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 essays, 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 UK, the US, 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.

Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches 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: Pedagogy and Acting

By 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

By Peter Zazzali

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

By Kristine Landon-Smith and Chris Hay

1. Cultivating the Reflexive Practitioner in the Performance Studio: An Intersectional Approach

By Valerie Clayman Pye

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

By Denis Cryer-Lennon

1. Training Actors’ Voices and Decolonizing Curriculum: Shifting Epistemologies

By Stan Brown and Tara McAllister-Veil

Part Two: Approaches to Scene Study as Cultural Intersectionality

1. Reconsidering the Link Between Text, Technique and Teaching in Actor Training

By Sherrill Gow

7. Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students

By Amy Rebecca King and Robert Torigoe

1. Liminal Casting: Towards Self-Inquisitive Scene Study in Actor Training

By Evi Stamatiou

Part Three: Structural Intersectionality in Values and Assessment

1. ‘“We Can Imagine You Here”: Acknowledging the Need and Setting the Stage for Multi-Layered Institutional Adaptation at Yale University’s School of Drama

By Jennifer Smolos Steele

10. Complex Movements for Change: A Case Study

By Niamh Dowling

11. Developing a Social Justice PWI Acting Studio Through Equitable Assessments

By Elizabeth M. Cizmar

1. Singing Pedagogy for Actors: Questioning Quality

By Electa Behrens and Øystein Elle

Part Four: Interpersonal Intersectionality: Learning Edges

1. Developing the Actor Trainer: Welcome, Trust and Critical Exchange

By Jessica Hartley

1. Scaffolding Consent and Intimacy in the Acting Classroom: Bridging the Gap Between Learning and Doing

By Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham

1. A Neurocosmopolitan Approach to Actor-Training: learning from neurodivergent ways-of-doing

By Zoë Glen

Afterword

By Amy Mihyang Ginther

Index

Lisa Peck is a 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 a 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. She recently published Bourdieu in the Studio: Decolonising and Decentering Actor Training through “Ludic Activism” (Routledge 2023).