, or dragons and sea monsters, is part of creating a thirdspace within the confines of a prison. This thirdspace supports the risks the men take when devising and performing theatre. This ‘re-envisioning’ of place is a key part of the project (Mackey 2016: 107). This process disrupts the men’s perceptions of themselves and their potential futures. It also disrupts the prison routine for the institution:  changes to the schedules of the participants and the officers are necessary to permit the daily rehearsals. During the performance day itself, this disruption is felt right through the prison, from the gate staff who admit the children into the buildings, to the catering staff who create a picnic for the families and to the other staff who work an extra Saturday to ensure the day goes smoothly. I  have also been told at every performance day, by an officer or education worker of the prison, that there is the potential to disrupt the officers’ mindsets as their perceptions of one or more of the men involved have been changed by seeing them perform. As such, this project creates a temporary geography of resistance that disrupts the status quo for all of those involved, whether that be directly as participants or indirectly as onlooking prison officers. Its reach is limited by the prison walls, but when projects that are pedagogies of utopia occupy professional theatre spaces, their potential for disruption grows exponentially. There are several Applied Theatre or participatory theatre companies working in various countries that take so-called ‘prison theatre’ into public spaces with the aim of disrupting the public perception of offenders and the criminal justice system. To use the words of the Synergy Theatre Project, these companies seek ‘to break down barriers’ (Synergy Theatre 2017a). Synergy makes theatre in prisons with inmates in partnership with professional actors. In addition, they make theatre with those who have served their sentences and moved back into society. It also creates work for touring in schools, young offender centres and pupil referral units and runs a series of educational training schemes for ex-offenders in London. Synergy regularly stages theatre written and performed by those with experience of the criminal justice

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system in London. In 2019, their performance of There Is a Field took place at Theatre 503, a 63-seat theatre which is known for producing new writing, and was reviewed by mainstream theatre reviewers for The Stage and a number of theatre review websites. In 2017, Synergy presented its second festival of plays written by ‘former prisoners’ at the same venue (Synergy Theatre 2017b). This festival was a collection of four plays – which included a first public reading of There Is a Field. Previously, the company has also performed at the Soho Theatre (Convictions May 2011, The Long Road May 2008) and in April 2010 their production of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train was seen by over two thousand people in a sell-out run at the Trafalgar Studios and in August of the same year by eight hundred people at the Greenbelt Festival (Kettering, UK). Other Applied Theatre companies that make theatre with those who have experience of the criminal justice system to raise public awareness of issues surrounding prison, crime and legal systems have also performed at high-profile London Theatres. Clean Break, a woman-only theatre company producing work with ex-offenders and about the criminal justice system, have worked in partnership with the Donmar Warehouse (Rebel Voices on Stage 2019, Frientimacy 2014), The Royal Court (Inside Bitch 2019), Theatre Clwyd (Thick as Thieves 2018), the National Theatre ([Bank] 2018), and they regularly perform at the Chichester and Latitude festivals. Companies like Synergy and Clean Break disrupt the UK’s theatre spaces by exposing audiences of mainstream theatres to work written by and performed by people who they might not meet and invite them to hear stories to which they are not normally exposed. It is debatable whether seeing these works really changes the audiences’ perceptions or if the audience only consists of those with a vested interest in issues surrounding the criminal justice system. Writing in 2017, neuroscientist Robert Blakey made the bold claim that Brainstorm by Company Three did change audiences’ attitudes towards young offenders. He bases this on answers from 728 audience members who responded to four questions about crime before and after watching the play. Having analysed the results of the surveys, Blakey notes that ‘participants recommended a significantly higher



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age of criminal responsibility after exposure’ to Brainstorm (2017: 12). He also states that ‘participants [in his survey] attributed significantly less moral responsibility to the young offender compared … to an adult offender … after exposure’ (Blakey 2017: 13). This suggests that Brainstorm disrupted the audiences’ opinions on youth responsibility for crime. Blakey’s research potentially has deep implications for theatre and social justice. Although I  would suggest that before such claims are convincing, work needs to be expanded to longitudinal studies to assess the longevity of any perceived changes. I can be certain, however, that Brainstorm did change the usual composition of cast and audiences at the National, as did Public Acts in 2018. Connections may be the programme with the greatest potential to disrupt the National’s typical demographics, both off- and onstage. When institutions which are entrenched as bastions of privilege, such as the National Theatre, are turned into spaces of resistance by the presence of those who do not usually perform or spectate in them, there is a particularly powerful resonance for those who disrupt with their presence and for those who witness the disruption. Ricoeur argues that partially realized utopias are ‘atoms of selfmanagement [and] are all challenges to the bureaucratic state. Their claim for radical equality and the complete redistribution of the ways in which decisions are made implies an alternative to the present uses of power in our society’ (Ricoeur 1991: 313). I suggest that pedagogy of utopia projects are such microsocieties in which their equitable practices imply alternatives to the distribution of power in society. Performance texts that allow for gaps, places to pause and think, encourage a critical thinking and a questioning of what is and a consideration of what could be, can be a valid part of this process. The partial utopia for the characters is one that offers a more equitable future, and in doing so invites the young performers to think about what equity might look like in their worlds. In both Dharavi and Crossing Bridges young people were given equal footing in the decision-making and skills sharing as professional theatre makers. In this sense they too enact ‘partially realised utopias’.

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Scholar Ruth Levitas, drawing on her own reading of Ricoeur, argues that ‘utopia is about how we would live and what kind of a world would we live in if we could do just that’ (Levitas 1990: 1). A pedagogy of utopia invites us to perceive just alternatives to our present and spatial orders. This is evident in the Halfway House Project, Children’s Theatre Project and Crossing Bridges, in each of these cases a pedagogy of utopia refines the way the space is used and uses everyday spaces of domination and hegemony as sites of resistance in a search for social and spatial justice.

Seeking spatial justice and jumping scale According to Giroux, ‘for many young people … the private sphere has become the only space in which to imagine any sense of hope, pleasure, or possibility’, adding that culture is ‘an activity in which young people actually produce the conditions of their own agency through dialogue, community participation, public stories and political struggle is being eroded’ (Giroux 2009: 21). Following Giroux, I argue that a pedagogy of utopia, particularly that which engages creative practices, can offer young people an alternative to the private sphere of home and the public sphere of school or work. It can offer a thirdspace in which to ‘produce the conditions of their own agency’. My projects focus on changes in participants rather than audiences, but the audience experience, and the effects of participants’ disruptive presence in elite spaces, is significant. Crossing Bridges used an upmarket rehearsal studio as well as the youth shelter’s gym as the locations for the guest artists to hold their workshops; both are examples of a resistive thirdspace. The ensemble, while devising performances, was invited to cast a critical eye to a society that demonizes and criminalizes youth and homelessness. As we worked together, we forged a new community from aspects of culture from all those in the room and everyone extended themselves and their world view while creating theatre. In this way and in these spaces, the Crossing Bridges company worked



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together without privileging either group and with a spirit of openness. The spaces we worked in were real and imaginary and within the real rooms they created imaginary versions of the world they knew. The young people devised urban fairy tales where the underdog came out on top and created a version of New York in which there was equity for all. When the company moved into the theatre the thirdspace shifted to a new location and invited the young people to enter a real space that was a reminder of the real world’s inequity, oppression and biases. The company acknowledged this shift during the journey from the shelter to the theatre. One of the young people on the project joked as we crossed 34th Street that he didn’t have his passport and so couldn’t cross the street. As we walked uptown together through the theatre district, spatial mobility  – or, more accurately, the lack of it  – was highlighted during the journey. The participants continued to narrate the journey as if they were providing the voiceover for a documentary about an invasion of territory. The commentary released some stress among the participants as the stories produced collective laughter, but this was sharply juxtaposed with the young people’s acute awareness that they did not feel like they belonged in the uptown theatre district. It is important to remember that these young people were all recently homeless and they often tried to stay out of sight for fear of being arrested for loitering and vagrancy. By criminalizing homelessness, the neoliberal city excludes the homeless from public spaces. The inherent contradiction is that they have few alternatives apart from public spaces, and so they must remain out of sight while occupying public space, while living on the streets. But while walking from the shelter to the theatre they did not try to be invisible; quite the opposite, and we all made a spectacle as we navigated Midtown. Lack of monetary and cultural wealth had excluded them from certain areas of the city, but we were on our way to take ownership of one of its theatre spaces for the day. Our work up to this point enacted, in the words of cultural geographer Neil Smith, ‘the production of space in the abstract’. After transferring to the theatre, the work became a ‘concrete production and reproduction of geographical scale’ (Smith 1992: 60).

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Human geographer Peter Taylor outlines a social structure that involves three economic scales: the urban, the national and the global. He mapped their development in terms of capitalist growth and argues that the global is the scale that ‘really matters’ (Taylor 1982: 24). Smith expanded on Taylor’s concept of scale by developing a more socially and culturally nuanced set of scales that included the home and the body, incorporating issues associated with race, gender, sexuality, disease and disability (Smith 1992). Smith also introduced the concept of the ‘politics of scale’ as a ‘geographical scale that defines the boundaries and bounds of identities around which control is exerted and contested’ (ibid.: 66). This concept of scale, which incorporates ideas surrounding where we live and the spaces we move in, recognizes that jumping scale thereby becomes an act of resistance. As an explanation for this theory Smith provided a detailed analysis of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s The Homeless Vehicle. This art installation, first created in 1988, comprised a shopping trolley adapted to hold a homeless person’s possessions, with areas for washing, sleeping and cooking. The vehicle provided protection, transportation and was highly visible on the streets, while also offering the owner privacy through panels attached to the trolley. It also enabled the owner to move through the city and collect bottles and cans to exchange for cash as a means of income generation. Its storage areas and movability made the gathering of such items possible over greater distances than the usual shopping trolleys used by the homeless for such purposes. Smith makes the argument that the vehicle enabled the homeless to ‘jump scales’ or to ‘organize the production and reproduction of daily life and to resist oppression and exploitation at a higher scale – over a wider geographical field’ (ibid.: 60). By inviting the Crossing Bridges company to take up residency in the theatre, I believe the youth similarly were ‘jumping scales’ and in doing so were using the theatre building as a site of resistance. The project invited the youth to move through boundaries physically by entering parts of the city that were alien to them and culturally by infiltrating the theatre. Smith argues that geographical scale enables spatial differentiation, that it is socially constructed and that it is a site for political struggle (ibid.: 62).



