Campus May Use Theater to Promote Diversity Discussion

Campus educators attended a presentation yesterday on the effects of campus interactive theater workshops designed to promote understanding of diversity in the classroom.

Faculty discussed the merits of the Interactive Theater Program, in which students and faculty perform skits together aimed at sparking discussion of equity and inclusion issues.

The last time the workshops were held for students and faculty was in 2000, with more than 70 College of Engineering educators in attendance, said Edith Ng, director of staff equity and diversity services.

“We can address diversity issues that are difficult to talk about because individual experiences are so different,” Ng told more than a dozen university educators in Tolman Hall. “Theater focuses on a common experience as a point of dialogue.”

Faculty members discussed the possibility of extending the program on campus beyond the one-time performance six years ago.

The program focuses on skits that examine classroom attitudes toward color, race, gender and disability as they pertain to engineering students, said Carla Trujillo, director of the Graduate Diversity

Program.

After each scenario, actors answer questions about their characters’ motivations and background. A facilitator mediates the discussion between the actors and the audience.

Lura Dolas, a lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, conducted more than 100 hours of interviews with students and staff to write the scripts, Trujillo said.

Such research makes the scenarios relevant to UC Berkeley, Trujillo said.

“The College of Engineering is challenging to women, disabled students, and students of color,” Trujillo said. “Many students approach me disenfranchised by faculty and students.”

In a survey taken after the Interactive Theater Workshops in 2000, the majority of audience members said they felt the interactive theater method is an “effective learning technique.” Ninety-one percent also indicated that they would recommend the workshop to a colleague.

Ng said the question and answer session personalized the complex issue of diversity.

“We asked, ‘If you were the character, how would you act?’” Ng said. “A lot of our work deals with the head, so when we linked it with the heart, it became more compelling.”

Ng and Trujillo said they were inspired to organize the theater performance in 2000 after watching the Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble present a similar workshop in 1998.

The Cornell ensemble came to UC Berkeley last month to present a series of theater workshops that also addressed diversity.

Ng said she hopes to expand the event into an interactive theater campus program, depending on funding and volunteer interest.

Tags: