The canon and the contemporary: change, challenge, conceit

The canon is widely recognised in drama school training contexts as the dramatic and practitioner texts with which actors can expect to work. The canon studied is often proscriptively - and therefore prohibitively - narrow. These two observations lead to the questioning of who, and for what industry, training actors are being prepared. Articulation of the Western bias and shortcomings of the hegemonic canon is well versed, but alternatives are often predicated on augmentation via addition. Examining and understanding the conceit by which canonical status is ascribed, achieved, and maintained, holds the answer to how the canon can be challenged and changed to allow for culture to evolve, through the plurality of stories and not regurgitation and perpetuation of those already lauded.