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According to Smith, place-making makes places different from each other and assigns them a place in a hierarchy, with some places being more highly valued and sought after than others. When the Crossing Bridges company jumped scales, they moved into spaces further up the spatial hierarchy. By performing to an audience consisting of the friends and family of the professional artists and of the shelter-dwelling youth, the invitation to jump scale was extended to people beyond the company and further highlights the lack of cultural and spatial justice at play in New York and elsewhere. In a pedagogy of utopia that aims for social justice, spatial justice must be considered. In the words of Soja ‘the geographies in which we live can have a negative as well as positive consequences on politically everything we do’. In doing so they also ‘expose the special causality of justice and injustice as well as the justice and injustice that are embedded in speciality, in the multiscale era geographies in which we live, from the space of the body and the household, through cities and regions and nation states, to the global scale’ (Soja 2009: 2). Spatial justice refers to issues of inequality that are geographical in nature, or inequalities that are created and reproduced through spatial relationships. In other words, for spatial justice to be achieved everyone would have equitable access to resources and opportunities to use them. Spatial justice advocates for people to have more agency in how spaces are used and by whom. On the surface this refers to access to spaces being fairly controlled. However, the concept of spatial justice also refers to the positioning of health care and educational facilities and their proximity to those who need access to them, and to the positioning of potentially harmful sites, such as landfills and factories that may produce pollutants. Spatial justice has implications for access to transportation centres and employment and to parks and open spaces. When thinking about housing and locations, those with access to health and education services, transport systems, employment, crime prevention and green spaces are considered prime and come with high rents and are inaccessible to those with lower incomes. Nancy Fraser’s (2005) concept of distribution, when she talks about social justice, is applicable here to spatial justice in terms

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of fair distribution of space and resources. Industrial areas with fewer resources are less attractive, but are likely to have lower house prices. Those less able to afford the desirable locations are, accordingly, subject to location-based discrimination. Exclusionary enclaves and gated communities mark an economic form of spatial discrimination. Less obvious is the discrimination at play in towns and cities in which many are excluded from attending the school of their choice or have no access to open spaces. Soja identifies three main forces that shape spatial injustice as being class, race and gender, but also stresses that ‘every geography in which we live has some degree of injustice embedded in it’ (Soja 2009: 3). Soja describes the way those driven by ‘fear and voluntary preference’ and who can afford to do so are ‘in many ways withdrawing from urban public life’ to live in insular ‘privatopias’ (Soja 2010: 43). A ‘privatopia’ is the polar opposite to the utopia that is at the heart of this book and the core of my practice. Rather than opening a space for democratic critical thinking and imagining a more just society, a privatopia is secured for the privileged and is designed to keep out those who do not have the financial wealth to seclude themselves into a private haven.

Privatopia: The neoliberal dream? The Indian ‘neoliberal utopia’ described by social geographer Waquar Ahmed is the yearning for just such a privatopia. In an article entitled ‘Neoliberal Utopia and Realities in Delhi’, Ahmed (2011) describes the manner in which globalization has impacted spatial justice in Delhi since the 1990s. The description, though specifically referring to India, can be seen in many urban centres around the world. Ahmed outlines how a crisis in urban living has been caused by increased mobility of capital in search of cheap labour, migration of rural labour to the cities, inadequate growth rates in jobs and public services, and lack of state support for those living under the poverty line (ibid.). The service industry has expanded, but Ahmed points



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out that these jobs are only available to those who speak English and offer limited opportunities for others. He links these developments to both the growth of those living in slum conditions and the aspiration of the ‘urban elite’ to avoid contact with the urban poor through ‘exclusionary city planning’ or the ‘bourgeois urban utopia’ offered by gated communities (ibid.: 175). Ahmed ascribes the term ‘neoliberal utopia’ as the desire to live in ‘urban spaces that are clean, safe and [in] which the poor cannot be seen’. He offers an example of a young man who in 1995 was beaten to death by house-owners because he defecated in a park close to their houses. The young man was from a slum region of Delhi with 10,000 households sharing just twenty-four latrines, where there was one toilet for every 2,083 people (ibid.:  171). Ahmed summarizes:  ‘This young man’s death was thus the culmination of a long-standing battle over contested space, that to one set of residents, was symbolic of “quality” urban lifestyle, and their association with “nature”, and that another set of residents, was a space that could be used as a toilet’ (ibid.: 172). This dystopic control and militarization of space continues and is not restricted to India. As the poor are priced out of urban ‘neoliberal utopias’ or are relocated by force at a cost to their livelihoods and communities, resistance to this removal can be seen in many guises, from strikes to peaceful protests and riots. The 2019 austerity riots in Chile started as a result of intended rises in subway fares that put the cost of getting to work above the means of poor service industry workers forced by housing prices to live on the outskirts of the capital city. As a response to the rioting and looting a military curfew was put in place in cities across Chile, as many of the population struggled to assert what Lefebvre ([1968] 1996) describes as the ‘right to the city’, or the need for those negatively affected by the urban condition to take greater control over the social production or urbanized space. When writing on the politics of dispossession, Edward Said uses a detailed analysis of colonial geographies to examine how spatial injustice is produced (Soja 2010: 36–7). Said and Lefebvre both agree that recognizing unjust geographies begins the process of resisting

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them. A  pedagogy of utopia may be part of both the recognition of spatial injustice and a form of resistance to it.

Resisting spatial injustice in an urban village Outside the doors of the National Theatre on the Southbank, there is a network of open paths that unintentionally has created an underpass that offers autonomy to skateboarding youth in London. Adelina Ong (2016) identifies this space beneath ‘one of the UK’s most prestigious cultural quarters’ as being utopic. She considers it to be a place in the public sphere which had been ‘left-over’ and purposeless, and now has been subverted. The skaters’ presence is a disruption, a resistance to the forms of culture that surround it, and as such their presence and ‘art’ contain the seeds of utopia. It is in this unexpected spatial disruption that I  argue we can identify this same utopic pattern of spatial disruption and resistance in The Voices of Worli Koliwada, an ongoing project in Mumbai that I co-run with Bhatia. I devote the remainder of this chapter to examining the spatial dynamics of resistance within this project. Worli Koliwada is situated on the coast at the southern tip of Mumbai. It is one of the oldest indigenous fishing villages in the region, believed to have been established eight hundred years ago by a fishing community – the Kolis. Today it is a 65-acre area with over two thousand residents who are the descendants of the original four hundred or so Kolis, plus another nine thousand tenants (Singh 2018). Many of the tenants are recent arrivals and economic migrants. It is also the site of a British colonial fort built in the seventeenth century which sat across the bay opposite the Portuguese fort built in the same era. Today it is an area of densely crowded lanes, and it is so crowded that Maharashtra’s Slum Rehabilitation Authority sought to declare parts of the village a slum in 2015 in order to deliver developmental funds (Johari 2015). Inhabitants rejected the slum label and argued vehemently that Worli Koliwada cannot be declared a slum because it



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is one of Mumbai’s earliest settlements. A local article which reported on this disagreement commented that Worli Koliwada’s infrastructure ‘often blurs the lines between slum-style living and an urban village’ (ibid.). Many of the inhabitants of the village are disadvantaged on both social and economic axes. The women who we have worked with there are disadvantaged further by their gender. The Koli women are unusual in that they are active in the fishing industry. Although not usually part of the actual harvesting of the fish, they make and repair nets, prepare the fish for sale and often work as sellers both within the community and beyond. The income of the fishing families depends on the women completing these roles as well as the childcare, meal preparation and their other domestic duties. Their families’ income is dependent on their labour and yet they themselves are not paid for their work. This lack of financial autonomy makes them prey to Fraser’s (1997, 2005) injustices of redistribution, recognition and representation  – the injustices that relate to the unfairness of the economic system and the exploitative work that it generates. They are denied respect and dignity based on their female identity, the work they do, the caste they are from and the difficulties of finding an organized community to amplify their voices to articulate their needs and rights as women, as workers and as citizens. The women in Worli are isolated by the long work hours and a caste system within the caste system, where the work they do connected with the fishing industry dictates where each woman falls in the pecking order. The least respected duties and most unpleasant jobs reduce the women to the lower ends of the scale, where the weak and different are bullied and victimized. The isolated community reproduces the hierarchies from the outside world and constrains the women who live there. For this project, my long-term collaborator, Bhatia, and I partnered with a local arts and culture organization called The G5A Foundation (G5A). G5A had three remits for the project:  to celebrate the community and site of Worli Koliwada in line with resisting the slum authority’s agenda to reclassify the area; to encourage the Koli community to use their cultural spaces and see the centre as part of

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their community landscape; and to enhance community spirit where the young women could support and comfort each other so they could gain strength in solidarity. In the summer of 2018 two of my postgraduate students joined Bhatia and Deembe to work with nearly two dozen of the women from Worli for three hours twice a week for five weeks. The sessions involved a range of theatre games, devising techniques and skills-sharing, often starting with a song and then some focus exercises. In the first sessions the young women were wary of the outsiders, often self-conscious and hesitant to play with the students. They were withdrawn and shy, but as is usual, session by session, they relaxed. The students worked on storytelling games, creative writing exercises and some gentle performance skills for the first two weeks. The theme of the work became celebrating Worli Koliwada, and part of this process involved mapping the village and the spaces in which the women felt comfortable or had particular memories to be celebrated. The workshop space became a thirdspace of cultures forged by the cultures of the women of Worli merging with the cultures of the students. This was an alternative space to the Worli women’s usual living and work spaces. These home and work spaces are all-consuming to these women and leave them with no time to call their own, often due to the cramped conditions in which they live, with no actual physical space for themselves. They describe themselves as always being responsible for someone or something else. In the thirdspace created by the workshops, they were for the most part released from their daily responsibilities and they had both the space and time to prioritize their own needs and desires. As part of the storytelling process they were encouraged to find spaces outside the workshop where this could and did happen. They decided they wanted to share these spaces with us and so we planned a walk that took the team through the lanes of Worli to stop in these spaces. A whole session was given over to the walk to explore the community. We set off with the women leading the way through the lanes, across the village and parts of the beach to reach the fort. On the way the women chatted and were clearly excited to be leading the session. We



