“The Ethics of Care: Practice, Pedagogy, and Praxis in Theatre and Performance Classrooms and Beyond,” with Kate Busselle and Samuel Yates, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, (37.1, Fall, 2022), doi:10.1353/dtc.2022.0012.

This article uses ethics of care and care work to explore the connective tissue between intimacy work, Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), and disability justice. Combining these three traditionally siloed theatrical practices offers a more holistic, processual understanding of care work in contemporary theatre studies and performance. Theatrical intimacy–the planned staging of intimate or sexually violent moments for performance–is borne from the need for care work in rehearsals and performance spaces. There are four categories of theatrical intimacy—physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, nudity, and sexual violence. TO similarly mobilizes care as a method and a methodology to use the stage as a space upon which communities can ask critical questions about the relationships between people, power, allyship, and solidarity.

Finally, disability justice is a praxis rooted in advocacy for the representation, equity, and liberation of disabled people–especially the Black, Brown, Indigenous, and queer disabled persons who lead this movement–and its methodology of interdependency, open communication, and accommodation is generative for building artistic networks attentive to care. This article demonstrates how each is concerned with the social imperative to care for and with artist co-creators and our audiences, sharing similar tactics for care work. This essay articulates the commonalities between disability/crip-inflected models of care, intimacy work, and TO practices in the collegiate and professional production cycle.