Critical Acting Pedagogy Intersectional Approaches Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies Series

Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches invites readers to think about pedagogy in actor training as a research field in its own right: to sit with the complex challenges, risks, and rewards of the acting studio; to recognise the shared vulnerability, courage, and love that defines our field and underpins our practices.

This collection of chapters, from a diverse group of acting teachers at different points in their careers, working in conservatoires and universities, illuminates current developments in decolonising studios to foreground multiple and intersecting identities in the pedagogic exchange. In acknowledging how their positionality affects their practices and materials, 20 acting teachers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and Oceania offer practical tools for the social justice acting classroom, with rich insights for developing critical acting pedagogies. Authors test and develop research approaches, drawn from social sciences, to tackle dominant ideologies in organisation, curriculum, and methodologies of actor training.

This collection frames current efforts to promote equality, diversity, and inclusivity in the studio. It contributes to the collective movement to improve current educational practice in acting, prioritising well-being, and centering the student experience.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Josette Bushell-Mingo

Introduction

Lisa Peck and Evi Stamatiou

PART ONE: Intersectional Methodologies and Critical Acting Pedagogies

1 Oppression and the Actor: Locating Freire’s Pedagogy in the Training Space

Peter Zazzali

2 Playing with Difference in Actor Training: A Method to Transform Policy into Pedagogy

Kristine Landon-Smith and Chris Hay

3 Cultivating the Reflexive Practitioner in the Performance Studio: An Intersectional Approach

Valerie Clayman Pye

4 Critiquing from the Centre: Challenging Breath Pedagogies within Dominant British-centric Voice Training

Denis Cryer-Lennon

5 Training Actors’ Voices and Decolonising Curriculum: Shifting Epistemologies

Stan Brown and Tara Mcallister-Viel

PART TWO: Approaches to Scene Study as Cultural Intersectionality

6 Reconsidering the Link between Text, Technique and Teaching in Actor Training

Sherrill Gow

7 Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students

Amy Rebecca King and Robert Torigoe

8 Liminal Casting: Self-Inquisitive Scene Study in Actor Training

Evi Stamatiou

PART THREE: Structural Intersectionality in Values and Assessment

9 We Can Imagine You Here: Acknowledging the Need and Setting the Stage for Multi-layered Institutional Adaptation at Yale University’s School of Drama

Jennifer Smolos Steele

10 Complex Movements for Change: A Case Study

Niamh Dowling

11 Developing a Social Justice PWI Acting Studio through

Equitable Assessments

Elizabeth M. Cizmar

12 Singing Pedagogy for Actors: Questioning Quality

Electa Behrens and Oystein Elle

PART FOUR: Interpersonal Intersectionality: Learning Edges

13 Developing the Actor Trainer: Welcome, Trust, and Critical Exchange

Jessica Hartley

14 Scaffolding Consent and Intimacy in the Acting Classroom: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Doing

Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham

15 A Neurocosmopolitan Approach to Actor Training: Learning from Neurodivergent Ways-of-doing

Zoë Glen

Afterword by Amy Mihyang Ginther

Lisa Peck is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Practice at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include actor training, theatre-making pedagogies, women in theatre, critical pedagogies, and site-based performance.

Evi Stamatiou is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the MA/MFA Acting for Stage and Screen at the University of East London. She is a practitioner-researcher of actor training with two decades of international experience as an actor and creative.