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arrived at the fort and climbed up into it. It offered a view of Worli, the sea and in the distance the high-rise buildings of central Mumbai. We stood and looked out from the vantage point and the translator and facilitators asked the women what this space meant to them and why it was important. The women grew silent and looked out at the sea. Ashwarya, a cultural worker from G5A, who had become one of the team and who had a strong bond with the women, gently encouraged them to tell us why they brought us here. It quickly became apparent that they led us here because they thought it was what we wanted to see. The fort represented the history of the village, as such it was a local landmark and had been used as a set for several films, but it was not a space the women themselves used. One admitted that she had never stepped inside it before that day; the others murmured agreement that this was their first time within its walls. Once this secret was out the more familiar workshop sense of fun and enthusiasm developed and it became possible for me to ask, ‘If this isn’t a place of stories that has meaning – where are the spaces that do have meaning to you?’ After a brief discussion, the women settled on the next place they intended to take us – a site just a few hundred yards from the fort. Off we set, walking and chatting until we arrived at the recently renovated 700-year-old Golfa Devi Mandir Temple. The women found the priest and asked him to explain to us the history of the temple. Deembe translated: this is the temple where the Koli fishermen prayed for a good catch and where you can ask the goddess to answer your questions. By placing what appeared to be magnets on a statue of the goddess, she would answer yes or no to any question you posed; if the right magnet fell off first, the answer is yes, if the left slides off first, the answer is a no. The women watched our reactions and looked pleased with the story. The priest left us to continue with his work and again the women fell silent. For a second time Ashwarya encouraged them to tell us why this building was important to them, and again they said nothing. I gently teased the women saying that I didn’t believe this was a site of personal importance to them because their silence implied otherwise. They laughed with me and agreed there were better places to show us, but they had thought we

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would want to see the temple. I asked again, ‘Where is the place to tell stories that celebrate Worli Koliwada?’ We moved off again, past the boats and the net repair station and arrived on a concrete jetty just as rain started to fall. We stood on the jetty where the fish are unloaded from the small boats onto the land and looked out to sea. Ashwarya asked again:  ‘Why here?’ This time the women exchanged sideways glances and giggles with each other, and they explained that during Holi this became a woman-only space for them to celebrate the festival. It was a place of song, dance and laughter. They recalled the last time they had been here and how the rain did not dampen spirits and as we stood there and the rain came down they started to sing. The song was soon accompanied by dancing and stories emerged of the evening a man invaded their space here and what they did to remove him. The scene was spontaneously acted out by several of the women. The stories got wilder and wilder and before long we were all soaked, but laughing, much to the bemusement of the men sheltering under a nearby boat hut. When the stories were done, we talked about why those Holi nights in this space meant so much to them. They told us it was because it was a women-only space, in which they had no responsibilities to anybody but themselves and that these evenings were truly evenings of much anticipated freedom that they longed for. In that moment, the focus for the rest of the summer’s work was decided. The workshop space would become a woman-only space where they could make theatre with that same sense of freedom. We agreed as a group that in the following workshop we would perform the songs and dances they chose and re-enact stories from those evenings of freedom. Our workshop space became a space for partying. In the sessions that followed the male project leads, Bhatia and Deembe, were excluded from the space, to create a womanonly environment; the windows and shutters were closed and the participants became more playful and shared Bollywood dance routines and songs that were swapped for the UK songs the students introduced. The Bollywood routines were raunchier than anything offered by my students. A key part of this process was the chai break



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midway through each session. The exchange of food became integral in these crucial moments. Food became a meeting point and the women started to bring festival-style food that they prepared at home especially for the sessions. Each offering was exchanged as a gift. In these tea breaks, the divisions between both groups of girls were relaxed; they laughed together and shared food and stories about their lives – they became friends. They became a group who came together as women without caste or class. In the final session in the first year of the Worli workshops the men were permitted back into the space to play games, hear stories and share the food. The women made freeze-frames and digital stories that celebrated their lives in Worli. The participants inscribed the place in which we were working with new meanings: play and creativity in a place that appears to have little room for play, and equity for the participants. The fishing dock during the Holi festival and the workshop space have become synonymous, the latter becoming a thirdspace of resistance where the women come together to celebrate. In the same year, 2018, the last two workshops for the women took place in the black box studio space of G5A. The women arrived by taxi and again treated these sessions like a festival by dressing up for the occasion. At first nervous of this strange environment the women soon took over the space, as if they had played in a theatre space all their lives. They made tableaux and short scenes about the migration of farm workers to the city, water shortages and drought, their children’s obsessions with mobile technology and games, family conflicts, and the lack of space for their children to play in and in which they themselves could relax. There was no audience apart from the facilitation team; however, each scene was reworked to perfection and said something about contemporary life in Worli Koliwada and beyond. After the sessions the theatre provided tea and snacks and the women chatted excitedly about the work. Asked if they wanted to repeat the experience, they agreed that they would because the workshops had given them time for themselves and they wanted this to continue. The respite from their daily routines was welcomed and they talked about the confidence the work had given them to speak about things they had

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not given voice out loud or in public to before. The drama had allowed them to talk about the things that worried them that they felt unable to change: space, water, overcrowding, hopes and fears for their children. Between summer 2018 and 2019 the team in India ran twelve sessions for the women in which they continued to create theatre and talk about their concerns. In June 2019 we established two groups, one for the women from the first year and a second for newcomers. After several sessions working separately, we brought both groups together in the G5A space. The team remained as it did the first year with the addition of two of the young people from the original Dharavi project who worked alongside us as assistant facilitators. Again, the women made pieces about life in Worli and their concerns; again lack of space became a prominent feature of the work. A  recurrent theme of the work in both the theatre space and the workshop space in Worli itself related to the spaces the women travelled through daily or had played in during their childhoods. As a group we therefore decided to take the workshops into these spaces. Two spaces were chosen in the lanes of Worli which were wide enough to fit us all. As we worked, a crowd, curious to see what was going on, developed around us drawn in by the laughter and singing, and the unusual spectacle of groups of female Worli residents, theatre professionals and six students performing. What was going on was the creation of three sets of freeze-frames devised by the women working in three groups. The frames depicted how the women used the space as children, how they used it now and how they would like to use it in the future. The tableaux were fused together with movement and song and in one afternoon’s work, we ended up with three short depictions of the past, present and possible future. The scenes of the past included the women as children, not necessarily as themselves but showing how children used the spaces. These scenes depicted children playing hide-and-seek and hopscotch and one riding a bicycle or, rather, three women helping a fourth to learn to ride a bicycle. The woman on the bicycle declared that she had never had the opportunity to do such a thing and so the others literally supported her and pushed and held the bike while she



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peddled. It was a beautiful moment that reminded us all what it felt like to be children again. The present scenes included a moment where the space was used as part of a religious festival, which it had actually been used for the day before. This involved women winding ribbons around a tree trunk seven times each, in order to bind their husbands to them for the next seven lifetimes, cleaning, sweeping and washing the space and carrying food to relatives, and sending children to school. The final set of scenes showed the women sitting and talking, sharing secrets and friendships, and teaching each other how to use financial packages and spreadsheets on a laptop and to do household finances on the computer. The progression from scene to scene each time was very moving; the movement from childhood joy to the burden of responsibility, to caring for each other was remarkable to witness. For Sally Mackey, performance in everyday spaces enables a ‘dull and embedded’ place to ‘be defamiliarized and re-envisioned’ (Mackey 2016:  107). In this project the lanes of Worli Koliwada had been defamiliarized, re-envisioned and reclaimed by the women. The impromptu, unintended public performance of these pieces turned the spaces into a geography of resistance through the women’s anarchic play and vision of the future. Their presence in them, at this time of day, was active resistance. Their performances were highly political in their demand for social and spatial justice: their thoughts about their community, their lives and hopes were amplified and represented. Most importantly, their visions of what they wanted for the future, while steeped in the reality of their circumstances, were tangible. These women showed us the not yet, and the what might be. In doing so, they shared their utopic vision – a utopic vision that could now be created in a thirdspace that offered a space of resistance. The thirdspace as a site of resistance then, in Worli Koliwada’s community hall, the lanes of the village and the black box studio of G5A, is a space in which participants can explore and reflect on their relationship to places they inhabit and their own identities. A dialogic performance process that engages critical thinking in a thirdspace invites participants to reflect on the processual nature of both identities

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and spaces. This potentially invites an inverting of everyday spaces and identities; both people and places in a process of ‘becoming’, neither a finished nor complete thing. A  pedagogy of utopia in a thirdspace welcomes perspective giving and taking, amplifies multiple voices and storytelling, and facilitates imagined and future stories, identities, aspirations and justices, both social and spatial. It is a thirdspace in which challenges to the status quo and risky notions can be embraced, where women can use the lanes of their village to teach each other, where male prisoners can be fathers to their children, where shelterdwelling youth can enter culturally elite spaces or where young people can disrupt institutions by their mere presence. They are spaces where people would not usually meet on equal terms; police officers and youth of the global majority, Indian sub-city inhabitants and students from an elite London drama school, or sex-trafficked young people and Golden Globe winners can work together to create theatre and new knowledge while opening up to each other and critiquing their own worlds. They are spaces which defy the usual order of things that are separate from our everyday lives and in which new worlds can be imagined and in which utopic thinking is not disparaged. They are radical, political spaces of resistance.

