Published as part of Springer's Perspectives on Children and Young People series, this collection of essays is the account of a five-year interdisciplinary project born out of the intertwining of research methodology, youth studies and drama pedagogy. Led by professor Kathleen Gallagher across Taiwan, India, Greece, Canada and England, the project seeks to establish the connection among agency, identity and citizenry through the exploration of what radical hope means to students throughout the world. In order to do so, 250 young participants were invited to answer the question ‘Who am I, relative to others, and what compels me to act upon my world?’ (Gallagher, p. 26), using performative methods related to ‘real’ theatre, such as verbatim theatre, oral-history performance and collective devising.

The creative collaboration dives deep into the participants’ biographies and personal experiences without losing perspective on the political context in which they are immersed. In doing so, the audience are asked to witness the ways in which young people cope with historical circumstances such as internal tensions in Coventry (England) the day after the Brexit poll, the economic and refugee crisis in Athens (Greece), the struggle led by Indian girls against patriarchy in Lucknow (India), the reappropriation of Confucian heritage by Tainan's youth (Taiwan), and the anxiety of living in a world dominated by hateful rhetoric as seen in Toronto (Canada).

Divided into two main sections, the first part of the book focuses on the manner in which these collaborative performative endeavours develop, while the second part addresses the benefits of combining methodologies, where qualitative and quantitative research is enriched with a dramatical approach. The exploration of data is, therefore, carried out through new lenses: translation gaps and metaphoric truths in the analysis of interviews, desire and affection in digital videos, commensality in multi-sited applied drama ethnography, cross-pollinating drama and quantitative research. As a result, the authors display both the affective nature of the collaborative performative experiences and the ‘purpose and place of aesthetic expression in research’ (Gallagher, p. 8).

Quoted several times, one participant's question plays a key role in understanding what is at stake: ‘How is this not going to blend into what you already think you know?’ (p. 256). Usually, when we as adults listen to young people, we tend to be biased, trying to confirm what we already think we know instead of acknowledging discomforting realities. That is why in this case all adult participants committed to a deep listening, an ethical disposition which facilitated true communication between researchers and the young participants.

One excellent example can be found in the final chapter, where playwright Andrew Kushnir gives an account of Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope, a production premiered as the closure of the project in which he participated as PAR (participatory action research) researcher. Faced with the ethical responsibility to guide the audience into perceiving and experiencing the world as young people do, Kushnir and the artistic crew involved in the production resorted to a ‘language of imagination, drawing inspiration from the documentary aesthetics of the play while making space for a highly-informed improvisational element’ (p. 259). These aesthetic choices allowed the young participants to express both their radical hope for the future and the discrepancies surrounding the taxonomies adult researchers have built in order to make sense of a world they do not fully understand.

The book goes far beyond the description of an innovative project; it questions the assumptions upon which traditional research is based. Instead of confirming the scholars’ biases, it enables the researchees to voice their knowledge, by giving them more agency throughout the project. In methodological terms, all traditional boundaries are crossed, thus proposing a productive blend of various methods, including artistic creation processes. Through drama, theatre and performance, the real meets the imaginary, allowing spectators, readers and researchers to construct new knowledge based on life experiences different from their own, hence shedding light on the many ways in which we all inhabit the world.