Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre

Writing Conflict Out of Schools

44 Writing Conflict Out of Schools Cristina Pippa Creating theatre for social justice is as much about portraying instances of oppression within a community as it is about finding ways to inspire an audience to take action. In 2005, the Theatre for Social Justice Institute team at the University of Iowa wrote a play depicting the discrimination against and abuse of LGBT students in Iowa City high schools. The target audience consisted of area high school teachers, coaches, and staff attending a district-wide professional development day. We gathered in a large movement studio in the theatre building at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner Action Theatre members, undergraduate and graduate student playwrights and actors, and professors and staff were joined by members of United Action for Youth and local teenagers. From the beginning of the process, discussions in this diverse group were candid and personal. Everyone had a story about witnessing or suffering anti-LGBT discrimination, and we were united by the common purpose of using theatre as a catalyst for behavioral and policy change within the schools. One story came up again and again in our discussions. Two young men had wished to attend a dance at an Iowa City high school as a couple , but a parent volunteer refused to sell them tickets at the couples’ rate. They went to the dance together anyway, where they were brutally assaulted by their peers. We believed that these acts of violence could have been prevented had the high school community recognized and quelled prior instances of prejudice and discrimination. As shown in the “Pyramid of Hate,”1 a tool developed by the Anti-Defamation League, prejudiced attitudes can lead to acts of bias, discrimination, violence, and even genocide. We decided to present the chain of events Writing Conflict Out of Schools 45 that took place at the local high school, consciously following their progression up the Pyramid of Hate, which mirrors the arc of the typical linear plot structure, including an inciting incident, rising action, and climactic moment. We also decided to use a Boalian “Joker” to serve as a master of ceremonies and to draw the audience into the world of the play.2 In her opening prologue, our Joker piles bunches of figurative apples on our audience of teachers’ desks: Joker: How can we teach a teacher? You’re the ones who helped us puzzle out Calculus and Geometry. You’re the ones who taught us to fall in love with History, and introduced us to our favorite book. You’re the ones who encouraged us to grow stronger, more creative, more analytical, and more just. You taught us to learn . . .3 At the end of the play, we planned for the Joker to invite audience members onto the stage to participate in Forum Theatre improvisations to explore how they might handle the situations presented in the play. Then, to keep the audience’s attention, we looked for a style or genre that would provide a fitting and entertaining approach to adapting the story for the stage. As most Americans are more accustomed to watching television than attending the theatre, and as our audience was sure to include Iowa sports fans, we decided to incorporate elements from a then-popular TV talk show/comedy program called The Best Damn Sports Show Period. The structure of the sports show also provided us with an opportunity to use such devices as closeups , playbacks, interjections of commentary and commercials, and, most important, humor. Imagining that some of the harder-to-reach members of our audience might include straight, male coaches and other sports enthusiasts, we hoped that the sports show concept would help them feel as if they were in their own arena and ultimately more receptive to the social change that we aimed to effect. We chose the title Welcome to the Game!, but the game in the play is not football or basketball. Instead, the game is high school, where there are also winners and losers, scores and fouls, and where injury, psychological as well as physical, is a real possibility. In order to approach issues of harassment and discrimination from multiple perspectives, we featured three “sports” commentators who Cristina Pippa 46 act as friendly adversaries: Amelia Grand Prix, Teresa Tremblay, and Sugar Ray Bob. Amelia is an extreme social conservative, Teresa serves as an advocate for LGBT students, and Sugar is in the middle, undecided...