Conclusion

Concluding – but not final thoughts: The voices of Dharavi I am writing the conclusion to this book in January 2020 as I  sit at my desk in the UK. It is a bleak start to the new year and the new decade. The global situation is one of crisis, both environmentally and politically. We, in the ever-fragile UK, are hurtling towards Brexit under the new right-wing government who has a significant majority in our parliament. The United States, under Donald Trump’s presidency, witnessed yet another school shooting this week, and tensions between the United States and Iran are high after the US assassination of a top Iranian general last week. A few days ago, Iran mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian commercial plane, killing 176 people. In India students and staff at Jawaharlal Nehru University were violently assaulted by masked attackers on 5 January 2020. Australia is in flames; ten million hectares of land have burnt to the ground since July 2019; a billion animals and seventeen people have died. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy protestors have been on the streets for months and as of the end of 2019, a total of 6,494 people have been arrested – some of these as young as 12. Civil protests in Chile are ongoing since October with twenty-nine deaths and 7,259 people arrested. Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Kurdish people continues. Protesters have been active on the streets in Indonesia, Catalonia, France, Peru, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Columbia, Iraq, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Venezuela, India, Brazil and no doubt many other lands/countries that I have missed from this list. Right-wing political parties are on the rise; racism, sexism, nationalism and inequality are

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all on the increase. When writing this in January 2020 we were aware of the epidemic that started in October and quickly became a pandemic. As I make the final edits for publication it is now clear that there is no sign of Covid-19 abating. To date the virus has been responsible for approximately 1.2 million deaths in 190 countries and 47 million cases of it have been confirmed (BBC 2020a). The World Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund assert that it will leave the poor further disadvantaged and those of the Global Majority are dying in greater numbers than white people (BBC 2020b). And across the world the Black Lives Matter movement highlights this, and more strongly the continued unacceptable, pervasive and violent nature of racism in all areas of life. There can be no doubt that the divide between the rich and poor and inequity in all its forms continues to expand and yet here I am writing a book about utopianism. I am choosing now to talk about utopianism because never has there been a time when we need critical thinking, practical achievable alternatives and more equity in terms of spatial and social justice. In short, utopic thinking has never been more in need than now. And I  remain stubbornly optimistic about the role the arts can play in envisioning a new way of doing things, not because I believe in miracles but because the small changes that Michael Balfour (2009) writes about are possible with long-term sustained interventions, and these small changes may lead or indeed contribute to participants’ visions of the future which are different to the present. Throughout this book I have shared experiences of practice, those I have been directly involved in and those which I have had the privilege to observe. Each demonstrates utopic theatre-making and the principles I believe are vitally intertwined in making theatre with aims rooted in social justice: deeply integrated community investment through longterm partnerships; critical and aspirational thinking; articulation and amplification of voices, thirdspaces and resistance. In the last stages of writing this book I have noticed another common thread in the work that stretches back to the projects in Costa Rica and that was present

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in all the India work through 2019, and which was a feature of Crossing Bridges and the work of Irondale Theater: the sharing of food.

Breaking barriers, breaking bread The coming together to eat, the social activity of eating together or commensality is present in all of my theatre practice, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design and often out of necessity. As I close this book, and look forward to future work, I am beginning to think that I  have underestimated its importance in the processes of pedagogies of utopia. Bourdieu (1984) describes commensality as creating social relations. Anthropologist Georg Simmel suggested in 1910 that social bonds are created through sharing common or mundane meals: ‘persons who in no way share any special interest can get together at the common meal’ and forge bonds through that process (Simmel [1910] 1994: 130). In the moments of the work described in the book that I  often took for granted, these bonds were being created just as much over tea and snacks as in the theatre-making. Sharing a meal forges shared spaces and new discussions, and potentially new identities. I experienced this myself in Costa Rica when the community and students shared the cooking space and when they offered each student and myself a ball of pure chocolate paste, their most precious commodity. The chocolate gift was a symbol of their appreciation of what we were doing and of our acceptance into their community. It was after this moment that the cooking tips and recipes started to be shared between students and community members. In the Halfway House Project, the shared meals and stolen mangoes bonded the students and the women in ways that enabled the latter to feel comfortable enough to take risks and play in the thirdspace. I have previously reflected on the events after the performance elsewhere (Busby 2018b), but do so again here as they are still full of meaning for me – holding and, I hope, expressing the affective power of the moment.

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The usual post-show euphoria was in full flow – young women in saris were whirling around the room and whooping with excitement, when just a moment ago the room had been silent, still and the spectators tearful. It was a woman-only space: a multipurpose sleeping, cooking, working, sewing space that had turned into a performance space for fifteen actors and an audience of twenty. The show, created by the young women, had been in Hindi and involved poetry, dance, mime and song. Even though I do not understand Hindi it had been beautiful to watch. It had no lighting, sound or costumes, the performances were stilted, hesitant and awkward, and yet to the tiny audience it was beautiful. As the women twirled about the room celebrating the end of a five-week rehearsal process they collected items of food saved for the event:  mangoes ‘foraged’ from next door’s tree, pickled chillies, crackers, sambals, dried fruits and sweets that I  couldn’t identify appeared as if by magic. A  higgledy-piggledy feast was laid out on the floor – a triumphant picnic for everyone who had participated or witnessed this process. As we all moved to the centre of the room, actors and audience merged into one mass of women  – all smiling, laughing and hugging each other. One young woman in a blue sari, trimmed with gold thread, darted from person to person offering each a teaspoon and a large jar of lime pickle; everyone dipped the spoon into the jar and licked off the pickle as if it were ice cream. She reeled round making sure everyone had a taste – suddenly I was next. ‘Didi, Didi, you must try’, she said, standing in front of me, her eyes shining with excitement and the joy of giving, both a performance and now the pickle … I hesitated just for a second – would it be too spicy for me? Would it make me ill? I opened my mouth to speak, and in that moment she suddenly, and without thinking, popped a large spoonful of the green chutney straight into my mouth. In a second she was gone, moving on to the next person while I stood still, shocked, with a blob of sweet and savoury chilli pickle gently burning my mouth. I was astonished, truly astonished: just days ago I had been a stranger, a stranger from a different culture and country. Meena had been shy and wary of my arrival, now she called me ‘Didi’, which I believe means an elder sister, and was spoon-feeding me. In the overall scheme of things this was a tiny event, but in that moment and in reflection since,

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it has become a moment of deep significance for me and my practice as an Applied Theatre practitioner. It was then, and is now, a moment of utopia. (Busby 2018b)

It was a moment of utopia that crystallized the thirdspace togetherness which had been created between two groups of women through a polycentric dialogical theatre-making practice where shared food had come to represent the bonds and commonality between us as an ensemble, in which aspirational thinking could take place and through which the resistance of hegemony seemed possible. In the Dharavi Project a young participant offered me a gift of chocolate during a chai break as a way to thank me for coming back each year. It was offered with words of thanks in English, from a participant who when he started the work spoke some English but who was too nervous to do so in front of us. The chai and wada pav breaks in this project were always moments where students and participants mingled together talking about food, films, hairstyles and ambitions. It was a thirdspace in which to quietly try out Hindi or English with just one or two other members of the group. In the Irondale workshops ‘breaking bread’ together is a key part of the process that both the police officers and civilians cite as smoothing the way and contributing to a ‘family’ atmosphere where you eat, disagree, argue and laugh. It’s a soft and gentle way into drama games where people share, fight, create and forge new understandings. Arjun Appadurai writes that the sharing of food has the ‘capacity to bear social messages’ and to ‘mobilize strong emotions’ (Appadurai 1981:  494), coupled with theatre in this project it brought new understandings and messages of empathy to two hostile factions for a ten-week period, that maybe has lasting effects for much longer. In Worli Koliwada the shared meals where each participant and each student brought something to the table mirrored the drama work where each also brought something to the table. Eating together is no less political than other social interactions, the politics of inclusion and exclusion, or gastro-politics are present here as elsewhere. Appadurai

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tells us that food ‘can serve to indicate and construct social relations characterized by equality, intimacy, or solidarity; or it can serve to sustain relationships by rank, distance, or segregation’ (Appadurai 1981: 496). The women of Worli shared food often reserved for festivals at our meetings  – which is apt as it was the dockside discussion of Holi that moved this work into a new phase of celebration. The pesto pasta the students contributed was largely left untouched by everyone. This could be read as exclusion, and maybe rejection, or perhaps just a refusal of the bland food, but this in itself was a form of bonding in which everyone in the room could laugh about the only thing being left on the table was student cooking. The atmosphere of the gym in Covenant House in the Crossing Bridges project (as discussed in Chapter 4) that had been destroyed by a demonstration of elite white privilege was soothed by the surprise gift of doughnuts, brought in and served individually to each participant by an award-winning TV actor, who spoke personally to each member of the group about the project and their roles within it. She had no knowledge of the destruction that had occurred just before her arrival, but in this moment food became the bridge between the culturally elite and the ‘bare citizens’ that enabled the creativity to resume, and the show to go on. If a pedagogy of utopia were to be six elements rather than the five I  have explored here, the addendum would be:  deeply integrated community investment through long-term partnerships, critical and aspirational thinking, articulation and the amplification of voice, thirdspaces and resistance, served with a tasty dish of food and a beverage, or served within a sense of commensality.

A word, or several, from Dharavi This book has focused on the positive contribution that making theatre can have when thinking about and acting for social justice, in opening up possibilities or ‘the field of the possible’, in enhancing aspirational thinking and resisting what is, in order to create what is not yet, but

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which can be imagined. As a way of explaining how theatre may contribute to the lives of participants, I am going to step back so the young people of Dharavi might occupy the last space in this book. I  have deliberately chosen to keep the words of the project partners as the transcript recorded them and as they spoke, out of respect and to amplify their voices as they are at the heart of the work in every way. I make no apology for giving them so much space, as I have learnt much from these young people over the last decade and I  choose to use part of this chapter to amplify their voices. This choice emerges out of my axiology of practice and as such my practice is based on the principles of a pedagogy of utopia rooted in partnership, aspirational thinking, articulation, third space and resistance. On 16 June 2019, Bhatia and I  brought together a dozen of the young people from the early years of the Dharavi Project and asked them to reflect on the theatre that was made and how they believed it contributed to their lives then and now. We expected some of the things they said, but some of the things they said really surprised us. Many of them commented on the confidence the work had given them as young people and how this had helped them since. Deepesh told us: We learnt how to present ourself, how to talk, so all this talent which we learn there, is so helpful for us now as well. Like now if I  go out somewhere professionally where we meet new people, … so with them … how to talk professionally, or if we meet friends in friend circle so how to talk there, so the different methods for communication were created, like how to talk professionally, how to talk in the society.

Rupesh described how each workshop developed his confidence: We took the first step and we gain confidence and then we took second step so we start getting more confident in ourself that we can do it better and we start to talk confidently … we were able to talk to anyone, answer anyone’s question, talk on any topic/point, if we found anything wrong then we were able to raise question on that, whatever knowledge we had we were able to share it. So we got/gain a lot of confidence, our

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personality got develop, how to sit in front of someone, how to talk, how to use words, where to use what words.

