Keynote 2024 by John O’Toole

John O’Toole

Title of Keynote:       Lost in translation… or not?

Intercultural opportunities and challenges for drama education

Abstract:                     

In this gently interactive keynote, John invites the audience to share and analyse some of their own significant experiences in drama education. Focussing mainly on process drama, he explains and defines his own key principles, based on half a century of world-wide trial-and-error, with its dramatic highs and lows, to assist this analysis. He explores some of the difficulties and challenges that translating a predominantly Western art-form and pedagogy brings to culturally diverse classrooms and students. With the audience he explores ways of turning some of the more commonly encountered problems into opportunities for drama.

 

Speaker’s biography:

John O’Toole was formerly Professor of Drama and Applied Theatre at Griffith University Australia, and Foundation Chair of Arts Education at the University of Melbourne. He has been teaching, researching and writing on drama and applied theatre for fifty years, with all ages, and on six continents. He has written and co-written over twenty books, including student textbooks, teachers’ texts and research books. He is active in curriculum and professional association development, founder-member of Drama Queensland and Drama Australia, and Co-Convenor of IDEA 95 triennial Congress. He was Lead Writer for The Arts and for Drama in the 2013 Australian National Curriculum. In 2002, he received the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Lifetime Research award. In 2014, he was awarded membership of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to drama education.