Fiction Theatre : Experience as Social & Pedagogical Practice

This book aims to show how a specific form of documentary research, founded in a theatre-making method labelled “real fiction,” can be utilised in drama education contexts, such as classrooms and performance spaces.

This book aims to show how a specific form of documentary research, founded in a theatre-making method labelled ‘real fiction,’ can be utilised in drama education contexts, such as classrooms and performance spaces. It introduces this process through an exploration of theatre-making practice, based on the author’s experience, and then applies the method in a drama classroom. Through this process, it reveals the value of utilising practice-based drama methods in education, revealing new ways of teaching drama through praxis inquiry. The book specifically applies ‘real fiction’ practice to the issue of social labelling in education. In this sense, it aims to challenge the use of labelling language in social and educational contexts. This is done through the process of utilising ‘real fiction’ monologue writing practice to explore labels, their meaning and operation, in the lives of a sample group of young people. One of the objectives of the book is to show how the documentary theatre practice of ‘real fiction’ can be used to influence and transform the social and cultural lives of young people. It then expands on the broader implications for this, through the use of an example, creating a play script from participants’ monologue data. Ultimately, this book is concerned with diversity and inclusion through the practice of the performing arts. It aims to build knowledge about the ways in which theatre-making practice and the teaching of drama can contribute to a more equitable society. It is interdisciplinary in the sense that it not only seeks new ways of teaching drama but also educates through the practice of theatre, monologue writing and method acting. This book is suitable for readers interested in drama, playwriting, theatre practice, acting and education. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.