About

Dr. Megan Alrutz is a full professor and Associate Chair for the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin. She teaches in the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities / UTeach Theatre programs. Her research and practice focus on creating new and interdisciplinary performance for stage and screen, storytelling (live and digital), and drama-based pedagogy. She teaches courses in applied theatre, theatre for youth and theatre for the very young, new play dramaturgy, devising, movement-based performance, and research methods. Alrutz is a graduate of Arizona State University and Rutgers University. She works nationally and internationally as a director, theatre-maker, and dramaturg for theatre and film/TV. She creates visually dynamic and poetic theatre for very young audiences and serves as the dramaturg for award-winning author/illustrator, playwright, and screenwriter Mo Willems. Her theatre work has premiered at notable venues including the Alliance Theatre, Arts on the Horizon, Metro Theatre, Orlando Family Stage, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and other presenting houses across the U.S. As a thought leader in applied theatre with and for young people, Alrutz leads interactive workshops and training sessions in K-12 schools, higher education, and with organizations focused on gender and racial justice, community engagement, digital storytelling, and curriculum innovation. She is a co-founder of the Center for Imagining and Performing Justice and co-directs long-term applied theatre programs such as Patchwork Stories and the Performing Justice Project. Additionally, she dramaturgs projects across multiple mediums and is the creative producer for interactive museum exhibits, including Mo Willems Presents: Opposites Abstract, which tours nationally. She is the author or co-author of three books: 'Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth: The Performing Justice Project,' 'Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre & Youth: Performing Possibility,' and 'Playing with Theory in Theatre Practice.' Her scholarship has been featured in several edited collections and academic journals.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Medicine
• Gender studies
• Law
• Criminology
• Intensive care medicine

Selected publications

• The politics of voice and visibility in the Performing Justice Project

  2025-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Negotiating Gender (In)Justice

  Routledge eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  While practitioners often tout applied theatre's ability to illuminate the stories of people who have been misrepresented or dismissed by mainstream society, Megan Alrutz, Laura Epperson, Jasmine Games, and Faith Hillis note that visibility can result in danger, criminalization, or even death for youth of color and LGBTQIA+ youth. They discuss two case studies in an attempt to nuance the practices around visibility-making with and for youth populations. The first is an online workshop with the Performing Justice Project, wherein due to their lack of privacy, students felt reluctant to openly express their gender identity. They next reflect on negotiating the restrictions of a residential treatment center for young people living in foster care. This chapter invites applied theatre practitioners to reconsider the assumptions about centering youth agency regarding their visibility and to embrace a flexible approach.

  PublisherDOI

• Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Intensive care medicine

  Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth: The Performing Justice Project offers accessible frameworks for devising original theatre, developing critical understandings of racial and gender justice, and supporting youth to imagine, create, and perform possibilities for a more just and equitable society. Working at the intersections of theory and practice, Alrutz and Hoare present their innovative model for devising critically engaged theatre with novice performers. Sharing why and how the Performing Justice Project (PJP) opens dialogue around challenging and necessary topics already facing young people, the authors bring together critical information about racial and gender justice with new and revised practices from applied theatre, storytelling, theatre, and education for social change. Their curated collection of PJP "performance actions" offers embodied and reflective approaches for building ensemble, devising and performing stories, and exploring and analyzing individual and systemic oppression. This work begins to confront oppressive narratives and disrupt patriarchal systems—including white supremacy, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth invites artists, teaching artists, educators, and youth-workers to collaborate bravely with young people to imagine and enact racial and gender justice in their lives and communities. Drawing on examples from PJP residencies in juvenile justice settings, high schools, foster care facilities, and community-based organizations, this book offers flexible and responsive ways for considering experiences of racism and sexism and performing visions of justice. Visit performingjusticeproject.org for additional information and documentation of PJP performances with youth.

