On Access in Applied Theatre and Drama Education

<p>This book explores and interrogates access and diversity in applied theatre and drama education.</p><p>Access is persistently framed as a strategy to share power and to extend equality but in the context of current and recent power struggles it is also seen as a discourse that reinforces marginalisation and exclusion. The political bind of access is also a conceptual problem. It is impossible to refuse to engage in strategies to extend access to institutions representations buildings education discourse etc. We cannot oppose access or strategies for access without reinforcing marginalisation and exclusion. We can’t <i>not</i> want access for ourselves or for others. However we are then in danger of remaining immersed in a distribution of power that reinforces and naturalises inequality as difference. For applied theatre and drama education the act of creating teaching and learning is intrinsically connected to choice along with the agency and capacity to choose. What is less clear and what still interests us is how the distribution of power and representation creates the schema for an analysis of access and diversity.</p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance</i>.</p>