| Summary: | This research began as a quest to better understand the relationships between marginalized communities, facilitators, and not-for-profit organizations, or NGO’s, in a specific Theatre for Development (TfD) process. When a TfD project that engaged and positively impacted the lives of Egyptian young garbage pickers was discontinued by the funding NGO, the researcher, who was the group’s theatre facilitator, set out to find solutions to this disempowering process. Initially, this research was created to explore how to pass on the skills of practicing theatre to marginalized communities, as a means for them to claim the process, practicing it independently of NGOs and facilitators. This initial inquiry then evolved to encompass exploring effective methods of TfD practice, where the question then became: What are the conditions that provide empowerment and autonomy for marginalized communities in the TfD context?
Using Narrative Inquiry the researcher recalls her experience working with the garbage pickers in one of the biggest slums in the world, Mokkatam City, in Cairo. The narrative is used to question the choices made by both the facilitators and NGOs which ultimately compromised an otherwise life changing experience for the young community. The researcher then employs Action Research to outline a community-based participatory project carried out with a group of immigrant and refugee youth in Victoria, Canada. The study traced the progression of the three action research stages carried out to find ways of using TfD to empower this vulnerable community. The documentation of this project was completed using Reflective Practitioner Case Study which enabled the researcher to reflect on her practice with the aim of improving her approach through critical analysis.
The findings of this research do not support the researcher’s initial hypothesis that the development of theatre skills will enable the community to function independently of outside support. Instead, through the careful examination of the experiences of the young participants in the slums of Cairo, and the immigrant and refugee communities in Canada, this research points to the importance of TfD integrating the celebration of life and the development of relationships as part of its process of enriching the experience of marginalized communities. This finding, together with an examination of the notion of sustainability redefines the place of the exit strategy through the ways in which the immigrant participants of the latter phases of the study, chose to integrate the benefits of TfD practice into their lives. === Graduate
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