  PublisherDOI

• Digital Storytelling Pedagogies, Processes and Performances: Two Case Studies

  2018-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Patchwork Stories: An arts project that celebrates and weaves our connections together

  idUS (Universidad de Sevilla) · 2017-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Patchwork Stories is inspired by the tradition of using story as a response to people asking for advice and guidance. Our research project gathers personal stories and experiences to offer each other; stories that without advice or direct answers, tell us what it may take to turn towards one another.
\n Founded in 2012 by researchers from the Universities of UT Austin and Exeter UK, Patchwork Stories explores the potential of storytelling in building community connections. Through an interactive storytelling process with community participants, an aural patchwork of personal stories and experiences is created and shared. Through a participatory installation, the process of weaving provides a physical representation of the interconnectedness between strangers and friends. This paper introduces "storytravelling", a flexible term to describe intentional acts of giving and receiving stories. Both project facilitators and project participants are "storytravellers"; the facilitating "storytravellers" create conditions in which individual contributions are nurtured and valued and the participating "storytravellers" contribute through sharing their own stories and actively listening to others. This paper outlines the process of storytravelling; engaging with simple acts of reciprocity that validate connection and community; making possible social inclusion and healing.

  Publisher

• Digital Storytelling and Youth: Toward Critically Engaged Praxis

  Youth Theatre Journal · 2015-01-02 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article explores how digital storytelling and applied theatre can help bridge the gaps between formally sanctioned knowledge (such as textbooks and other traditionally school-based forms and content) and the everyday interests and experiences of youth. The author examines elements of a digital storytelling residency to analyze how devised performance work can invite personal contexts into the classroom and help build active engagements with history. Through descriptive analysis and practice-based examples, the article theorizes how digital storytelling as an applied theatre praxis invites students to see and name the relevance of formalized curriculum content to their own lives. The author then theorized critical questions and challenges raised in and by her approach to applied theatre praxis and called for more critically engaged approaches to performance pedagogy and practices with youth that explicitly address identity, representation, and power.

  PublisherDOI

• Engaging the wisdom and experience of youth

  2014-09-19

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inviting dialogue and deliberation with audiences

  2014-09-19

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth

  2014-09-19 · 7 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth argues that theatre artists must re-imagine how and why they facilitate performance practices with young people. Rapid globalization and advances in media and technology continue to change the ways that people engage with and understand the world around them. Drawing on pedagogical, aesthetic, and theoretical threads of applied theatre and media practices, this book presents practitioners, scholars, and educators with innovative approaches to devising and performing digital stories. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of digital storytelling as an applied theatre practice. Alrutz explores how participatory and mediated performance practices can engage the wisdom and experience of youth; build knowledge about self, others and society; and invite dialogue and deliberation with audiences. In doing so, she theorizes digital storytelling as a site of possibility for critical and relational practices, feminist performance pedagogies, and alliance building with young people.

  PublisherDOI

• Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth: Performing Possibility

  2014-08-21 · 21 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth　argues that theatre artists must re-imagine how and why they facilitate performance practices with　young people. Rapid globalization and advances in media and technology continue to change the ways that people　engage with and understand the world around them. Drawing on pedagogical, aesthetic, and theoretical threads of applied theatre and media practices, this book presents practitioners, scholars, and educators with innovative approaches to devising and performing digital stories. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of digital storytelling as an applied theatre practice. Alrutz explores how participatory and mediated performance practices can engage the wisdom and experience of youth; build knowledge about self, others and society; and invite dialogue and deliberation with audiences. In doing so, she theorizes digital storytelling as a site of possibility for critical and relational practices, feminist performance pedagogies, and alliance building with young people.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Trae Stewart

  2 shared

• Julia Listengarten

  University of Central Florida

  2 shared

• Fiona Macbeth

  1 shared

• Jasmine Games

  1 shared

• Amy Petersen Jensen

  1 shared

• Faith Hillis

  1 shared

• Carina Ripley

  1 shared

• Laura Margaret Winslow Epperson

  1 shared