Executive Summary

This handbook provides a comprehensive guide to designing, executing, and evaluating theatre-based workshops tailored to engage and empower communities. Each chapter explores critical components essential to creating impactful experiences, including community engagement, curriculum design, facilitation techniques, and post-workshop evaluation. To emphasize the importance of aligning workshop objectives with community needs, the handbook offers practical insights, strategies, and principles for practitioners, educators, and community and/or youth leaders. By following the guidelines outlined in this handbook, readers can harness the transformative power of theatre to nurture creativity, foster personal growth, and strengthen community bonds among participants. Finally, each chapter includes checklists and toolkits from various existing guides and handbooks as resources for users of this handbook. The handbook ends with a case study section from the lead author Taiwo Afolabi’s doctoral research offering examples from drama workshops that were part of a socially engaged theatre project. While the handbook is designed primarily for undergraduate students and practitioners new to socially engaged theatre, graduate students, established practitioners, policy-makers, and faculty members will also find it useful as a resource.