Telling Our Stories: Community-Created Theatre as Intra-Cultural Diplomacy in a Transnational World

New York City College of Technology's ¹ ("City Tech") classrooms are among the most diverse in the world. Students land in my speech and theatre classes from a range of countries, such as Egypt, Thailand, Ivory Coast, Peru, New Zealand, Yemen, and Hong Kong, among others. ² One student told me how he escaped from a guarded clothing-sweatshop factory in Guiana and made his way to the United States; others come by winning the immigration lottery, borrowing money from extended family in India, and arriving here alone. Other scenarios include students who are received in large, intact communities, but then become trapped by being coerced to work in, say, Chinese restaurants and experiencing arranged marriages. Students can also be pressured to live and work in Chinatown and thus never really learn to speak English. Among these are others, students from New York City itself who come from drug violence, gang violence, or violence born out of frustration and boredom. Additionally, there are students from middle-class backgrounds—some even having parents who attended City Tech themselves.

In today's multicultural world, students must learn to work collaboratively with those who are different in order to thrive. Current diversity initiatives encompass, of course, the usual categories of race, ethnicity, class, sex, gender, and dis/ability across the spectrum of students, faculty, and staff on campus and in its communities. I posit that the ways students need to learn to work together are not merely a result of proximity (namely, the diversity of students within the same classroom), but rather a function of deliberately utilizing diplomacy.

The traditional definition of "diplomacy" is twofold: "1) The art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations, and 2) skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility" (Merriam-Webster.com). Diplomacy, in the context of students needing to understand those who are different, is the art of communication, such that others feel respected and understood, and a means of bridging one's experiences with those of others. Further, I argue that students must learn to appreciate difference, and not just to tolerate or ignore it. This essay offers one model for teaching students how to value difference, their own as well as others', by using individual diplomacy and community-created theatre as "cultural diplomacy."

In my "Effective Speaking" course classroom, individual diplomacy is practiced through mediated classroom discussions: for example, getting students from countries that are at war (or else in conflict) to engage in dialogue. I urge students to view themselves in a globalized framework by saying that "the future of the world depends upon people who are different, and may think very differently, learning to talk and listen to one another respectfully." Although initially wary, eventually these students begin to trust their new friendships and consequently relinquish histories of hatred and violence. In one class, a political discussion arose among students from Afghanistan, Iran, and Israel. When their words became heated, I reiterated the classroom rules: "You have to LISTEN to each other. You have to treat each other as individuals. Don't just repeat things you've been told by others or grew up hearing. You MUST learn (as a graded part of the class) to have a respectful dialogue." I had to intervene many times, but eventually they began listening to one another, viewing one another as individuals and not simply as representatives of distrusted nations. As Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren has written: "much already has been written about the need for a nuanced understanding of multiple voices and the right to speak. Less, however, has been written on listening to the other—notwithstanding the ways in which the other is defined, whether political, cultural, or metaphysical. Not only do we have great difficulty seeing the other, but we also have great difficulty hearing the other as well" (424). Thus attuning both myself and the students increasingly toward listening as a key to individual diplomacy practiced through classroom discussion is part of most of my days at City Tech.

These classroom forays into individual diplomacy set the stage for a new kind...