Teachers Act Up! Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre

by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Mariana Souto-Manning

If teachers want to create positive change in the lives of their students, then they must first be able to create positive change in their own lives. This book describes a powerful professional development approach that merges the scholarship of critical pedagogy with the Theatre of the Oppressed. Participants "act up" in order to explore real-life scenarios and rehearse difficult conversations they are likely to have with colleagues, students, administrators, and parents. The authors have practiced the theatrical strategies presented here with pre- and in-service teachers in numerous contexts, including college courses, professional development seminars, and PreK-12 classrooms. They include step-by-step instructions and vivid photographs to help readers use these revolutionary theatre strategies in their own contexts for a truly unique learning experience.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2010

About the author

MELISA "Misha" CAHNMANN-TAYLOR is the author of Imperfect Tense and and co-author of four books, Enlivening Instruction with drama and Improv Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre and two editions of Arts-Based Research in Education). Misha’s poems, essays, research articles, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals in print and online including TESOL Quarterly, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Anthropology & Humanism, Poet Lore, Mom Egg, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Calyx Magazine, American Poetry Review, and in many other scholarly and literary homes.

Some of Misha’s awards include the Beckman award for “Professors Who Inspire Social Change,” Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg and Anna Davidson poetry prizes, Jenny Penny Oliver Diversity Award, First Year Odyssey Teaching Award, and the Foreign Language Association of Georgia [FLAG] Leadership Award.

In 2020 Misha was appointed as U.S. Fulbright Ambassador scholar to speak to faculty audiences around the U.S. about Fulbright. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient (Oaxaca Mexico, 2013-2014) and visiting scholar-artist in Guanajuato Mexico at the Resplandor Center (2017), she enjoys speaking internationally in Mexico, Israel, Canada, Chile, Poland, Germany, Hong Kong, Aruba, Spain, and elsewhere around the world. Cahnmann-Taylor has directed a U.S. Department of Education Transition to Teaching grant and numerous National Endowment for the Arts Big Read and Georgia Humanities grants.

A graduate of the New England College low-residency MFA program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Educational Linguistics doctoral program, she lives in Athens, Georgia with her husband, two children and their rescue dog, Bagel.

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and explicit description of teachers using theatre of the oppressed to consider and imagine ways to make social change.

[Esmé J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool approaches to bringing Boal's Theater of the Oppressed into classrooms and trainings. I used several of these exercises in a workshop I ran with good results!