Masters Thesis

Community-based theatre: a medium to advocate for social justice and change

This thesis looks at theatre as a possible medium to advocate for social justice and change. The arts have proven to be a method for engaging people, groups and communities in dialogues concerning a vast amount of issues. I participated in a nine-day artistic residency with thirteen student artists from a theatre school in Northern California in order to see their interactions, involvement and engagement with a rural community in northern California. During the residency, I took the role of a participant observer and did ethnography. After the artistic residency, the participants were asked to participate in semi-structured interviews with the purpose of understanding and obtaining richer descriptions of their experiences during their stay in the rural community in northern California. This research is in response to a program evaluation I produced for the school. The results show that arts and theatre are a venue to promote community building.

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