Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre

Rehearsing for Dialogue: Facilitation Training and Miami University’s A More Perfect Union

120 Rehearsing for Dialogue: Facilitation Training and Miami University’s A More Perfect Union Ann Eliz abeth Armstrong The Theatre for Social Justice (TSJ) Institute play A More Perfect Union: A Response to Issue 1 succeeded in many of its goals, primarily in fostering dialogue about Ohio’s 2004 ban on same-sex marriage, the effect of this ban on our community, and the underlying homophobia within Miami University’s student culture. In their essay, Amanda Dunne Acevedo and Lindsey Barlag Thornton describe the trajectory of the Walking Theatre Project, the peer-led student activism theatre company that took a lead role in developing and touring the play and that has continued for seven years, tackling topics such as sexual assault. As we prepared for our 2005 Institute, I realized that a critical component of the project would be training the members of the Walking Theatre Project as facilitators. At a public university with a liberal arts focus, Miami University students have grown weary of administration-led diversity initiatives, so a peer-led theatre company was particularly important. Students know how to reach other students, they know what issues are meaningful to them, and they know the best ways to talk about them. However, the marriage equality issue was a flash point, one that elicited heated debates. Even though we had carefully planned partnerships in order to reach the “Movable Middle,” facilitators would be working through a minefield of hot-button issues such as religion, sexual identity, and legal rights. An independent study preceding the spring 2005 Institute produced dramaturgical research that significantly informed our facilitators ’ approach. Then, in fall 2005, I taught a class called Performance Techniques for Social Activism. The course focused on the techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, briefly touching on other Rehearsing for Dialogue 121 community-based theatre methods. Acevedo and Thornton were among the students in the class who trained themselves as Theatre of the Oppressed facilitators with an audience talkback approach. Throughout the life of the project, the demand for A More Perfect Union grew, and facilitation training became an issue that we needed to address again and again. We needed a trained pool of facilitators who could adapt the performance and post-show discussion for each audience. In the post-show, the facilitator’s goals were to (1) guide an interactive discussion to engage diverse perspectives, (2) help audience members position the problem within their own communities, (3) deepen the engagement with the problem, and (4) suggest future actions, if the first three goals were successful. In “Dialogue in Artistic Practice,” Andrea Assaf notes that “participatory arts practice requires skills that dialogue specialists identify as fundamental to productive dialogue, such as creating safe space, listening for meaning, revealing assumptions , and leveling power dynamics” (v). In this essay, I’ll explore a few of the challenges we faced in A More Perfect Union and propose a kind of facilitator’s “boot camp” curriculum. While we didn’t use this curriculum, my reflection on the Walking Theatre Project’s work has led me to develop it. The curriculum allows a peer-led theatre company to continue to expand its pool of facilitators. Problems, Theories, and Methods There are many different ways to conceive the role of the facilitator for community-based theatre. In “The Art of Community Conversation,” Anne Ellis describes the post-performance discussion as a catalyst that creates dialogue contextualizing the performance within the audience’s frame of reference (92). In referring to the Jokers of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal calls them “difficultators” rather than facilitators (Rainbow xix). Like a catalyst, the Joker helps participants see a problem from a new vantage point and acknowledge its complexities. Indeed, as Mady Schutzman writes, the Joker is a trickster clown that is constantly pushing on the boundaries of the community and shining the spotlight on its own contradictions (“Joker Runs Wild” 139). On the other hand, other facilitators privilege the role of listening, reflecting back to the community like a mirror. No matter how the role of the facilitator is imagined, facilitation requires a complex balancing act between asserting a structure for Ann Elizabeth Armstrong 122 dialogue and simply acknowledging, affirming, listening. More than anything, facilitators need to adapt to their context, which makes it difficult to pin down a single formula for success. Not every facilitation format will work for every audience. Some groups may...