Abstract
This chapter considers the value of theatre practice in schools in encouraging young people to explore and challenge their literary heritage. It discusses the dominance of male authorship and criticism of the classical texts commonly taught in schools and suggests that through physically engaging with the characters and situations of these narratives, young women can consider them as cultural metaphors which can be used to question the assumptions and expectations of the society they live in. Developing a metacognitive awareness of how texts are produced and received, alongside an imaginative exploration of those texts, can encourage young people to ask questions about what cultures consider normal. This ‘embodied cognition’ approach can develop what Peter Brook called ‘the culture of links’ which uses theatre practice to explore how we exist together in our individualities and shared humanity across cultural differences.
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Irish, T. (2019). Theatre, Education and Embodied Cognition: Young Women in a Changing World. In: Sewell, J., Smout, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23828-5_33
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