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ABSTRACT
In this article, we demonstrate how theatre pedagogy was mobilized, and to what effects, in one Toronto drama classroom which was strongly divided along racial lines. Using the work of Diane Reay (2012) and Tara Yosso (2005) in particular, among other theorists and social commentators, as well as data from a multi-year, multi-sited global ethnographic research project of drama classrooms, we offer two micro-encounters from our data to illustrate how drama pedagogy both reproduced and interrupted the established classroom social relations of race and gender for seven different youth, provoking them to negotiate who they are, what they know, and the world in which they live. Through these micro-encounters, we demonstrate how youth can shift the landscape of traditional learning and explore avenues where different, relational, socially embedded, and more complex intersectional (Crenshaw 1989; Collins 2015) possibilities for “having” a voice may exist.
Acknowledgment
The authors would also like to acknowledge the very engaged feedback provided by the journal reviewers of this work.
Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Notes
1 Participants selected their own pseudonyms and social identity descriptors they wished to be used in any writing about them.
2 All of the students in this group self-identified as binary regarding gender systems, though we are aware that a spectrum of gender positions may have existed for any of them.
3 For an introduction to the research project and a panel discussion by members of the international and local Toronto team, including Mr. L speaking to his context at the school, please see the posted video Reclaiming the Radical: Drama in Dangerous Times at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/dr/Home/index.html.