Student Agency in Devised Theatre Education: Creating Collaborative Theatre in Virtual and In-Person Classrooms

This monograph argues that implementing devised theatre as a learning praxis has a unique potential to cultivate student agency in the twenty-first century classroom. It offers actionable guidance for drama instructors by providing a new arts education methodology that emphasizes the role of student-led dramaturgy. Based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey results, group interviews, and field observations from the facilitation of two original pieces of digital devised theatre created by Pacific Islander and Asian-American public high school students on Oʻahu, the author documents the crucial roles of constructive and resisting student agency in a devised theatre classroom. This book then departs from established research in suggesting that passivity serves a crucial role in allowing students to assert agency nonconfrontationally, which has considerable implications for peripatetic learners. It also investigates the role of student agency in online theatre education, which, along with expected challenges, was found to produce unique benefits, such as real-time documented performance feedback and accessible asynchronous teacher guidance. Further, a new form of student agency is identified, one exclusive to online learning environments, where students assert themselves by discussing technological challenges such as slow Wi-Fi, camera malfunctions, or other pragmatic concerns. Finally, this book makes a case that the success of these projects with Pacific Islander and Asian-American students suggests that although devising comes from a White Eurocentric tradition, it can provide an effective learning strategy for students from a wide variety of backgrounds.

As global discourse continues to push toward reform that would allow populations around the world increased agency over their lives, this volume makes a unique contribution to the critical conversation around student agency in education today and will appeal to scholars and researchers across arts education, and theatre and performance studies.

Mike Poblete is Instructional Assistant Professor of Devised Theatre at Texas A&M University. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, he is a playwright, performer, and deviser who has written eight full-length plays and numerous one-acts, which have been performed in six countries.