From traditional play analysis and theatre history courses to creative writing courses like playwriting, writing is everywhere in theatre and performance studies. Yet, many of these classes fail to emphasize the tools common to rhetoric and composition classes and writing studies programs that help students generate and refine new work. Harnessing cross-field “writing in the disciplines” and critical university studies approaches, this collection of practical instructor-oriented resources from scholars teaching at a range of institutional types surveys both undergraduate and graduate theatre and performance studies classrooms to identify best practices and common pitfalls in writing instruction. Teaching Across Theatre and Performance Studies: A Resource Guide provides detailed lesson plans for teaching students the mechanics of research methods, editing, and revision, while offering course assignments to support instructors seeking to enhance student writing. Whether you teach playwriting, dramaturgy, theatre history, dance, design, or performance criticism, this guide offers adaptable strategies for making writing central to the work of theatre and performance studies.

Samuel Yates is Assistant Professor of Theatre at The Pennsylvania State University (USA). Their interdisciplinary research focuses on disability, performance, accessibility, and pedagogy. Samuel’s forthcoming book, Cripping Broadway: Producing Disability in Musical Theatre, earned the 2025 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities. You can follow their work online at samuelryates.com.

Jeanmarie Higgins is the editor of Teaching Critical Performance Theory in Today’s Theatre Classroom, Studio, and Communities (2020), and co-editor of Teaching Performance Practices in Remote and Hybrid Spaces (2022) with dance and somatics practitioner Elisha Clark Halpin. Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Texas at Arlington (USA), Jeanmarie is the 2021 recipient of the Oscar Brockett Award in Teaching from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education.