Theatre and Empowerment examines the ability of drama, theatre, dance and performance to empower communities of very different kinds, and it does so from a multicultural perspective. The communities involved include disadvantaged children in Ethiopia and the Indian subcontinent, disenfranchised Native Americans in the USA and young black men in Britain, people caught in cycles of violence in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and a threatened agricultural town in Italy. The book asserts the value of performance as a vital agent of necessary social change, and makes its arguments through the close examination, from inside practice, of the success not always complete of specific projects in their practical and cultural contexts. Practitioners and commentators ask how performance in its widest sense can play a part in community activism on a scale larger than the individual,one-off project by helping communities find their own liberating and creative voices.

Published by FEDAPT, the Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Theatre. Explores the role of arts in community activism on an international level.