The Gardener, The Actor, and The Educator: Six Lessons Towards Creating and Cultivating Spaces of Vulnerability Between Theatre for Young Audiences and Education

This thesis explores the intersection of, or space between. theatre and education, as observed through the co-creation, rehearsal, and performance of an original play: The Edge Project. The project brings together artists from a professional theatre company and students/teachers from four secondary school drama classes. Conversations with TEACHER, ARTIST and CREATURE, lead me to consider topics including: individual and collective roles in meaning-making, process and product-based theatre creation/education, and to unpack concepts such as: trust, empathy, and vulnerability. I invite the reader to follow me, and the participants, down a garden path where we search for ways to cultivate and nurture authentic and mutualistic relationships on the stage and in the classroom. In tribute to Boleslavsky’s work on actor training, I imagine what “The First Six Lessons” of The Edge Project might be, and hope to inform further research into the gifts of Theatre for Young Audiences and theatre education.