Dr. Drew Chappell
- Affiliations:
- First-year Foundations Program
- 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 is an instructional assistant professor in Theatre, where he teaches foundational courses as well as Theatre for Social Change, Theory and Criticism, 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.
Dr. Chappell earned his BA in history from UC San Diego and then shifted his focus to theatre for graduate study. He earned his MFA in Applied Theatre and Theatre for Youth from the University of Texas at Austin and his PhD in Theatre from Arizona State University.
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. 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’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.
Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications
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Powered by Play: a podcast exploring how play socializes and empowers us
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Chappell, Drew. “Time Mirrors.” In Noorda Theatre Youth Plays: Five Age Appropriate Scripts for Young Actors, JD Newman. Newport, ME: Leicester Bay Theatricals, 2021
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“Play As Curriculum,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education
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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
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Time Mirrors, Utah Valley University (playwright)
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“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
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*“Building Social Inclusion through Critical Arts-based Pedagogies in University Classroom Communities.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 20:3, 2016
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Matt Omasta and Drew Chappell, eds. Play, Performance, and Identity: How Institutions Structure Ludic Experiences. Routledge, 2015
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“’Cheering is Tied to Eating’: Consumption and Excess in Immersive, Role-Specific Performance Spaces.” 2015
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“A Review of Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds.” American Journal of Play 8:1, 2015
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*Matt Omasta and Drew Chappell. “Major Impacts of Minor Differences: Theatre Education in the Academy.” Theatre Topics 25:3, 2015
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“Scholarship’s Rich Pageant: A Review of Performance Studies: An Introduction, Third Edition, Richard Schechner.” Youth Theatre Journal 28:2, 2014