"Applied drama" is a term that only appeared and used in western society and universities in recent ten years. It covers a wide range of dramatic works, taking participants and audiences out of traditional professional and mainstream theaters and into another field of drama. In this field, drama actively responds to and participates in the lives and stories of ordinary people, discusses the topics they care about, and works harder to practice the concept of "everyone is an artist". Some fields of applied drama generally include: oppressed drama, community drama, educational drama, drama therapy, replay drama, disabled drama, psychological drama, developmental drama, prison and parole drama, cross-cultural and intergenerational drama, museums, archives and historical sites drama.

Classification of applied drama:

Educational drama/theater

Educational drama is different from drama education. It uses drama methods and drama elements in teaching or social and cultural activities to enable students to achieve their learning goals and objectives in drama practice. The focus of educational drama lies in students' participation, understanding the meaning of knowledge from feelings, discovering possibilities from mutual communication and creating new meanings. Rather than a simple drama arrangement.

In European and American countries, educational drama is a very important teaching method to cultivate students' all-round quality and ability, and even considered as the best teaching method.

China's educational drama is in its infancy, but more and more parents realize the role of educational drama and the importance of cultivating children's all-round quality, so educational drama is about to usher in an important development period in China.

Educational theater is a drama school, which is a drama activity that extends from drama and is tailored for a specific target group in a school or kindergarten. Generally designed and performed by professional actors. Its purpose is to create a broader learning space for the syllabus with the help of drama.

Educational theater performances are mostly composed of performances with strong sense of participation and interaction. Actors/teachers (because they use acting skills, but at the same time think as teachers) lead students to improvise in some roles in the play, or give them some tasks to complete, or other activities that extend from the performance.

Usually, educational theater needs some preparation workshops and some simple follow-up drama activities to form a complete experience.

Playback theater

Playbacktheater was founded in the United States on 1975. It is an impromptu drama that emphasizes the interaction between the audience and the performers.

The audience shared their personal experiences and feelings in the theater. After listening, the actor presents it in real time in the form of body, voice or drama, and gives it back to the audience as a gift.

In a performance, the audience will appreciate the stories of different people being interpreted, and there is often a subtle relationship between stories similar to each other's dialogue.

Anyone can become an "actor" and serve the community in this form of drama. PlaybackTheater has a strong social service. At present, there are many troupes in China.

? The theatre of the oppressed

I have no right to speak about the oppressed theater, because I have never participated in relevant workshops. All the information comes from the internet, books and papers. In the materials, the oppressed theater is associated with the names of Brecht and Meierkholid, which is very kind to drama students.

As a practical subject, applied drama will be very different from the understanding of the workshop, and the understanding will be very different, so I won't write more here.