Performing through layers: Reading the world through theatre in Zanzibar

This qualitative case study incorporating the methods of arts-based research and Participatory Action Research (PAR) documents the ways in which students in a classroom in Zanzibar experienced an applied theatre workshop designed to offer a platform for participants to challenge the societal roles and gender roles that they perceive as unjust and to improve their English literacy skills. The stories of the participants in Global Empowerment Theatre's (GETheatre) workshop in Zanzibar are shared and analyzed. The students that participated were invited to name issues in their community, critique their worlds and investigate new roles played out on stage and with each other. I critique and examine my own practice within the experience of a coeducational devised theatre project. Insights are offered on how students involved in this project perceive their roles in society, and how this project offered them opportunities to critically think about these roles and potentially change their behavior both in the classroom and outside of it. I advocate for the use of arts-in-education in Zanzibar as a student-centered alternative to current colonial models of education that privilege rote-memorization and teacher-centered methods.