The Ethics of Care in Pedagogy and Performance: Intersections with Disability Justice, Intimacy Work, and Theatre of the Oppressed

This article argues that an applied ethics of care practice is central to the work of addressing the patriarchal and racist practices embedded within both professional and educational theatre spaces and their protocols and policies. Many theatre faculty in both the classroom and in rehearsal spaces encounter students’ trauma(s), but often lack the tools to adequately guide students down from that trauma once it has been activated. In this article, Kate Busselle, Erin Kaplan, and Samuel Yates theorize what ethics of care in theatre and performances spaces might look like when creating systems and structures to protect students from future harm, address potential trauma in the moment, and mitigate the damage incurred from past experiences. Building from the foundations of feminist ethics of care theorists such as Virginia Held, Lisa Tessman, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the authors share strategies for establishing ethical care processes to safeguard students in the classroom and in rehearsal spaces.