Drama, Masculinity and Violence

The theatre in prisons and probation (TIPP) field has developed in response to a growing recognition within the criminal justice system that the arts can play a directly functional role in the ‘primary task of reducing offending, through education and challenging behaviour, offering new ways of thinking, and redirecting energies’ {Community Sentences Committee (1994) Probation and the Arts: a briefing paper (Wakefield, Association of Chief Officers of Probation)}. In particular, criminal justice agencies have acknowledged that imaginative and engaging styles of education are crucial to rehabilitative work with offenders. In the UK there are currently half a dozen theatre organisations working exclusively with offenders on probation or in prison, and over a 150 artists and/or companies who work regularly in a criminal justice setting. There is a British Network of Prison Theatre which exists to influence and inform Home Office policies and a European Network which was formed after the 2nd European Conference on Theatre and Prison, held in Manchester in 1996. Academically, the theory and practice of prison theatre is being taught in half a dozen UK universities at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The TIPP field is both complex and diverse in its approaches to working with offenders. A precise definition of TIPP practice is difficult, partly due to the complex interaction between drama and educational method, but also because the work is constantly changing and evolving in response to practical experience. Underlying the different approaches, whether implicitly or explicitly stated, is a crucial orientation to a rehabilitative goal. (The arts organisations currently practising exclusively in prisons and probation were all founded under very different circumstances. Geese Theatre Company, for example, was a franchise of an American company, and imported its methods and ideas from the US, while Clean Break Theatre Company was established by two women ex-offenders, and set out a belief that the arts should be used as a method for empowering and developing skills with offenders. The TIPP Centre was created after a conference for theatre and probation practitioners interested in working together on projects.) This article investigates the ways in which a drama-based cognitive‐behaviourial programme for violent offenders can construct and review its theoretical approach through practice. The TIPP Centre’s Pump Challenging Violence programme serves as an example of a creative educational project which sought to provide a positive model of practice; and it is through the analysis of this practical example that the model may be tested and its efficacy assessed.