Pedagogies of Self-Humanization: Collaborating to Engage Trauma in the Phoenix Players Theatre Group

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Phoenix Players Theatre Group was founded by incarcerated theatre artists located in a maximum-security prison with the aim of creating a space where they can be witnessed in order to initiate a process of personal, cultural, and sociopolitical transformation. This article integrates research from trauma theory with theatre and social justice studies, in addition to the archive of written material by the Phoenix Players themselves, to understand how practicing collaborative prison theatre to cope with traumatic experiences constitutes a pedagogy of self-narrating, self-teaching, and self-humanizing.