Beyond acknowledgement of whiteness: Teaching white theatre teachers to examine their racial identity

ABSTRACT

While some US public school theatre programs seek to move away from an annual token play of color, the white canon persists. This reflexive essay examines one professor’s pedagogical approaches in working with white pre-service theatre teachers as they direct short plays with high school students. The work interrogates intersections of identity, critical race theory, performance, representation and education theory and invites the field of theatre education to move beyond an acknowledgement of whiteness towards critical analysis of such racialization. The author examines her own practice as she seeks to embody culturally responsive theatre pedagogy (and invites her students to do the same), thus interrogating all identities rather than the common approach of viewing whiteness as given, non-diverse and normalized.