The 2nd day of the 9th International Drama in Education Research Institute saw an evening book launch at the official event pub, The Leaky Boat. The book launch event was supported by RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance and was described by its new Co-Editor, Dr Michael Finneran, as “a celebration of work in the field because what we’ve seen over the lifetime of IDIERI is a growth, indeed an explosion, of high-quality research in the field”.
Books by Dr Molly Mullen, Dr Claire MacNeill, Dr Erika Piazzoli, Dr Matthew DeCoursey, and Dr Monica Prendergast were launched and the article that follows summarises quotes about each of the texts.
Dr Molly Mullen – Applied Theatre: Economies
“It really looks at something that, up until now, not an area people have really explored”
-Michael Balfour
The book is “thinking about the ways Applied Theatre can actually generate new forms of economy – new ways of sustaining not only our practices but also the communities we work with”
– Dr Molly Mullen
It explores “how funding shapes the work that we do – not just from the point of view of how do we get money to do what it is we do but how what money we have, and what money we don’t have, shapes the ideology and philosophy and the ways we go about doing the work”
-Michael Balfour
“It’s a hopeful book in that it’s highlighting some of the challenges around funding but also offering some possibilities of how we can navigate those challenges”
– Dr Molly Mullen
Dr Claire MacNeill – Applied Theatre with Looked-After Children: Dramatising Social Care
“What I love about the book is that it weaves elegantly, poetically, theory and practice […] I would highly recommend it”
– Professor Peter O’Connor
“A stunning scholar – this book, she sent me a copy of it last week and even in the madness of the last week I spent time reading it because I was completely entranced”
– Professor Peter O’Connor
“It is a beautifully written book”
– Professor Peter O’Connor
Dr Matthew DeCoursey – Embodied Aesthetics in Drama Education
This book is a very welcome addition to what’s still a very small literature on Drama Education […] for several reasons – because it confidently and firmly places our heartland of improvised and processual drama in an aesthetic frame as a truly grown-up genre of drama.”
-Professor John O’Toole
“The purpose of getting into philosophy with respect to Drama Education is to get into the mechanisms of why it works when it works”
-Dr Matthew DeCoursey
“The book has a unifying vision […] it’s a vision of embodied learning – incorporating and prioritising the role of the body and the emotions in cognitive learning. It also provides a gentle introduction to the enormous relevance to our field of the neurological sciences.”
-Professor John O’Toole
Dr Monica Prendergast – Web of Performance: An Ensemble Workbook
“It’s intended to be a 21st century textbook for our field. It intends to broaden and deepen how we think about Performance and how we practice that with students. And it intends to open up all these spaces.”
-Dr Monica Prendergast
“I really love the fact that it’s a book that it is a book that tries to bring that cousin of ours, Performance Studies, and translates it into a curriculum approach of how you might invite students to engage with it”
-Dr Christine Hatton
“Philosophically, this project was always going to be an open-source curriculum. I really think that’s the future. I’m sick and tired of big publishers making money off of my intellectual labour.”
-Dr Monica Prendergast
“What I love about this eBook and its accessibility is the way that I was already reading how it could serve my students”
-Dr Christine Hatton
