The drama workshop: Collective discernment and artistic practice as relational pedagogies for an epoch of intersecting ecological, social, and economic crises (2025-2029)
How does the drama workshop equip young people for both the world we have and the better world-to-be-imagined?
Background
The Drama Workshop is a global research project that brings young people and artist-teachers together in Canada, Greece, Nigeria, India, and Ireland. Through theatre practices—such as solo performance, devised theatre, site-specific work, and ensemble building—the project explores how workshops can become spaces of cooperation, imagination, and civic engagement. At a moment of global polarization, the project positions the drama workshop as both a creative practice and a civic model for imagining more cooperative and life-sustaining futures.
Research Objectives
To bring young people together in drama workshops that spark cooperation, creativity, and shared problem-solving skills they carry into classrooms, communities, and everyday life.
To connect theatre with civic life by linking artistic expression to schools, public forums, and community spaces, showing how drama can fuel participation and responsibility.
To face today’s crises through art using theatre to confront ecological, social, and economic challenges, turning complexity into conversation, imagination, and collective action.
To build global connections among youth and artist-teachers in Canada, Greece, Nigeria, India, and Ireland, creating collaborations that cross cultures, borders, and generations.
To share performances and resources that spread drama practices to wider publics, inspiring educators, communities, and policymakers to imagine and work toward more just and sustainable futures.