‘I made myself’: playmaking as a pedagogy of change with urban youth

Abstract

This article reflects on outcomes of a playmaking project conducted with 14–20-year-old urban students in the USA. The playmaking experience was part of a larger research project designed to facilitate students’ understandings of the ways in which their own experiences of discrimination are reflected in pervasive inequity at the societal level, and to facilitate the acquisition of skills that would allow them to become agents of social change in those dynamics. Outcomes discussed include the development of community among the class members and its importance to them, the sense of power and agency students reported as a result of participating in the playmaking process and performing their piece, and the effect of the process on their emerging understanding of unequal power dynamics and the role of collective action in fostering social change.

Keywords:

• multiculturalism
• power
• community
• playmaking
• applied theatre/drama

Notes

1. At the request of the students, I have used their real names in this paper.