Editorial: Into the Traumaverse

Abstract

In this editorial, the editor reflects on the current political climate in the US and its impact on theatre education. The editor then introduces this issue, in which our contributors have reflected on their diverse practices, many of which fall under or draw upon trauma-informed and healing centered practices. In Divided We Stand, Carmen Meyers uses verbatim documentary theatre to investigate how women in the U.S. negotiated and maintained their identities and relationships in today’s climate of political polarization. Taiwo Afolabi focuses on his performance in an applied theatre project with refugees, immigrants, and international students in Victoria, British Columbia to explore how his migratory and mobility experiences shape his identity and in turn reveal expression in his artistic practice. In her narrative of practice, Kaitlin O.K. Jaskolski highlights the methods used to facilitate, assess and stratify learning outcomes in order to create a culture of inclusion as illustrated through case studies on devising and the performance of Aesop’s Idols at Westside Inclusive Theatre Company in Houston, Texas. Lea Ticozzi reviews her staging of Neil Simon’s The Gingerbread Lady with young people at a high school in Switzerland. The students embodied physical, intellectual and emotional experiences by staging characters who address sexist, LGBTQ, and racial issues as illuminated through their written reflections. Amanda Claudia Wager and Sara Schroeter explore their experiences as drama-in-education professors in Canada teaching educators how to create and facilitate process drama and call for artists and educators to be more thoughtful in approaching the creation and facilitation of process drama, especially when teaching people with different subjectivities and positionalities. To illustrate active learning methods, U.S. based teacher-educator Rosalind M. Flynn presents a lesson sequence and resources for teaching theatre history. In Santiago, Chile, theatre practitioner Moira Fortin works through and into the intersections between illustration and theatre, as she explores her collaboration with visual artist and illustrator Carolina Schütte González as they created a graphic transposition of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Dawn Ingleson probes her use of conflict resolution models at a Primary School Federation in London, UK. Ingleson implements nonviolent communication, systems theory, and philosophy for children to create a simultaneous community of inquiry and practice using versions of forum theatre and process drama via a journey of immersive practice.