Sana, who in 2019 was a facilitation assistant on the projects in Worli Koliwada and who in 2020 will take a lead role in facilitating the work, described how in the workshops she moved ‘from being a shy to a bold person’. Anand combined his comments on confidence with the effect that being able to have a space in which to articulate his thinking and represent himself more fully was an important part of his journey through the projects: Public speaking was always a big problem. There’s a lot we want to say and express, but the confidence we need to say it, that we couldn’t find it. Because we had never experienced it. How to speak in the public space? And we were still doing the things we liked doing, without realising that we were doing it for a public audience. When we do things we like, we don’t observe who is around us. By doing that, today I have so much power … There was a certain sense of confidence, I don’t have a fear of the public. Even in 10th and 11th [school standards] I had so much to say but I didn’t know how. What would someone think? I didn’t know if I was saying the right or wrong thing. But when I attended the workshop, I realized there’s no such thing as right or wrong answer. What is inside you, let it out.

We expected the now not-so-young participants to talk about their confidence levels  – but what we had not expected was how this confidence might permeate other aspects of the Dharavi residents’ lives. Krishna, who like Sana from 2019 has been a key part of our facilitation team in Mumbai, told us about how the work affected his social life: The thing was even our English wasn’t very good then. But when we realized we could speak in English after we spoke to the girls through translations, we began understanding more. And over two to three years we built on our language. English was a language that we could speak and understand. And because of that we gained some confidence that we can do this. The thing with clothes was I realized this was my character, these are the kind of clothes I like wearing and so I will wear them. If someone else wants to judge me, that’s their problem. Then the fun part

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was that I realized that people judge you based on your English. If I enter a mall even with torn shoes but can speak in English they will treat me well. But if I wear the best of clothes and still speak like a dehati [nonEnglish] it doesn’t matter. And in that way that fear left me. Now I go however I want the way I want, with some sense of decency of course but I am not scared of someone else judging me. I know my capabilities now.

Krishna’s comments allowed Bhatia and me to reflect on the value of the English skills first requested by the NGO: that regardless of my concern about the problematic politics of teaching English as a preferred language, being able to use it with confidence had made a significant difference to some of the participants. Several of the others mentioned that the students from Central being foreigners had a positive impact on them and the workshops in ways that surprised us: Saraswat: That time when we got there, the most important challenge was language … In the beginning due to the language barrier we needed a translator but after sometime, slowly, slowly, in broken English we started conversing, which was the biggest challenge we overcame at that time. Nilesh: When we first heard that there were some girls who were foreigners who were going to teach us something, we were wondering how we will communicate with them because our English was not very good. But then after a few sessions, we realized that there was no need of language, there were other ways we could communicate. Rupesh: And the big best thing was that the ones who were teaching us were Indians and foreigners, so because of that we were trying to learn foreign language and accent, we were trying to get along with them and because of all that we come to know about foreigners. Before that we have seen foreigners only when they used to come for the visit in Dharavi, they used to come for the visit, they used to take photos, but we never have ever talk to them. This was the first time that we were talking to them, this three to four years was where we work with them, we share ideas with them, we share ideas

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about their country, people and their environment also we share about our environment. So that feels good. Rupesh: And because of that conversation our personality got a lot develop and that was useful in our career and professional life. Because my work is to investigate directly if anyone is wrong, I have to tell them ‘you are wrong’ and for that I need a lot of confidence because if I don’t have enough confidence then I will not be able to say that. So in that project in those three to four years I have got/gain a lot of confidence.

The partnership between Indian practitioners and Central’s emerging facilitators together with ‘foreigners’ taking the time to talk, share and make theatre over a sustained period of time was seen by all of those that came to talk to us as useful, valuable and meaningful. This in itself was also unexpected. Bhatia and I  had wanted to bring together two groups of young people who would not usually meet and see what would happen. This blending of the groups seems to have developed the confidence of the young participants, improved their English and was a key part in raising their aspirations. Krishna: I don’t remember exactly what happened on the first day but I remember the first year. During that time, since we were all adolescents and that we had girls our age coming and teaching us, the primary thought was that being the same age we are learning while they are teaching us. So this was fun to see how their thinking was so forward, why aren’t we learning? Why aren’t we career oriented? So in that way we also began thinking and focusing on the lines of career not just about theatre. Like Raghu is doing really well in production today, Dipesh is doing something, I am doing something, Rupesh is trying to do his C.A. [accounting]. So the reason we even began being career oriented was because if girls our age can come and teach us so why can’t we achieve something at a certain age. And that was a new mentality. And it was fun.

Deepesh, Rupesh and Nilesh all talked about the way the project raised their expectations and invited them to think that they could have different dreams:

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Deepesh: For me the biggest change was that till third standard I did not even talk to people, it was difficult for me to face someone, and then I learnt to talk a little and slowly become free to talk and began speaking a lot. I was not too social either. Rarely did I meet anyone, because there was one thing in our area/community about not meeting / spending time with people who were bad. So I found some good people here some new people and with them I got confident, so I learn to present myself. We were from Dharavi and had no dressing sense, I used to wear anything and when I met new people and see them wear good cloth I started to get a sense of dressing, and then we started developing and started seeing new big dreams. So we live in Dharavi, that does not mean we have or should have small dreams. We can have a dream to go into a three to four bedroom flat as well. So that was my platform to catch a train to go to a good station. Rupesh: And the most important thing is we understand what we want to do in our own life. The things we like, we love, what we are doing, that’s the reason mantra of my life is DO WHAT YOU LOVE. Things which satisfied you, so I never give up In my life till date. I never ever give up whatever I start doing. Nilesh: But we never felt that we could actually do something different. It was a little difficult but fun to do that. When it was completed, I did not believe like we had made it, it felt like some professional artist had made it and kept it in front of us.

The young people talked at length about how the projects gave them positive alternatives and encouraged them to make better life choices – some tied this to avoiding getting into trouble and others made links between the project and avoiding the traps of addiction. Deepesh:

So like this a lot of changes happened. And back then in that age it was so easy to get involve in bad thing but this because of this project we got one good thing to do and this also gave us one direction in our life as well. And which is one of the most helpful things of me.

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Or whatever [the project] was, today we didn’t move in the direction Dharavi is, the negative reasons for which Dharavi is known today, we didn’t get into any trouble. Because we also enjoyed, whether it was acting or even play, we participated because we were interested, and we couldn’t get involved in the things within our neighbourhood. If this continues, maybe children like us in Dharavi can benefit and if they are going in the wrong direction, maybe this can help them. These workshops could keep them busy and we will also feel like we gave the children what they wanted plus we prevented them from going into the wrong direction. Raghuvendra: But I will say that for that two or three hours the person who was in addiction he/she also even stop … control that addiction for that period of the day. And that’s the big thing.   YES, for that three to four hours he/she used to control their self. And maybe they also have got some benefits of this. Like if someone is a chain smoker and he … she cannot control their self but if they are controlling them for those three to four hours because of some fear. Fear means he/she is afraid because she wants to learn something, for example he/she is afraid of you, indirectly he is there with you to learn something and he really wants to learn that or else they have to leave and go to do whatever they want to but they does not want to miss that learning, that’s why they is controlling their self and they are present there, and enjoying it as well, so I will say that this has really benefits for them as well. And also they have worked on themself during that time. Anand:

Rupesh also articulated the level of respect he felt he gained in his community just from being part of the project: Our value increased, and when our value in society increased then the trust on us also increased and when the trust increased then the society starts to have faith in our words. And because of that we start to get some standard, trust, and respect in society. So when we start to get respect from

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everyone then we come to know that we can’t do anything wrong because of which our parents trust could get compromised and our focus gets clear and because of that we got the confidence in what we wanted to do.

Many of the young people talked about the specific skills they developed on the project over the years: Saraswat: And if I talk about overall experience, throughout the year, from start to now, this skill, which is built because of those activities, is not a single talent or skill. This talent did not only help in acting but also helped us solve so many problems. Say I am impatient or angry, and at that point to know that I can act with a smile on my face.

Krishna claimed the project taught him how to apply his concentration and be stress-free. Kisan said he could see things from the perspective of others and be calm in the face of adversity. Sana said the project taught her how ‘to think differently’ and to ‘quiet the mind’. Several others talked about how the project taught them not to fear failure and to try new things. Deepesh: One more thing in our puppet event was, Don’t Give Up, like Andy and I were working together at some point and it wasn’t working or something is broken, that time Andy would say if its not working don’t worry lets do something more effective more creative, that’s what I learnt and applied for my whole life. If you fail at some point then success will be at your door.

Rupesh highlights that teaching the Central students’ skills was also valuable to him: Rupesh: So we were satisfied that we had learnt a lot of new things which we could teach to others as well. That we are sharing our information, this all was also a kind of addiction because of which we used to feel satisfied that we are doing something good.

Many of them talked of the fun, laughter and enjoyment the project brought them that came with the learning:

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Raghuvendra: It probably was a time when we had such a good fun. Deepesh: I remember the fun … enjoyment … session used to start at 4 o’clock but we used to reach there at 3 o’clock and chill and pass time there. Raghuvendra We used to go earlier to pass time. Because some different fun was there, the way of teaching was unique and different. It was not like you are here to learn theatre so you have sit for two hours and fill various forms, NO. So when theatre used to start the different kind of aspects of it were there, which used to start with so much fun and end in that way only. We never realized that we did some work there, (it never felt like work), we learnt something. So the way of teaching was unique/different and we have followed that way to be free minded, enjoy and work. So we remember how to work, how to have fun while working, how much we had fun when we were working on that project. We remember that entire thing. Raghu: When I was working on the puppets, then my mind doesn’t have the time to think about the chaos of life. And so if you ask me I would do it, because without the mind, you cannot participate in this kind of workshop. Five days in the workshop, I am learning something new, not thinking about life, no tension, no stress, new perspectives, thinking of new things, not thinking about the stress. And with age, the pressure from home is also increasing, and so even though there are all kinds of pressure, if such an opportunity presents itself it’s not like we won’t be told not to do it.

