Towards a culturally responsive directing practice

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) is an approach to classroom teaching that draws on students’ unique strengths, and seeks to improve the effectiveness of instruction for minority students by teaching through students’ individual culture. CRP also concerns itself with curriculum that offers accurate, comprehensive, and diverse representations of people of all ethnic backgrounds. This thesis explores the process of applying the principles of CRP to the context of rehearsing and producing professional theatre. The professional theatre suffers from a lack of diversity, and many theatre artists are without a standardized approach to directing and producing theatre with thoughtful racial and ethnic representation in mind. Building on the scholarship and research surrounding CRP, as well as current discourses concerning diversity and representation in the field of theatre, this document explores the application of CRP principles, specifically caring-in-action and valuing diverse curriculum, to the process of directing the Latino play Tomás and the Library Lady by José Cruz González. This study invites theatre artists to consider the importance of diverse, authentic representation both onstage and off, and offers some possible frameworks for culturally responsive directing.