Dr. Drew Chappell
Assistant Professor; Instructional Faculty
Theatre, College of Performing Arts
Expertise: Performance Studies; Theatre for Social Change; Theatre Pedagogy
Office Location: Moulton Hall 210
- Education:
- University of California, San Diego, Bachelor of Arts
The University of Texas At Austin, Master of Fine Arts
Arizona State University, Ph.D.
Biography
Drew Chappell teaches foundational courses as well as Theatre for Social Change, Arts
Leadership, Teaching Methods in Drama, and a First Year Foundations Course in Fantasy
and Science Fiction. He is an avid traveler, who has visited cultures on five continents
and studied their performance traditions and techniques. He believes a global approach
to theatre studies reveals the multilayered story of theatre's development and the
universality of the play impulse.
His research interests are in the areas of social justice through the arts, play as performance, and curriculum development. His two published books are Children Under Construction: Critical Essays on Play as Curriculum (Peter Lang) and Play, Performance, and Identity: How Institutions Structure Ludic Spaces (Routledge). He has written articles on topics such as the Federal Theatre Project, photography as research method, and board and card games as social and ideological acts of transfer. He also hosted a podcast with Chapman alum Avery Tang called Powered by Play, which is still available to stream.
His research interests are in the areas of social justice through the arts, play as performance, and curriculum development. His two published books are Children Under Construction: Critical Essays on Play as Curriculum (Peter Lang) and Play, Performance, and Identity: How Institutions Structure Ludic Spaces (Routledge). He has written articles on topics such as the Federal Theatre Project, photography as research method, and board and card games as social and ideological acts of transfer. He also hosted a podcast with Chapman alum Avery Tang called Powered by Play, which is still available to stream.
Dr. Chappell’s creative/practice interests are in new play development and theatre education. Highlights from his playwriting include a performance at the Kennedy Center and commissions from Utah Valley University. Dr. Chappell has also taught educational theatre residencies at all levels K-12 including on a Pima reservation in Arizona, as well as serving as director of a summer theatre camp for a professional theatre.
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Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications
- Commissioned to write a TYA play for Utah Valley University's summer program
- “Play As Curriculum,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education
- Drew Chappell, Jocelyn Buckner, and Malvika Lankalingam. “Teaching Worldmindendess in a Mixed Majors and Non-Majors World Theatre Course: The Work of Rabindranath Tagore Explored Through Third Culture Classroom Spaces.” Theatre Topics 28:1, 2018
- Time Mirrors, Utah Valley University (playwright)
- “Book Review of Adapting War Horse: Cognition, the Spectator, and a Sense of Play, Toby Malone and Christopher J Jackman.” Theatre Topics 27:3, 2017
- *“Building Social Inclusion through Critical Arts-based Pedagogies in University Classroom Communities.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 20:3, 2016
- *Matt Omasta and Drew Chappell. “Major Impacts of Minor Differences: Theatre Education in the Academy.” Theatre Topics 25:3, 2015
- Matt Omasta and Drew Chappell, eds. Play, Performance, and Identity: How Institutions Structure Ludic Experiences. Routledge, 2015
- “’Cheering is Tied to Eating’: Consumption and Excess in Immersive, Role-Specific Performance Spaces.” 2015
- “A Review of Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds.” American Journal of Play 8:1, 2015
- “Scholarship’s Rich Pageant: A Review of Performance Studies: An Introduction, Third Edition, Richard Schechner.” Youth Theatre Journal 28:2, 2014