Krishna linked this sense of fun with a feeling of unity or bonding with the Central students and other participants: Krishna:

There was also a lot to learn from the girls. The girls who came here, they came from another country here and lived so confidently. If I go to Pune even, I could get lost and wonder where to go? But those girls left another country, are living comfortably. They came only for

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fifteen days but it felt like we knew them for seven lives! That’s how much we bonded, had fun and played!

It is not uncommon for Applied Theatre project participants to reflect on the sense of community generated through theatre and the bonds it can create. In this project Rupesh summed this up by saying: Rupesh:  If we talk about unity, when we have started that time I did not know anybody … When we start to work together from 2009 now its nine/ten years and we are together, we share a kind of bonding that if any one of us doing anything wrong and we find out about it then we directly call them and ask why you are doing this? This is wrong. Because it can be problematic in future so if in our point of view it’s wrong and he feels otherwise, we talk to each other and try to understand.   The biggest responsibility was that, what we have learnt and have got confidence because we had learnt something and because of all this our friendships also grew stronger, our trust on each other also increased and our bonding become stronger, and because of that now if any one of us need help at anytime we will be present there, even at three in the morning. So this project was the best thing in our life because if we had not joined this project then maybe we would never have this friend circle, this much of confidence, and the kind of point of view we have, the way of thinking and talking maybe we would never have got all this. Actually, the most important thing is even after failure, people who surrounded us say, ‘you fail no problem, try again do more’. They support a lot even now. During my exam period, I … study [for] twelve hours, fifteen hours, which is really frustrating, I just call them and [they] help me, even [at] 2 am or 3 am. I can imagine the faces of these people, and talk with them, meet them. That’s the reason there is no such word as failure. If we feel something is going wrong with then we call each other and discuss with each other.

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When we talked about what they are doing now the answers were varied: one is a paediatrician, one a dentist, two run an Applied Theatre company, one works for an NGO working to amplify the voices of children who live in informal housing settlements, one is doing an MA in social sciences and another in education. Rupesh is a cost auditor studying to be a chartered accountant; Nilesh is a civil servant. Many directly link their confidence and English skills that enabled them to work in their professions directly to the project, but two in particular attribute their current work to being involved in the Dharavi Project: Raghuvendra: I work in film and television production. I had no idea about it. When I was in school I didn’t know what I want to do. I did my graduation in B.COM that time also I didn’t have any idea, then I did this theatre workshop and did some street play also. I work in my college theatre as well so when I finish my college and get out into the real world in the year of 2014/15 then I got to know the real struggle, then I start doing some direction work and slowly I got stable in this production work. Before I had no idea about what to do but all this knowledge which I have gained is because of this theatre work. Anand: I’d like to share my success story, I came first as a researcher in the India fellowship. My topic was on organ donation, of why people don’t donate organs in today’s time. To find out the challenges in that. And during a research [fellowship], you have to present in front of people, even if the research is properly recommended and it’s all good, but if you don’t present it how will it reach people and help them understand or judge the topic. So when I presented, I was selected first at an India level. Then somewhere, I realized that, yes I can speak in public.   Earlier I had no plans of being a professor, because I couldn’t talk to people, so what is the point of being a professor. But now I am preparing for NET [National Eligibility Test for teaching in Indian government

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schools and colleges]. Now I can explain everything that I am thinking

A pedagogy of utopia did not give these young people aspirations, it did not change them, it did not make their dreams a reality and it did not create concrete change or rescue them from anything. It did offer them the space to critique their current circumstances and imagine alternatives; it amplified their voices and their aspirations and it allowed them to think change was possible. It also gave them a sense of community and they continue to support each other in their struggles in ways that may not have been possible without the project. That is why in these bleak times I want to talk about utopia and the power of dialogical participatory theatre and why I will continue to make theatre in unglamorous spaces. In the words of Sana, Such opportunities are much needed, especially in slums like Dharavi and other various parts of Bombay. That’s because they don’t really know anything about this, that such a world even exists. They just know that they have to wake up in the morning, go to school, roam around … But this idea of self-awareness or enlightenment, they have no idea about this, I had no idea about this. I feel so lucky and blessed because I kept getting different kinds of opportunity. Whatever I  thought of, or had questions about, I found the answers through opportunities, so it’s very important for everyone to get such opportunities.

Or as Raghuvendra said simply, ‘To present ourselves we need this thing you do. We just need it.’

216

Notes Introduction 1 Rooted in the history and development of drama, education theorists have been split between those who value the process of creating work (Heathcote and Bolton) over that of the product created (Heathcote 1991 and Bolton 1998) and vice versa (Hornbrook 1989). For a summary of this debate see Helen Nicholson’s Theatre & Education (2009). James Thompson called for a turn away from considering the effects of applied theatre – or the impacts it creates towards an appreciation of the affects created through its aesthetics (2009). 2 Some academics and practitioners object to this term on several grounds, ranging from it creating a binary between applied and pure theatre, to it lacking political intent and it being too vague to be useful. For a detailed look at this debate see SCUDD (2006). 3 There is an important distinction between equality and equity. Equality refers to fairness and implies that to be achieved all people should be treated in the same way. The concept of equity is more nuanced, allowing for the varying degrees of inequality and privilege to be considered. Equity therefore implies that living in a truly inclusive society requires people to be treated differently and in accordance with their level of need. 4 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as written by the United Nations in 1948 demands global recognition of basic rights that is universally accepted as being fundamental to all global citizens. Over fifty years later it is now argued that these rights originated in the global north and reflects the interests of the countries there and a North American, European, Judeo-Christian philosophy at the expense of those in the global south and so can be seen as a form of cultural hegemony (https://theglobalobservatory.org/2018/10/ are-human-rights-a-western-concept/).

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2  Partnerships, integrated community investment and nebulous utopia 1 Subaltern Studies is discussed in detail later in this chapter. 2 Matarasso’s 1997 text, Use or Ornament, tackled this area head-on, but since then the topic has formed a key part of the literature in the field. Anthony Jackson addresses the topic in Theatre, Education and the Making of Meanings: Art or Instrument (2007), while Thompson explores this in his discussion of effect and affect (2009), and Joe Winston in his discussion of beauty (2010). 3 For a detailed discussion of the value of the project from the participants’ perspective see the conclusion of this book.

3  Aspirational thinking: Social justice and critical pedagogy 1 I am paraphrasing this term from Bertolt Brecht’s use of it in The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944). 2 I have chosen to use Latinx as the gender-neutral form instead of the gendered Latino or Latina.

5  Finding a thirdspace 1 The online, on-demand streaming service provided by the BBC in the UK. 2 Islington, according to the local council, is the ‘most densely populated local authority in England and Wales with 15,517 people per square mile … more than 36 times the National average’ (Islington 2017). In 2015, when their play Brainstorm was first performed, Islington was the eleventh most deprived borough in England. In 2017, things had improved and it had become the twenty-sixth most deprived. Despite this rise it was recognized as having the third highest level of child poverty in the country, with over a quarter of children living in households where no one is in employment, with almost 70 per cent of schoolchildren aged between 11

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and 16 receiving pupil premium and a quarter of them receiving some form of special educational needs support (ibid.). Pupil premium is money given to schools by the UK government per annum to aid the attainment levels of disadvantaged children.

6  Geographies of resistance 1 In 2011 Connections did not run while the NT production team reviewed and revised the scheme. 2 In 2009 Central commissioned Morrigan Mullen to write an evaluation of the scheme and our partnership with it. 3 Renamed the Dorfman Theatre in 2014.

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Index Adebayo, Mojisola 1 affect 1, 46, 69, 71, 201, 217 n.1 vs. effect 1, 69, 218 n.3 (see also applied theatre) agency 37, 43, 55, 62, 157, 168–9, 176–9, 184, 187 denial of 145 self-agency 73–4 Ahmed, Sayed Jami 35–6, 46, 71 alternatives 19, 47–53, 64, 67–8, 91, 95, 106, 111–12, 115, 130, 133–5, 138, 151, 172–4, 183–5, 200, 209, 215 anticipation 13–14, 50, 109 (see also utopia) Appadurai, Arjun 3, 10, 42, 58, 76–7, 88, 109, 116, 120, 203–4 applied art practices 1 (see also applied theatre) applied theatre 1–9, 11–12, 15–17, 32, 36, 38–41, 46–7, 48–9, 52–3, 63, 70–2, 79, 82–3, 86–7, 89–90, 93, 97, 106–8, 114–15, 116–17, 129, 143–4, 151–2, 156–7, 160, 173, 181–2, 204–16 affect/effect 6, 11–12, 46, 69, 218 n.1 art or instrument 7–8, 95, 159, 218 n.2 by-products of 59, 63, 101–2, 105 and change 6, 73 (see also change) and disruption 71 as emancipatory 9, 17, 62, 108, 110 ethics 8–9, 15–16, 32–4 (see also ethics) grandiose claims about 7 hero narratives in 7–9, 117, 145 impact 7–8, 32, 69, 80, 159, 177 integrity and 2, 9

intentionality 21, 82 and intervention 84 and liberation 41, 93–5, 107, 145 longevity 21, 72, 73, 183 and money 38–9 problems of 1–2, 10, 31–2, 94–6, 104–5, 117, 159 process/product 1, 105, 164 and space (see space, site; thirdspace) and social exclusion (see social exclusion) and social justice (see social justice) and ‘soft skills’ 102–6, 146 and tourism 36–40 training 70–1 and trust 120–1, 146, 171 as an umbrella term 15–16, 82, 94, 116 (see also applied art practices; community theatre) articulation 18, 20, 43, 116–40, 172, 200, 204–5 and amplification 116–40, 172, 200, 204–5, 215 aspiration 6, 27, 43, 59, 65, 70, 85, 90, 97, 109, 115, 130, 189, 198, 208–9, 215 (see also hope) ‘aspirational capital’ 90 as a forward imperative 85 and higher education 10, 173 and privilege 85 repression of 130 aspirational thinking 6, 8–9, 18–19, 43, 73–115, 140, 172, 178, 180, 200, 203–5 Aula, Sahith 60

