Drama and Diversity: A Pluralistic Perspective for Educational Drama

Sharon Grady's book, unlike major texts that capitalize on the exploding demand for books on multicultural education, introduces the reader to the theory and practice of classroom drama and theater for youth from a pluralistic perspective; that is, how people build their identities and how one can help them acknowledge them. According to Grady, the need for a "pluralistic practice" in the drama classroom is a necessary step in theater education that will structure works in ways that will help students reflect on issues related to difference. Through dramatic situations, Grady maps out how to implement a pluralistic practice throughout a constellation of five distinct theoretical frameworks that deal with the concept of difference: ethnographic, multicultural, postcolonial, feminist, and disability theory.

Each chapter presents a theorized story that graphically assesses the various possible misunderstandings that may result from the many cultural assumptions between teachers (adults) and students. Grady shows how improvisational drama and other dramatic techniques such as pantomime become tools for engaging students and teachers in a quest for understanding of such matters as bias, discrimination and racism. Each chapter carefully interweaves an activity to be practiced in the classroom with a theoretically embedded story and targets a particular audience. Grady also makes certain to include in her "pluralistic methodology" general guidelines that pertain to how to build a session: the material needed, the procedure that the teacher should adopt, and the body of students involved.

Instead of advocating a multicultural theater that tends to present an idealized, utopian view of democracy, in which no citizen oppresses another, Grady prefers to use drama in the classroom as a way to show how bias arises. One method that she advocates is to create what she names a "listening, learning posture" among students, which should help them to point to the "presences and absences" of identity. In chapters two through six, Grady builds a framework of pluralistic locations that encompass racial and ethnic orientation, class, gender reorientations, and disability. She coherently concludes each chapter with a section that deals with questions to ponder-practical, pedagogical problems to consider while engaging students in these plural(istic) spaces. Each chapter ends with case-study situations as a way for readers and practitioners to engage themselves more fully with the material presented in the chapter.

The strength of the book derives from the fact that it does not deal strictly with concerns of practices of theater education but also engages the reader in larger discussions of drama and theory, embracing critics as varied as Kristeva, Spivak, Shapiro, Moi, and Gilmore. This book is an important addition to interdisciplinary work, because like the pluralistic practice that Grady defends, it also marshals multidisciplinary content, exploring such fields as drama education, theater for youth, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, women's studies, cultural studies, and others. Grady succeeds in re-establishing the value of the field of drama in education and in raising important issues that should help shape a new type of theater in the classroom, a theater based on how such a critique may promote a more sophisticated type of drama that not only reflects mere reality but also rewrites it.