Journal of Drama and Theatre Education in Asia (DaTEAsia)

This article presents how, based on my professional experience as an artist and researcher, I have been developing different methodologies for teaching theatre to children. For the past two decades, I have engaged at the intersection of performance studies and Japanese haiku to create poetic scenes. Introduced to Brazil in the early twentieth century, haiku has exerted a significant influence on Brazilian art ever since. Emphasising the present moment – the “here and now” – as well as art, life, ritual, and everyday experience, haiku shares essential principles with performance art. I aim to demonstrate how my artistic journey is deeply intertwined with my development as an educator. Throughout the article, I reflect on theoretical studies and their practical implications within elementary school theatre classrooms. Translating research on haiku and performance into pedagogical exercises has posed both conceptual and practical challenges. Here, I offer a concise account of how I have established connections between haiku and performance, exploring some of their historical roots and aesthetic resonances. My goal is to build a bridge between the theoretical frameworks explored in my research and their practical application in the classroom. Ultimately, this work responds to the urgent need to engage young students in creating performances that foster a sense of living in harmony with nature. By integrating poetic forms and embodied experience, I seek – through theatre education – to stimulate sensitivity, imagination, and appreciation for the subtle and ephemeral dimensions of life.

The paper investigates the landscape of Performing Arts Education in Ghana, particularly contrasting institutions under the Ghana Education Service (GES) with those accredited by international organisations such as Cambridge and the International Baccalaureate. Utilising Joan Lazarus’ (2012) best practices framework, the study evaluates the pedagogical approaches of these two educational systems, advocating for a well-rounded theatre education that merges curricular and co curricular activities. The paper also identifies prevailing challenges in cultivating effective performing arts programs, promoting a call for strategies that support holistic educational reforms. By highlighting disparities in performing arts education, the paper aims to offer insights into best practices that can elevate performing arts instruction in Ghana. In essence, the research underscores the necessity for transformative changes in the educational framework, calling for enhanced collaboration between GES and international schools to harness the strengths of both systems, ultimately enriching the arts education landscape in Ghana. This comparative exploration serves as a foundation for recommendations aimed at improving educational outcomes in performing arts across the nation, ensuring that students gain the essential skills needed for their personal and professional development.

This review provides a synthesis of recent research (2019 – 2024) examining urban-rural disparities in drama education across China’s compulsory education system. Drawing on 25 articles, the analysis reveals that urban-rural disparities in Chinese drama education primarily exist in students’ consistent access to drama education, professional development opportunities for teachers, teachers’ attitudes towards drama education, and drama pedagogical effects on students. The findings are critically discussed through a multi-dimensional educational equity framework using a comparative perspective within Asian educational contexts, and an integrative framework that synthesises principles of effective Professional Learning and Development (PLD) and Professional Learning Community (PLC) models, offering a culturally responsive and systematically cohesive mechanism to address the multifaceted equity issues. The review urges educators and policymakers to prioritise this integrative model to bridge urban-rural divides, ensuring drama education is a universal right for all students, not a privilege for some.

As an art-based research inquiry, Tatas Tales/Los Cuentos de las Tatas encompasses three interconnected facets: poetry therapy groups in English and in Spanish, a playscript in English and in Spanish based on the poetry group work, and emerging arts based curriculum modules for medical personnel emerging from the playscript. Theatrically-informed ways of working shape each phase. All three facets centre the voices and stories of breast cancer survivors, sometimes as creative content, sometimes as inspiration, sometimes as response, sometimes as dialogue, sometimes as inquiry, and sometimes as all of the above. The dynamic, generative nature of the growing arts-based inquiry builds on itself. Each phase offers some learnings or preliminary “findings” or grounded distillations for consideration: (1) Poetry therapy tables offer an iterative literacy counterspace with productive drama/theatre parallels to seed playscript and arts-based pedagogies. (2) Breast cancer connections cross borders, arts-based methods help articulate, frame and deepen those connections between people and forms. (3) Writing, scripting and staging with peoples’ real lives and stories requires time and negotiation to navigate “ethical stress” in representation. (4) “Whose story is missing?” is a necessary, continual inquiry which also welcomes arts-based approaches. (5) Nursing education, poetry and theatre work productively overlap with imagination, perspective taking and critical reflection processes as a bridge crossing all.

In our previous issue (Vol. 13), we gathered several papers from The 10th International Drama / Theatre and Education Association (IDEA) World Congress 2024 – ranging from a keynote speech, an essay to a conference review – partially fulfilling our responsibility to give timely coverage of the congress proceedings. We have in fact received a few more IDEA papers, but the reviewing and editing work took some time. Therefore, we have decided to publish three more brilliant IDEA papers for our readers in this issue.

The triennial grand event in the Applied Drama community, the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association World Congress (IDEA Congress), was held in Beijing in July 2024. Tied up with a performance at my university, I was unable to attend. Meanwhile, I happen to be appointed by the Hong Kong Drama/Theatre and Education Forum (TEFO) this year as the journal editor again, taking over from Dr. Pansy Tam, who has dedicated herself selflessly to the editorial work for a total of 11 years since 2013 (A special shout-out to Dr. Muriel Law for sharing the heavy workload from 2013 to 2021). Pansy suggested that the journal could seize the opportunity to publish a special feature on the IDEA Congress right after its recent closure, so I had the privilege to peek at some of the conference papers before our readers, sort of consolation to me for missing the chance to be there. As I recall, when the IDEA Congress was hosted by TEFO for the first time in Hong Kong in 2007, we, with our limited experience, managed to successfully organise the largest drama education conference in the world through cautious and humble efforts combined. The excellent essays published back then were compiled in Planting Trees of Drama with Global Vision in Local Knowledge: IDEA 2007 Dialogues (Shu & Chan, 2009). 17 years later, the IDEA Congress returned to China. Readers, either present in the capital or not last year, can revisit or catch a glimpse of the event through the texts of our selected essays.