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As teacher-facilitators, Joseph M. Shosh and Jennifer A. Wescoe emphasize the educational value of theater. To promote student leadership of a production, students audition for roles on and off stage and contribute to the technical aspects of the production through "crew days," from which they build community and develop a sense of respect for the complexity of production. Additionally, Shosh and Wescoe implement writing activities to help students understand and develop their characters.
In order for something of quality to take place, an empty space needs to be created. An empty space makes it possible for a new phenomenon to come to life, for anything that touches on content, meaning, expression, language and music can exist only if the experience is fresh and new.
-Peter Brook, There Are No secrets: Thoughts on Acting and Theatre
Theater is our greatest teacher-or at least it has the potential to be. The ancient Greeks understood this so well that during their great dramatic festivals, even prisoners were released to attend and experience a communal catharsis in the theater. Just try telling your principal, though, that you want the kids in the in-school suspension room to form your audience or join the thespian troupe, and someone else in your department will surely be assigned to direct the school play. In most schools, drama is an extracurricular activity provided as a reward for those who behaved and want to stick around after the final bell has sounded. We have come to believe that the best teaching of English happens in the otherwise empty spaces of schools where we facilitate learning in ways that help students slow down the frenetic pace of their lives long enough to make meaning of the present moment.
Students are often forced to be passive learners in school, memorizing and regurgitating information without creating meaning for themselves. John Dewey, the pragmatic American educational theorist, and Peter Brook, arguably the most important stage director of the twentieth century, have helped us to rethink how we direct the school play and, in turn, how we teach English classes before play rehearsal even begins. Dewey's critique of traditional education is analogous to Brook's disdain for what he calls the "deadly theatre." Each is characterized by a lifeless conformity...