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This book analyses the partnership between applied theatre and sexual health communication in a theatre-making project in Nyanga, a township in South Africa. By examining the bridges and schisms between the two fields as they come together in the project, an alternative way of approaching sexual health communication is advocated. This alternative considers what it is that applied theatre does, and could become, in this context. Moments of value which lie around the margins of the practice emerge as opportunities that can be overlooked. These somewhat ephemeral, intangible moments, which appear on the edges, are described as 'apertures of possibility' and occur when one takes a step back and realises something unnoticed in the moment. This book offers an invitation to pause and notice the seemingly insignificant moments that often occurs tangentially to the practice. The book also calls for more outcry about sexual health and sexual violence, arguing for theatre-making as a route to multitudes of voices, nuanced understandings, and diverse spaces in which discussions of sexuality and sexual health are shared, felt, and experienced.
List of contents
Introduction.- Part I Context.- Chapter 1 HIV/AIDS and the Challenge for Socially Engaged Theatre-Making.- Chapter 2 The Context for Our Place, Our Stage.- Part II Practice.- Chapter 3 Applied Theatre: A Space 'Safe Enough' to Take Risks?.- Chapter 4 'If You Want to Be Safe, You Must Stay at Home': Dialogical Spaces and Repressive Outcomes.- Chapter 5 Apertures of Possibility: A Subtle Form of Resistance?.- Conclusion.
About the author
Dr. Katharine E. Low is a practitioner and researcher in socially engaged theatre making and sexual health communication. Her work and research focuses on the intersections of health, labour and care in applied practice, and motherhood and academia. Katharine has written about her practice research in a number of journals and co-edited
Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing for Methuen Bloomsbury (2017). She is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Theatre and Community Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Report
"Katherine Low's Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication: Apertures of Possibility delivers a thoroughly researched, theoretically grounded critique of arts-based public health programs. ... The book would be useful for applied theatre scholars and arts-based researchers. In an age when communication moves quickly, Low's book invites theatre-makers to slow down and think critically about the spaces they create through their practice and the small moments of possibility in their work." (Hannah Fazio, Theatre Topics, Vol. 32 (1), March, 2022)
"I was moved by this well researched and detailed read about the ongoing struggles in one of the world's newest democracies. ... I too want to reiterate that this book is a necessary contribution to the ongoing discussion around the need of more voices and more discussions on how to apply theatre to create social change. And, like Thompson, I want to add my voice to commend Low for ... articulating the complexity of the work of an AT practitioner." (Matthew Hahn, Journal of Applied Arts & Health, Vol. 13 (2), 2022)
