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167 Pronouns, Play Building, and the Principal: Negotiating Multiple Sites of Activism in a Youth-Focused Theatre for Social Justice Project X anthia Angel Walker It is Day Four of the Minnesota Theatre for Social Justice Institute. The principal of Sunnyside High School, who is attending the workshop for the first time and can stay for only a few hours, just referred to one of his transgender students by the wrong pronoun—again. The workshop session is focused on feverishly editing the play we’ve written. The group is stuck on the locker room scene, in which a transgender student is being bullied. The principal is objecting to the scene, arguing that this would not happen at his high school and that it is not appropriate for performance in a school. “It’s really what happens—it’s based on reality,” counters one of the youth participants. The principal ’s transgender student is out in the hallway with a trained counselor processing his feeling of not being safe in this space. I wish he was in the room so he could say to his principal that this has happened to him at their school. We are between a rock and a hard place. The Institute project planning began in April 2006 and culminated in a high school tour in April 2007. Fringe Benefits collaborated with the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, a local suburban high school (referred to here as “Sunnyside High School”),1 and a local drop-in center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender , and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Fringe Benefits explicitly identifies its Theatre for Social Justice (TSJ) Institute projects as activist (Norma Bowles, personal communication ). I posit that our project in Minnesota was definitely an example of activist theatre. I believe that activism and community cultural development work go hand-in-hand. Arlene Goldbard’s fifth unifying Xanthia Angel Walker 168 principle of community cultural development work states that “cultural expression is a means of emancipation, not the primary end in itself: the process is as important as the product” (43). In this essay, I will explore the multiple sites of activism that emerged in the creation, rehearsal, and performance of this piece, framed by the project’s partnership with Sunnyside High School. I will identify the specific spaces where activism lived in this project, as well as the moments where we missed opportunities for activism in process, product, and performance . Moments of “emancipation”—of embodied, transformative activist theatre—occurred in all phases of this project. The project began with a six-month series of workshops at the drop-in center with its already-established theatre group. The core group of youth participants, all in high school or recently graduated, passionately articulated their frustration with the lack of Safe Space for LGBTQ youth in their high schools. This became the crux of our project: creating a piece of theatre to address bullying and the lack of Safe Space in suburban high schools. Unfortunately, very few high schools in the area were willing to take on a dialogue about LGBTQ themes, and hosting the play project was considered by the schools to be too big of a risk in the face of potential backlash. At this phase of the project, the youth participants stated both verbally and nonverbally, through their commitment to showing up and participating, that they felt agency over the project. They were actively engaged in the process of creating and participating in workshops ; they decided how they participated in the space, stepping in and out as they pleased; and they drove the decision-making process for determining the theme of our play project. One of the youth, known to us as “Mark,”2 attended Sunnyside High School. At Sunnyside, he was not out as transgender. He identified as Mark in most of the social parts of his life but at school was still known by his birth name, Mary. Mark was adamant about getting our play into his school, and he convinced his school counselor to have a meeting with us about building a partnership. Mark’s push to get Sunnyside to partner with our project was a site of activism. Before the theatre-making even began, Mark was already engaged in an emancipatory experience in his efforts to get the administration to meet with us and ultimately to become a partner on the project. Mark, the other project coordinators, and I had a series of fantastic meetings with the school...

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