1st Edition
Critical Acting Pedagogy Intersectional Approaches
Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches invites readers to think about pedagogy in actor training as a research field in its own right: to sit with the complex challenges, risks and rewards of the acting studio; to recognise the shared vulnerability, courage and love that defines our field and underpins our practices.
This collection of essays, from a diverse group of acting teachers at different points in their careers, working in conservatoires and universities, illuminates current developments in decolonising studios to foreground multiple and intersecting identities in the pedagogic exchange. In acknowledging how their positionality affects their practices and materials, 20 acting teachers from the UK, the US, Europe and Oceania offer practical tools for the social justice acting classroom, with rich insights for developing critical acting pedagogies.
Authors test and develop research approaches, drawn from social sciences, to tackle dominant ideologies in organisation, curriculum and methodologies of actor training.
Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches frames current efforts to promote equality, diversity and inclusivity in the studio. It contributes to the collective movement to improve current educational practice in acting, prioritising well-being and centering the student experience.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
By Josette Bushell-Mingo
Introduction: Pedagogy and Acting
By Lisa Peck and Evi Stamatiou
Part One: Intersectional Methodologies and Critical Acting Pedagogies
- Oppression and the Actor: Locating Freire’s Pedagogy in the Training Space
By Peter Zazzali
- Playing with Difference in Actor Training: A Method to Transform Policy into Pedagogy
By Kristine Landon-Smith and Chris Hay
- Cultivating the Reflexive Practitioner in the Performance Studio: An Intersectional Approach
By Valerie Clayman Pye
- Critiquing from the Centre: Challenging Breath Pedagogies within Dominant British-centric Voice Training
By Denis Cryer-Lennon
- Training Actors’ Voices and Decolonizing Curriculum: Shifting Epistemologies
By Stan Brown and Tara McAllister-Veil
Part Two: Approaches to Scene Study as Cultural Intersectionality
- Reconsidering the Link Between Text, Technique and Teaching in Actor Training
By Sherrill Gow
7. Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students
By Amy Rebecca King and Robert Torigoe
- Liminal Casting: Towards Self-Inquisitive Scene Study in Actor Training
By Evi Stamatiou
Part Three: Structural Intersectionality in Values and Assessment
- ‘“We Can Imagine You Here”: Acknowledging the Need and Setting the Stage for Multi-Layered Institutional Adaptation at Yale University’s School of Drama
By Jennifer Smolos Steele
10. Complex Movements for Change: A Case Study
By Niamh Dowling
11. Developing a Social Justice PWI Acting Studio Through Equitable Assessments
By Elizabeth M. Cizmar
By Electa Behrens and Øystein Elle
Part Four: Interpersonal Intersectionality: Learning Edges
- Developing the Actor Trainer: Welcome, Trust and Critical Exchange
By Jessica Hartley
- Scaffolding Consent and Intimacy in the Acting Classroom: Bridging the Gap Between Learning and Doing
By Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham
- A Neurocosmopolitan Approach to Actor-Training: learning from neurodivergent ways-of-doing
By Zoë Glen
Afterword
By Amy Mihyang Ginther
Index
Biography
Lisa Peck is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Practice at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include actor training, theatre-making pedagogies, women in theatre, critical pedagogies, and site-based performance.
Evi Stamatiou is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the MA/MFA Acting for Stage and Screen at the University of East London. She is a practitioner-researcher of actor training with two decades of international experience as an actor and creative. She recently published Bourdieu in the Studio: Decolonising and Decentering Actor Training through “Ludic Activism” (Routledge 2023).
‘The contributors to this book provide a wealth of information for educators to rethink their teaching practices from a place of humility, respect and genuine interest in fostering equitable, just and inclusive spaces of learning. In doing so, this book will undoubtedly challenge brave educators, seeking innovative approaches to revolutionise traditional ways of teaching and learning, to go beyond the superficial "celebration" of diversity.’
– Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Principal at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
