The Citizens Theatre partnership
Our innovative partnership with Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre focuses on the specialism of Applied Theatre. It aims to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the contextual practices and critical pedagogies associated with Applied Theatre in a real-world context. The Citizens Theatre’s Participate Team has been perfectly placed to co-design and co-deliver this course for students on our postgraduate programmes, MLitt Playwriting and Dramaturgy and MLitt Theatre Studies. The partnership aligns with a key strategic pillar of the department: Theatre & Global Challenges (climate crises, environmental justice, migration, arts health & wellbeing, social inequalities), as well as with the University’s key strategy in relation to civic engagement and inclusive ambition.
Applied Theatre: Contextual Practices and Critical Pedagogies
Applied Theatre is often created outside of conventional theatre spaces, collaborating with communities with shared experiences and passions to make performance work meaningful to them. It is often concerned with social issues and provoking positive change.
Taught by Participate Director, Dr Catrin Evans, with guest practitioners and contributions from the wider Participate team at the Citizens Theatre, Applied Theatre: Contextual Practices and Critical Pedagogies offers introductory insights into the critical and theoretical frameworks and the wide-ranging practices and outputs associated with Applied Theatre. Through a range of participatory learning methods combining lecture style presentation with facilitated workshops and task-based working, students are invited to combine an exploration of the ethical and representational issues at play within this area of theatre-practice, through Case Study analysis of local and international contemporary practices that straddle a range of social settings. In doing so, the course provides a unique learning experience that expands each student’s experience of participatory methods in practice and nurtures the skills required to consider a professional journey into the socially engaged, justice-orientated arts sector.