Applied Drama: The Gift of Theatre (review)

In Applied Drama: the Gift of Theatre, Helen Nicholson, a specialist in applied drama and lecturer in theatre and drama at Royal Holloway University of London, examines the value of theatre and drama practices in various community and educational settings. Nicholson raises questions about applied drama, a "dramatic activity that primarily exists outside conventional mainstream theatre institutions, which [is] specifically intended to benefit individuals, communities and societies" (2). She expands upon this definition by describing practical examples, grounding her arguments in theory, and probing ethical issues one encounters as an applied drama practitioner. As such, Applied Drama is an intriguing and accessible text for a wide audience, including seasoned practitioners, academics interested in drama and education, and students recently introduced to the art and practice of applied drama.

Nicholson sensibly organizes her study into three major sections: "Participation and Praxis," "Narratives and Narrativity," and "Creativity and Social Justice." In each section, the author describes fascinating applied drama projects that took place in predominantly non-Western countries. For example, Nicholson details the Story Workshop's facilitation on family violence in Malawi, as well as a workshop she led in Sri Lanka in which a child's dress was used as a prop to inspire participants to create stories about their community. Throughout, the author considers important, recurring ethical questions: Whose stories are told in drama and whose are not? How can applied drama praxis be indicative of a plurality of perspectives? And, how is the human body used in applied drama pedagogy?

In the first section, "Participation and Praxis," Nicholson considers crucial dilemmas and examines the need to carefully consider the participants, location, and goals when creating an applied drama project. For instance, Nicholson argues that some participants might be marginalized by drama if it requires literacy. To offset this problem, she proposes that drama can be practiced using multiple languages, such as kinesthetic imagination with abstract physical activities, to serve the variant needs and skills of participants. In this section, the author also discusses practitioners' well-meaning intentions and how these intentions are sometimes misperceived by participants. In Nicholson's view, most practitioners of applied drama have an altruistic aim to make a positive impact on the lives of participants. However, participants may perceive practitioners as outsiders who infiltrate their community and demand it to change. Nicholson believes that practitioners act out of altruism as well as self-interest. She contends that these two motivations are not oppositional and that it is important for practitioners to recognize both in their work.

In the second and equally strong section, "Narrative and the Gift of Storytelling," Nicholson examines applied drama projects in which the participating community creates a collective story. She opens this section by discussing how each of the drama's participants bring their own narratives that exemplify their individual identities, how these participants are influenced by other participants' narratives, and how, in turn, the collective narratives are constructed. As an exemplar of this process, Nicholson vividly recounts a facilitation experience from her own career. During the 2003 applied drama project in Sri Lanka, where Nicholson used a little girl's dress as a key element, the community created a story that the dress's wearer was a child who was beaten during the war. Although the little girl was fictional, the twenty-year civil war the community described in the story was real and had recently ended. As another example of creating stories through the practice of applied drama, Nicholson, with much detail, describes a London production of A Woman's Place, a devised autobiographical play with narratives written and performed by three refugee women from Cameroon, Rwanda, and France. Regarding this example of applied drama, Nicholson focuses on the community outreach for the production (e.g., an exhibit of refugees' artwork displayed around the performance space...