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  • To Thrive:Social Justice Theatre on Six Catholic Campuses
  • Reid Davis (bio), Peter Harrigan (bio), Marietta Hedges (bio), Maya Roth (bio), Monica Stufft (bio), and Christine Young (bio)

The following conversation emerged from an ATHE roundtable among six faculty who work at various Catholic institutions: Catholic University, Georgetown University, Saint Mary’s College of California, Saint Michael’s College, University of San Diego, and University of San Francisco.1 Through a series of questions, we explored the nature and practice of social justice theatre, a term used to delimit supposed boundaries between Catholic social justice and socially engaged pedagogies and practices. Our understanding of social justice for this panel relates to initiatives that aim to expose and transform social inequalities and/or prejudice in communities, whether institutions or “in the world.” In this note from the field we convey our experiences developing courses on performance theory, theatre activism, interactive theatre, and theatre for social change, and consider how these contribute to our respective school’s identity. Taken as snapshots of dynamic relationships with home institutions, this conversation across six socially engaged theatre faculty reveals the vivid plurality of Catholic campuses today and suggests strategies for navigating activism and critical pedagogy. We have sought to distill key themes to stir more widespread reflection among colleagues on how institutional cultures call us as faculty, artists, and activists to grow and to promote conscience.

What is the lived relation of your institution’s Catholic and social justice identities?

Maya Roth:

Georgetown is a Jesuit institution, which highlights academic excellence and, since its founding in 1789 in Washington, D.C., religious pluralism, as well as public service. Its Catholicism has several roots: the Ignation emphasis on scholarship, often stated as “reflective engagement”; cura personalis, or care for the whole person; and social justice. The latter manifests as a call to service; students, like staff, are encouraged to be “men and women for others.” Our high percentage of international students and the research and teaching cultures drew me in. Students identify across the political spectrum. Social justice programming around poverty, peace, and human rights engage the mission; for me, that is pivotal.

My lived relationship to Georgetown’s Catholic identity is respectful because I see that it enables focus on social ethics and on spiritual life, on care for people and complex engagement across differences. The Jesuit love of education and reflective engagement: these are also where I connect.

Peter Harrigan:

Saint Michael’s College was founded by members of the Society of Saint Edmund (or “Edmundites”). The Edmundites are very dedicated to service and to social justice, and were actively involved in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans. We are a liberal arts college with 1,900 undergraduate students, mostly from the Northeast, with nearly 70 percent participating in campus or community-service programs during college. Saint Michael’s is situated in Vermont, which borders Massachusetts; over one-third of our student body comes from there. For most of them, gay marriage has been legal since they were in middle school. Our students are way ahead of some of their parents, and particularly their grandparents, in terms of awareness and acceptance of difference. [End Page 277]

Reid Davis:

Saint Mary’s College of California was an all-male school until about forty years ago; its iconic image was male students piled into the telephone booth in a 1957 prank photo. After years of working towards goals of inclusion, a withering 2007 Western Association of Schools and Colleges [WASC] report called attention to the gap between a rhetoric of diversity and the reality of our campus. Helpfully, WASC pointed out that while we call ourselves a diverse campus and we call ourselves a social justice campus, the rhetoric was not meeting the road. To some, this debate meant we needed to fortify our Catholic identity, and to others it meant we were about to embrace a social justice philosophy grounded in service and social consciousness. The college has since worked to reconcile many of these tensions and unify divergent ideals about the health, welfare, and direction of the college.

Christine Young:

Like Maya, I teach...

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