240 autonomy 36–7, 41–3, 81, 114, 154, 190 autonomous community 27, 32 and resistance, 104–5 (see also resistance) axiology 16–19, 21, 38, 43, 45, 92–3 axiological code 32–3 axiological impasse 29–35 axiological puzzle 43 of equity 145 and ethics 38, 43, 45 of practice 16–18, 205 Balfour, Michael 6, 38, 200 Berlant, Lauren 85–6 Bhabha, Homi 20, 152–3, 155–7 Bhatia, Divya 45, 49–54, 59–72, 73, 143–4, 155, 190–5, 207–8 Bloch, Ernst 13–14, 48–50, 67, 70, 110 Bollywood, 66–9, 85–6, 147, 194 Bond, Edward 20, 129–35, 139–40 Brainstorm Project 20, 160–5, 169–71, 180–3, 218 n.2 (see also Company Three) Bribri (community) 23–44, 61 (see also Costa Rica) Cahill, Helen 95, 105–6, 122–3 capitalism 82, 91 change/changes 1–3, 6–9, 10–14, 18, 22, 25, 34–5, 40, 47, 49–50, 61–2, 64, 68–70, 73–4, 109–10, 182–4 agents of 43, 52 community desire for 34–5, 40, 43 ethics of 42, 82–3 evidencing 7–8, 32 issues of 1–2, 62–3, 68–70, 73–4, 159 logocentric understandings of 63 as no longer possible/impossible 47–9, 65–6 macro and micro 11, 42, 91

Index middle-class standards of 82–3, 88 as possible 53, 63–4, 67, 109, 113–14 (see also social change) The Children’s Theatre Project 99–115, 141, 148, 180–1, 184 citizenship 3, 5, 54, 58, 75 bare citizens 3–4, 10–11, 15, 18, 44, 48, 54–8, 60, 74–6, 88, 116–17, 119, 140, 204 class (social) 24, 55, 57, 60–1, 75–82, 90, 108, 118, 137, 148, 150–7, 167, 173–4 Clean Break 182 colonisation/colonialism 25–6, 31–6, 55, 57–8, 60–4, 59, 108, 188, 195 colonial geographies 189–90 neo-colonialism 59–61, 117 resisting 57–8, 64 community/communities 1, 4–7, 15, 17–19, 23–5, 34, 42, 45–8, 51, 55, 59, 73, 81 83–4, 139, 142, 155–6, 163, 170, 177, 184, 191–2, 200–1, 204, 213, 215 and agency, 34–6 attachment to 5 community cultural wealth 83–4, 90 fragmentation 30 having a voice in 5 indigenous 23, 26–9, 35–7 of knowledge 17–18, 25, 83–4 making art in 1 temporary 65, 83 urban 59 working with 17, 30 (see also integrated community investment) Community Theatre 28–35 ‘bottom up’ method 30 exchange 30 techniques 30 transference of skills 30

Index (see also theatre; theatre-making) Company Three 20, 158–72, 174, 180–2 (see also Brainstorm project) Costa Rica 15, 17–18, 23–44, 61, 200–1 critical pedagogy 19, 73–4, 92–4, 102, 106–10, 114–15 and change 73–4 Critical Race Theory (CRT) 20, 83–4 critical thinking 19, 73–4, 92, 95, 115, 143, 164, 183, 197–8, 200 democratic 188 Crossing Bridges 19, 21, 74, 80–3, 85–92, 108, 119–22, 141, 146, 151, 157, 174, 183–7, 204 cruel optimism 85–6 (see also Berlant, Lauren) cultural capital 20, 79–91, 120–3 cultural exchange 24–5, 28, 30, 37, 41 or cultural invasion 25, 60, 68–70 (see also dialogue) deficit 79–80 thinking 59–64, 83–4, 117 democracy 76, 199 radical 42 development 35–6, 41, 46–54, 162 as troubling 35–6 Dharavi 46–50, 54–72, 85–6, 108, 155–6, 203–15 (see also Mumbai) dialogue 18, 24, 46, 59, 71, 81, 92–4, 106–10, 118, 120, 131, 140, 157, 184 critical 108 (see also critical pedagogy) intercultural 24, 42–3, 54 polycentric 44, 58 dignity 6, 77–9, 82, 191 politics of 9–16, 18, 43 disavowal 93 displacement 25–7 Dolan, Jill 13, 61–2

241

Dorling, Danny 4, 10 drama xi, 1, 7–8, 21, 33, 58, 89–80, 100–1, 108–9, 132–5, 139, 143, 146–7, 154, 159–60, 196, 203, 217 n.1 education 1, 12, 139, 156 participatory 13 economies 4–8, 25–6, 36, 44, 64–6, 75–6, 79–81, 137, 177, 186–91, 200 ecotourism 23, 27–8, 40–1 education 7, 10, 18, 30, 59, 73–4, 84–5, 94–6, 101–2, 105, 108, 132, 136–7, 159, 187 and cultural capital 79–84 deficit model of 79 as political 93 and power 79, 108 and social mobility 10 empathy 105, 122–4, 128–9, 135, 179, 203 empowerment 17, 35, 118 issues of 16–17, 34–5 English language 24–5, 28–30, 32–3, 59–64, 139, 206–7 and power 25, 60–4, 66, 207 equality 4–6, 10, 39, 67, 116, 120–1, 183, 203–4, 217 n.3 (see also inequality) equity 2–9, 12, 21–2, 37, 59, 91, 108, 116 , 143–5, 148–51, 169–70, 183–5, 195, 200, 217 n.3 as distinct from equality 217 n.3 knowledge exchange 37–8, 42–3 in rehearsal rooms 21 (see also equality) ethics 2, 8–9, 15–16, 29–34, 69, 76, 175 of care 122–3 and ethical codes 15, 31–3 and ethical dilemmas 31–2, 34, 38 ethical dilemmas as stopping work 22

242 ethical impasses 24, 19–34, 61–4, 134 and exit strategies 38 of payment 38 research 15–17 social justice approach 15–16 facilitation 15–16, 33, 61, 70, 95, 120–1, 147–8 and responsibility 212 food (sharing of) 33–4, 37 60, 69, 123–7, 146–7, 194–5, 201–4 ‘breaking bread’ 125, 201–3 Foucault, Michel 77–8, 94–5, 103–4, 149–51, 156–7 (see also heterotopias) Fraser, Nancy 74–5, 78–9, 116, 122, 187–8, 191 (see also social justice) freedom 12, 105–6, 194 radical 95–6, 103–5 of speech 108 Freire, Paulo 31, 34, 43, 92, 106–11, 120, 129–30 (see also ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’) funding 1, 4, 7–8, 38, 136, 178 streams 1, 42 futures 12–14, 19, 47–9, 58, 70–1, 82, 85–6, 93 (see also utopia) Gallagher, Kathleen 7, 89–90, 120, 129 Giroux, Henri 7–8, 12, 14, 19, 76, 86, 93, 114, 153–4, 157, 184 globalization 35–44, 188 at the expense of indigenous communities 26, 36 international development 41 monoculture 41–2 and neoliberal policies 36, 39 ‘poverty alleviation’ 36 (see also postcolonialism)

Index Halfway House Project 143–51, 154–5, 184, 201–2 Hall, Stuart 20, 117–18, 122 health and wellbeing 11, 59, 65, 67, 80, 149, 180 and access to health care 79, 187 hermeneutics 51–2 heterotopias 20–1, 149–52 (see also Foucault, Michel; Soja, Edward) Hiles, David 16–17 homelessness 3–4, 10–11, 19–20, 74–8, 80, 87–90, 151, 185–6 hope 2, 12–14, 48–52, 61–2, 67, 70, 84, 105–6, 112–14, 137–8, 185, 197 ethos of 2 and hopelessness 74, 84 and optimism 66–7, 132–4, 148 (see also Berlant, Lauren; cruel optimism) and pleasure 7, 66, 184 radical 102 hooks, bell 14, 19, 112–16, 122, 156–7, 163, 172–3, 179 Human Rights 5, 122–3, 217 n.4 identity 10–11, 51, 78–9, 87, 113, 118–19, 131, 152–4, 165, 186, 197–8, 201–2 cultural 25 female 191 group 7, 147 negative 6, 10, 80–1, 87–8, 94 unfinished/fluid 13–14, 9, 48, 110, 122 imagination 12–13, 19–20, 46–7, 49–53, 58, 66, 70–1, 85–6, 97, 103, 107, 109–10, 115, 138, 142, 151, 157, 165 impact 6–8, 32, 69, 80, 118, 139, 159, 177, 179, 217 n.1 academic focus on 7 measuring 8

Index

243

short term/long term 8 (see also applied theatre) India 15, 18, 45–72, 141, 143, 149–50, 188–9, 196, 199 and colonialism 54, 57–8, 60–2 inequality 4–6, 10, 58, 65, 84, 108, 121, 135, 139, 150, 187, 199–200, 217 n.3 complex triangle of 4 implicit and explicit 6 injustice x–xi, 3, 10, 75, 78, 104, 130, 187–98 resistance to 3, 75, 142 social 92, 130–1, 139, 173, 178 spatial 190–8 institutionalisation 75, 113 Integrated Community Investment 64–8, 71–2, 81, 164–5, 167, 200, 204 Irondale Theater 123–9, 135, 170–1, 203 (see also To Protect, Serve and Understand)

Malta 18–74, 97–100 marginalization 10, 62–3, 73–4, 86–7, 115, 120, 159 Mullen, Molly 38–9 Mumbai 45–72, 190–7 (see also India)

Jacoby, Russell 47–8 Jumbo, Cush 20, 135–40

Ong, Adelina 190

Kara, Helen 15–17 Kincheloe, Joe 19, 73–4, 79, 86, 93, 117, 121 (see also critical pedagogy) labelling 4, 10–11, 80–1, 86–8, 190–1 internalization 10–11, 87–8 issues of 11 and relabelling 105–6 Lefebvre, Henri 141–4, 173, 189–90 (see also space) Levitas, Ruth 47, 184 liberation 31, 41, 93–5, 107, 141–2, 145 (see also applied theatre) Lorey, Isabel 7, 17, 77–8 Mackey, Sally 142–3, 180–1, 197 (see also place; space)

National Theatre (UK) 135–40, 160–1, 174–80, 183 National Theatre Connections 135, 174–80, 183 neoliberalism 4, 7, 10, 47, 74–6, 103, 115, 188–90 and applied theatre 19, 39 (see also applied theatre; ethics) and social inclusion/exclusion 5, 74, 79, 142 New York 80–92, 123–9, 157, 174, 185–7 Nicholson, Helen 146–7 North America 15 (see also New York)

Panikkar, Raimon 24–5, 41–3, 59 (see also dialogue) participation 74–9 barriers to 75, 78 partnerships 4, 18–19, 34, 44, 45–72, 160, 170–2, 200–1, 205 and integrated investment 45–54 patriarchy 27, 67, 79 108, 154–5 pedagogy critical 73–5, 82–3, 92–4, 102, 106–9, 114–15 for change 122–3 pedagogy of utopia 12–14, 18–22, 43–6, 58, 68, 71, 73, 84–6, 92, 94–6, 106–10, 115, 121–3, 130–2, 139–43, 149–72 ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ 106–7, 129

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Index

(see also Freire, Paulo) performance 13, 49, 54, 59–60, 67, 69–70, 88–93, 109, 120, 127, 134, 183, 197 applied 49 (see also applied theatre) as possibility 67 site-specific 21, 142 street 81 (see also drama; theatre) Pinder, David 47–9, 110 place 20, 42, 68, 142–5, 149, 151–4, 180–1, 190, 197–8 (see also site; space) and place-making 187 play 14, 62, 123, 125–6, 145–6, 168–9, 192, 195, 197, 201–2, 210 pluralism 41–2, 54, 59–61 ‘pluriverse’ 25, 44, 59–60, 64, 155 police 123–9 policy 57, 76 policy makers 6 prison 98 possibilities 12, 14–15, 49, 61–2, 67, 71, 90, 110, 135–7, 154–5, 172, 196 emancipatory 110 ‘field of the possible’ 14–15, 19, 47, 52, 68, 71, 90, 108–9, 113, 121, 164, 204–5 (see also Ricoeur, Paul) foreclosing 94–6 and potential 3, 6, 13–14, 53, 66–7, 82, 84, 90, 114–15, 119, 123, 138, 181 (see also hope; utopia) postcolonialism 41, 55, 61–2 poverty 4–5, 10, 36, 56, 64, 77–9, 85, 136, 144, 188, 218 n.2 (see also inequality) ‘poverty porn’ 55–6 war on 76 powerlessness 5, 131 Prakash, Gyan, 54–5, 62–4

praxis 41, 93, 106–7 (see also Freire, Paulo) precarity 7, 58, 71–2, 76–8 prison 3–4, 14, 78, 93–115, 121, 149, 198 and the criminal justice system 96–9 prison theatre 74, 93–115, 141, 151, 180–2 privilege 4, 44, 85, 88, 92, 152, 183, 204, 217 n.3 (see also inequality) race 55, 61, 83–4, 108, 120, 150, 152, 157, 186–8 racism 83–4, 97, 124, 137, 199–200 reciprocity 17–18, 25, 31, 166 reflexivity 19, 21, 46, 52, 68–9, 71, 120, 131, 133 relational accountability 17–18, 25 representation 75–6, 116, 122, 191 ‘representation of space’ 144–7 self- 135, 206 research 7–8, 15–16, 29, 158 (see also axiology; ethics) as co-operative enquiry 16–17 indigenous 17–18 resistance 18–19, 43–4, 79, 93–6, 104–5, 114–15, 117, 132, 172–3, 189, 203–5 and change 64 and disruption 6, 49, 73–4, 80–1, 97, 110, 174, 180–3, 198 geographies of 21, 173–98 presence as 64, 173–4, 179, 183–4, 190, 197–8 sites of 157, 172 respect 5–6, 11, 17, 37, 54, 120–1, 191, 210–11 Ricoeur, Paul 12–14, 19, 46–53, 66–8, 70–1, 106, 109, 121, 131, 150, 154, 183–4 ‘social imagination’ 46–7, 51–2, 58, 71, 133, 138, 164–5

Index risk 143, 146–8, 151–2, 156, 162, 169–70, 173, 181, 198, 201 -averse 143 creative 169 -taking 143, 162, 170 Roy, Arundhati 3–4, 74 rural 41–2, 188 (see also urban) Salverson, Julie 31 Second Shot Productions 99–101 (see also The Children’s Theatre Project) sisterhood 147–8, 155 site xii, 20, 42, 132, 186 and counter-site 149 (see also place; space) Smith, Neil 21, 185–7 Snyder-Young, Dani 7, 38 social change 2–3, 7, 94, 139–40 (see also social justice) and responsibility 133–4 social exclusion 4–6, 9–11, 75–80 and cultural inequality 79 and health issues 11 and self-esteem 11 self-fulfilling prophecy 10 wider impacts of 3, 79, 101–2 (see also inequality) social imagination (see Ricoeur, Paul) social justice 2–9, 12, 14–15, 38 73–115, 122–3, 130, 151–2, 172, 183, 187–8, 200–1, 204–5 and citizenship 5, 54 demand for 2, 197 and fairness 3, 5–6, 9, 217 n.3 merit 4, 6–7 a slippery term 3 or social change 2–3 (see also equality) Soja, Edward 20, 152–3, 156–7, 187–90 solidarity 129, 145, 150, 191–2, 203–4 assumptions of 62–3

245

space 68, 86–7, 94–6, 109, 115–16, 141–73, 180–1, 188–90, 192–95, 205–6 brave 151–2 counter-hegemonic 145, 172–3 lived 154, 165 ownership over 165–9, 180, 185 and power 141–2, 152 public 185, 206 safe 127, 142–4, 146–7, 151–2 and scale 186 and segregation 149–50 social mean of 144–5 (see also Lefebvre, Henri) spatial in/justice 187–9, 197 as unfixed 141–2, 152 utopic 19, 148–9 (see also place; site; thirdspaces) Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 55, 62–3, 157 Stage Left (Theatre Company) 45 story/stories 23, 28–9, 31–3, 42, 60, 65–6, 89–1, 100–1, 111–12, 122–3, 126 133, 146, 154, 167, 171, 179, 184–5, 193–5, 214 ‘authentic’ 28–9, 34 and the ethics of telling 28–9 storytelling 29, 42, 60, 90, 126, 146, 192, 198 Subaltern Studies 54–63 survival 38, 41, 146, 163 sustainability 15, 19, 33, 42, 65, 105, 164–6, 170–1, 177, 200 Synergy Theatre Project 181–2 teenagers 162–3, 166–9 theatre xi–xiii, 1–9, 12–15, 46–50, 54, 58, 61–4, 68–70, 80–1, 93–6, 106–9, 116–17, 158–61, 176–7, 196 children’s 96–7, 99, 175–6 community 25, 28–31, 48–9, 73, 142, 180

246 creating utopic spaces 148, 83 devising 7, 20, 23–4, 33–4, 59–60, 65–7, 70–1, 81, 88–91, 117–18, 121–4, 129–131, 169–71, 181, 184–5, 192 dialogical 63–4 as a heterotopia 150–1 as a hook 62 as an institution 90 instrumentalised 7–8, 59, 95, 159 intercultural 44, 54 live 13 participatory 13, 173, 181, 215 in prisons (see prison theatre) scripted 129–30, 135–6, 139–40 site-specific 21, 142 and space 141 (see also space) spatial turn in 142–5 (see also space) theatre-in-education 130 (see also Bond, Edward) theatre-making 17, 23, 28, 30, 59, 61–4, 100–1, 173, 201, 204–5 theatre for development 34–6 ‘Westernisation’ 36 a world without 35 thirdspaces 152–73, 181–5, 192–203 Thompson, Neil 3, 9 Thompson, James, 6–7, 9, 46, 71, 217 n.1 To Protect, Serve and Understand 123–9, 131, 140, 170, 203 (see also Irondale Theater) tourism 29–31, 36–42, 54–5 scientific 40 (see also ecotourism) (see also applied theatre; globalization) transformation 7–8, 14, 41, 85–6, 106, 159 issues of 7 urban 3, 19–20, 54–9, 76, 80, 153, 185–91

Index and rural divides 41 (see also rural) utopia x–xii, 1–2, 12–18, 45–54, 66, 68–72, 106–9, 199–216 anticipation 13–14, 50 and critical distance 53, 68 concrete 70–1, 113 critiques of 12–13 iconoclastic 48–9, 149 (see also Jacoby, Russell) and ideology 49–53, 67, 106, 118, 150, 154–5 (see also Ricoeur, Paul) as imperfect/imprecise 48 levels of/stages of 50, 67 nebulous xii, 19, 70–2, 86, 92, 110, 148, 157, 165 and neoliberalism 76–7, 189 and realism 49–50, 85–6, 149, 183 and resistance 64, 115, 132, 157, 172–3, 189–90, 197–8, 203–5 spectres and 58 and social imagination (see Ricoeur, Paul) theatre of hope 12 utopic intent 45 utopic thinking 18, 43–4, 115, 198, 200 utopian theatre practice 68 utopic/utopian vision 90–3, 159, 197 (see also Hope; Ricoeur, Paul) value 4–8, 16–18, 33, 45–7, 75–6, 93–4, 210–11 (see also axiology) violence 67, 98–9, 102–6, 119, 124, 131–5, 137, 145 domestic 50, 65, 67 voice 20–2, 62, 116–22, 127, 129–32, 135, 158, 160, 170, 172, 176, 198, 200, 204–5, 214–15 amplification of 117–18, 130, 135, 160, 215 (see also articulation; Hall, Stuart)

Index having a 5, 116 issues of giving 117 lack of/voiceless 31, 116–17 and listening 121–2 repression of 130 and silence 117, 119–20 (see also articulation) Voices of Worli Koliwwada 190–7, 203–6 vulnerability 9, 17, 77, 143, 147–9, 152, 170, 180 wellbeing (see health and wellbeing) Wilson, Shawn 17, 29 women 20–1, 27–44, 143–52, 154–5, 191–204 health 59, 67 speaking 28, 62, 116

247 women-only spaces 144, 149–50, 193–5, 2020

Yorkín 25–9, 31–42 (see also Costa Rica) youth 4, 7, 9–11, 49–50, 60–5, 80–8 119–20, 130, 137, 158–72 and cultural capital 80, 82 demonization of 153–4 homeless 11, 74–94, 80–3 (see also homelessness) in public space 153–4 represented in theatre 130–5, 158–72, 175–6 at risk of offending 15 violence 137–8 youth experience 20 youth theatre 158–72, 174–83

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