That sultry end-of-June day that I looked down at the alert on my buzzing phone to read the words “Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade,” I really thought I might throw up. I was in the Target store in Wilmington, Delaware, buying rehearsal materials for my upcoming theatre project, an activist devised performance with teenage girls and nonbinary teens. My cart was already filling up with boxes of mini Kind bars, Crayola markers, notebooks and rainbow Post-It notes when I abruptly turned to the “Women’s Health” aisle and in a daze, grabbed three packages of Plan B Emergency Contraception. Just in case. What if they needed it? What was my role as a theatre director who works with teenagers with uteruses in a moment of crisis when it seems they are about to lose the legal right to control their bodies? It has been several years, but I can still remember the plastic mauve chairs in the waiting room of Planned Parenthood where I would sit after I had gone with yet another teenage girl to get an abortion. Over the past 20 years, I have collaborated to make theatre with more than a thousand teen girls and I know far too deeply what impact this verdict will have on their current and future lives. And as a theatremaker and activist, what can we do? What role might theatre have in the lives of young people? How are they making sense of the world around them and the decisions that adults are making for them? How do we, as youth theatre scholars, educators and artists, do better?
In my new role as Co-Editor (along with Ansley Valentine and Elena Stephenson) of Youth Theatre Journal (YTJ), I am committed to answering these questions with you. As one response, I would like to invite you into our editorial process—As I was settling in at my desk one late afternoon this fall, I heard that “new e-mail” swoosh that we had a new submission to the Journal and that giddily squeal of new-gift excitement flooded through me as I opened the manuscript. I sat frozen at my computer, shoulders hunched forward, middle and index fingers sliding down my trackpad trying to keep up with the pace of my eyes scrolling down the screen. My heart thumping was the only sound I could hear as I read and read and read the words that rolled past. Spells, wishes, curses. A surprising gasp seemed to leap from my chest and then I found myself actually release a laugh. I was stunned. Ever since the overturning of Roe, I did not think there would ever be anything related to abortion that could make my body do anything except rage. And yet, I stared at my screen reading the text from the new play The Wish: A Manual for a Last-Ditch Effort to Save Abortion in the United States Through theatre. This. I could not stop reading until the end, after the scenes between the two fumbling lovers who broke their the condom, the clinic nurse’s explicit and simple description of an abortion, the Witch’s spells and incantations, the rallying cries of activism, the brilliant analysis of the case for abortion, all bundled into a generous, shareable document begging to be performed. This. Young people most impacted by the violent oppression they face are using their voices to fight back, using their theatre to educate each other, advocate for change and offer strategies to their peers. This play is but one of the bold and brave pieces we are thrilled to share with you in this new issue of Youth Theatre Journal, the first (of hopefully many!) edited by YTJ’s new leadership team which includes Ansley Valentine, Elena Stephenson and myself.
Adelaide Fisher, a young playwright in Orlando, Florida, who had friends at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the time of the massacre there tells us about the play they wrote as a high school student, weaving the Fates from Greek Mythology and the journey of Odysseus with the all-too-contemporary issue of school shootings. They talk about their writing process and their vision for why youth theatre needs to address the issues most connected to the lives of teens today.
Fraggle, Trevor and Davina, three brilliant young activist artists committed to sharing their own stories of being unhoused, collaborate with a local director and other youth to devise and perform a haunting, powerful play based on their lived experiences. They then analyze and assess their script and their unique process in order to guide others to do similar work through a youth participatory action research process.
These pieces represent some of the ways we are reimagining what this space could be, ensuring that we are including pieces that center the experiences of those most often marginalized in our field. As we (Ansley, Dana and Elena) started to connect with each other as the three shiny, green, new editors, we recognize that our overlapping work, experience and identities represent a new vision for what YTJ can be. As individuals, we have created and run youth theatre activist organizations, managed youth theatre programs in government agencies, held faculty appointments in theatre departments, published in peer-reviewed journals, written books, directed and performed in Theatre for Young Audiences productions, produced music written by teenagers, devised original plays in collaboration with young people, facilitated theatre-based antiracism workshops with teens, taught theatre in public and independent schools, and most recently in our current role: read and edited some truly stellar works by artists, scholars, educators, and young people in our robust field. As a team, we believe passionately in the power of youth-centered theatre to transform both young people, and their audiences. We are committed to antiracist pedagogies and practices and acknowledge the deep harm that White supremacy has caused in our communities and in our field, and our humble vision for this journal is to provide space for us to learn together how we can use theatre to change the world. To that end, we are immensely proud that every piece in our first issue features work that centers the experiences of people most marginalized, bringing you voices and experiences that do not often populate the pages of academic journals. Our authors are asking urgent, unique, impactful questions that resonate beyond their own projects:
How can we safely use prop guns on stage in youth theatre productions?
How do high school teachers select plays for their students to perform in that meaningfully represent the racial diversity of their classroom?
What techniques and strategies have theatre educators and directors successfully and creatively used when collaborating with young performers with learning disabilities?
We question previous understandings of who an “expert” in our field might be and what “peer-reviewed scholarship” can look like. From this issue and all issues moving forward, alongside more traditionally accepted forms of scholarship such as the academic essay, we will be including interviews with teenagers and young theatre artists, reflection pieces from teachers in the trenches and excerpts from scripts of new plays written by or for young people. All pieces will be assessed and evaluated through a rigorous peer review process, though we are expanding our pool of “peers” to make sure we are including practitioners, artists, educators and even young people alongside our colleagues with faculty appointments in research universities.
We want to express gratitude to Monica Prendergast, Gustave Weltsek, Jonathan Jones, and the amazing editorial board. Thank you for your mentorship and guidance. We hope to continue to improve through each new issue. We would also love to connect with YOU! If you are reading this, you must be interested in youth theatre in some way and perhaps you want to join us. We are often welcoming new peer reviewers and editorial board members with creative vision for what this space could become. Or perhaps you have an idea for a new section or want to offer constructive feedback on this issue. Please e-mail us at [email protected]