Adolescents and teens are surrounded by a myriad of influences that affect how they see and present themselves. Contemporary communication for these young people frequently happens in an online forum through digital social media. The primary purpose of this master's thesis is to examine the affect of digital social media on adolescent and teen identity construction and perception of self and other. Further research was performed to identify how that identity can be expressed through theatrical performance. The first chapter is a review of current literature, theory and practice of those within the educational paradigm who are trying to incorporate media literacy skills into contemporary pedagogy. An action research project was formulated to create lesson plans that aid students in engaging critically with digital social media and then empowering them with the skills to access, analyze, evaluate and create that media. Students then use their findings in the creation of a devised theatre piece. Chapter Two discusses the methodology involved with the gathering of the data and the process of analysis using open coding. Chapter Three presents the findings and exhibits student work and Chapter Four analyzes the findings and presents a course for future study, research and use of the findings in the contemporary drama classroom.

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L'imbrication de la théâtralité et des paradigmes issus du performance art est inscrite au coeur du théâtrepostdramatique, défini par Hans-Thies Lehmann, et elle fut également placée au coeur de ce qui fut nommé la« vague flamande » des années 1980. C'est de ce mécanisme que rend compte le terme de théâtreperformantiel, choisi par contraste avec le performatif austinien. En assimilant l'idéal des avant-gardeshistoriques d'une fusion art-vie, fondée sur l'action réelle en temps réel, la théâtralité se trouve à la foisdébordée et révélée dans son essence, comme un processus en cours, qui prévoit la réception d'un regardactif et complice et se donne à vivre comme un événement. La théâtralité performantielle, fondée sur lemontage et le recyclage, oscille entre deux pôles : celui de l'immersion, du choc voire du rêve d'un art total,d'une part, et celui de la mise à distance méta-théâtrale et auto-référentielle, d'autre part. Au centre de cettetension, l'image scénique oppose une résistance au flux des visibilités du monde. C'est ce que révèle uneimmersion au coeur des processus créatifs de trois troupes fondées au début des années 2000 : AbattoirFermé, le Warme Winkel et Wunderbaum. La participation observante éclaire en profondeur les enjeuxesthétiques et idéologiques de cette rencontre entre théâtre et performance. Elle révèle aussi la validité etl'actualité d'une interrogation sur les idéaux de l'avant-garde, dans le contexte d'une crise et d'undurcissement politique et économique auxquels sont confrontés ces artistes, après une période de prospéritéet d'institutionnalisation des pratiques expérimentales. / In postdramatic theatre, as theorized by Hans-Thies Lehmann, theatricality, processuality andperformance art have merged. This overlapping was precisely at the heart of the so-called Flemish Wave, inthe 1980s. That generation drew links between the avant-garde's ideals and methods, and today's youngartists. The blurring of art and life overflows theatrical stages and frames, but thereby reveals the veryessence of theatricality : what is showed on those contemporary stages is the emergence of a process, animage in construction, a work-still-in-progress...This is what coins down the expression « théâtreperformantiel » (« performantial theatre » versus performativity). Frictions between representation, illusionand performativity provoke a constant oscillation between meta-theatrical distance, self-referentiality, shockand sensationnal immersion. It even flirts with the dream of total art. These works also rely on an activespectator's gaze. In the midst of these contradictions, stage images oppose a resistance to the visual flows ofthis world. These movements are explored through a field analysis and a close-up on the creative processesof three Flemish and Dutch groups created around 2000 : Abattoir Fermé, the Warme Winkel andWunderbaum. Participative observation offers deeper insight into the aesthetic and ideological issues at stakeat the heart of this encounter between theatre and performance. It also reveals the currency and the validity ofquestioning the avant-garde's ideals given the context of an economic crisis and political tightening.

This research started as a quest to understand better the ethics of doing Theatre for Development/Applied Theatre with under-served, marginalized and vulnerable populations especially in post-conflict zones in the Global South. As a theatre practitioner-researcher from Africa who has lived and worked in post-conflict zones, I was interested in fostering appropriate ethical protocols for arts-based practices for social engagement, advocacy and social justice. Thus, in this dissertation, I focus on two concepts in applied theatre practice: participation and ethics. I examine how participation can be re-conceptualized in applied theatre practice and focus on the ethics around conducting research among vulnerable populations especially on refugees and internally displaced persons. On participation, I use existing case studies from various fields to argue that participation in community engagement and socially-engaged art practices can become a tool to reposition voices on the margin to the centre in order to unsettle centres of power. However, for this to happen, participation needs to engage a communicative action that is both epistemic and ontic in its approach. An epistemic discourse provides a way of seeing the world while an ontic discourse provides people with a way of being in the world. The former is a ‘theoretical’ discursive practice that is fundamentally epistemological, and the latter is an ‘embodied’ praxis that is fundamentally ontological. I examine the famous Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Kamiriithu Community Theatre project in Kenya and Michael Balfour et al’s refugee project in Australia to foreground this new thinking on verb-oriented and noun-oriented notions of participation. On ethics, I raise a series of critical questions around interventionist or humanitarian performances. It is hoped that these questions will deepen discourses in applied theatre practice and further challenge practitioners to rethink why we do what we do. Using narrative inquiry, I glean lessons from my field research facilitating drama workshop among secondary school students who have been internally displaced due to an ongoing socio-political crisis in Nigeria. I also reflect on my other applied theatre experiences in Canada and Sudan. I propose an ethical practice that is built on relational interaction. In the context of working in post-conflict zones or in places of war, I argue that precarity becomes a determining factor in framing the ethics of practice. The questions around ethics are raised to also draw attention to decolonizing ethical practices. Finally, I articulate the connection between participation and ethics in that participation becomes a tactic to ensure that applied theatre researchers/practitioners conduct their work in ethical ways. This is because through participation, concerned communities can challenge unethical practices and transform the research to create outcomes that are beneficial. Thus, as an example of reflective practitioner research, the projects in this dissertation offer opportunities to examine critically how participation has been conceptualized and the need for a decolonizing understanding towards ethics in applied theatre practice especially in post-conflict zones. / Graduate

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Proceeding from a framing of theater as collaborative storytelling, I argue for defining role-playing games as a kind of performance and for their value in structuring experiential and participatory theater. Building on the impulse at the heart of experiential and immersive theater to place the audience within the world of the performance and center their experience, I explore what it means for theater artists to cede control over how audiences make meaning of their work in favor of letting narrative emerge from the participation of the audience during the performance event. I propose a framework called pervasive performance that merges theatrical frames and methods with pervasive gaming, which expands the magic circle of play and blurs the distinction between the game and everyday life. This union of ideas puts audience members in contact with one another and allows them to be playful and co-author the overall performance experience. Further, the blurring of the performance and everyday life transforms audience members’ relationship to the real world and gives them space to imagine and experiment with other worlds and ways of being in them. I devised an alternate reality game (ARG) at UMass Amherst in May 2023, and in my thesis I analyze this project and the process of creating it as a case study in pervasive performance.