Theatre of Good Intentions: Challenges and Hopes for Theatre and Social Change by Dani Snyder-Young (review)

In a locked residential youth facility outside of Chicago an ensemble of incarcerated teenage girls performs an original musical that mythologizes motherhood. Leveraging and resisting dramatic conventions, such as singing stories about actual mothers and speaking fantasies about ideal moms, the performance lauds a prison staff member as a paradigmatic maternal figure before an audience that includes the actresses’ real-life families. The problematic idealization of authority in this gymnasium-turned-theatre comprises one of five case studies in Theatre of Good Intentions: Challenges and Hopes for Theatre and Social Change, Dani Snyder-Young’s first monograph. Arguing that good intentions can reproduce the hegemonic structures that applied theatre artists aim to dismantle, Snyder-Young persuasively outlines theatre’s political and practical limitations in creating social change.

A two-part structure distinguishes applied theatre’s impact on participants from its impact on spectators. Each chapter considers different US-based applied theatre projects, ranging from urban classroom drama to professional productions with a political agenda, in light of a focused issue that practitioners commonly face. How can facilitators check their privilege when collaborating with underprivileged participants? How do funding bodies temper the resistive possibilities available to artists who wish to address the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? While Snyder-Young does not resolve the incisive questions she raises, the argument’s design models a process of critical interrogation that the author invites applied theatre artists to adopt.

Theatre of Good Intentions straddles the boundaries between historical narrative and practical guide to address scholars and practitioners who engage with applied theatre and theatre for social change. Throughout, Snyder-Young responds to the theoretical groundwork that Shannon Jackson, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Sonja Kuftinec, Augusto Boal, James Thompson, and Helen Nicholson establish. Drawing from interviews, participant observation research, and critical self-reflections, Snyder-Young destabilizes the assumption that applied theatre intrinsically creates social change. Just as she urges practitioners to interrogate how their biases manifest in the processes and productions that they lead, Snyder-Young regularly speculates as to how her privilege and experiences shape her observations. Beyond theatre and performance studies, the issues that her multivalent analysis addresses also pertain to social-change-oriented students and leftist activists across disciplines.

Snyder-Young identifies institutionalized oppression as a principal force that inhibits theatre for social change work on both the micro and macro levels. Spaces that support applied theatre work are not objective, and their influence can curb the radical politics that artists strive to embody. For example, during her twelve-week Theatre of the Oppressed residency in an urban charter school, her authority as a co-facilitator implicated her with the school’s mission to socialize students to embody a dominant paradigm of upward social mobility. Snyder-Young’s self-consciousness around the classroom’s power dynamics informed her response to a participant who insisted that “real men” do not walk away from their women (57). Rather than imposing distinct values on the participant, Snyder-Young offered her critique of the scenario that the participant described as one of many interpretations in the room. While this particular approach honors participant agency, it deflects the radical social change that motivates many applied theatre artists.

Rather than dissuade theatre facilitators from pursuing social change, Snyder-Young rallies artists to strengthen their impact through strategic action. To do so, she addresses common dynamics in the field, such as artists’ desire to intervene in social issues that they have not personally experienced, facilitators’ attempts to advocate for a political agenda that conflicts with spectators’ and audiences’ values, and activists’ struggles to motivate audiences to take action outside of the theatre. Snyder-Young’s critique extends to theatre’s formal characteristics, such as its inability to reach mass audiences, its failure to respond immediately to current events, and its inflexibility to adapt over time to changing historical circumstances. While some practitioners may struggle to accept such unapologetic claims, applied theatremakers will benefit...