Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: An Antidote to the Representation and Interpretation of Young People's Experiences in Socially Engaged Theatre?

Abstract:Today's youth bear witness to growing economic disparities, class inequalities, migrant otherings, and prejudicial thinking. Now more than ever, young people across Canada are asking adults in positions of power to become allies and start creating more spaces for their voices to be heard. Often learning beyond the classroom from their peers, through multimodal ways, young people have transhistorically exemplified creative demonstrations of resilience, solidarity, and tenacity, both online and in the streets.Within the research, practice, and scholarship of applied theatre, children and young people make up a large proportion of the documented case studies that are interpreted and represented through an adult lens. This in turn poses important ethical questions about engagement and representation strategies of their lives, particularly when a large proportion of the work is written from a Western perspective. This article first navigates a personal perspective on ethics in socially engaged theatre. I then reflect on key principles of intersecting practices in radical youth pedagogies and critical community-engaged research that will inform my practice for future ethical engagements with youths in socially engaged theatre.