Taking Action: Teaching Participatory Community-based Theater – Ann Elizabeth Armstrong

Ann Elizabeth Armstrong

Ann Elizabeth Armstrong is the Director of Graduate Studies in the theater Department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her experiences doing a grassroots theater project at the College of William and Mary (Willamsburg, Virginia) are documented in these materials (and in an article in the September 2000 issue of Theatre Topics.) This project came out of two classes, one taught in the fall as a freshman seminar and one taught the following spring as an upper-level seminar. She took the course plan with her to Miami University.

Q: How does one get a community-based theater course included in the curriculum?

Ann Elizabeth Armstrong: Community-based theater courses work well as a freshman topics class. It builds students' research and writing skills; it requires a great deal of skill in collaborative group work; it forces them to become aware of political and ethical issues, and, of course, it stimulates them to use creative faculties. While it might at first seem too "advanced" for freshmen, I think that community-based theater by its very nature questions notions of "expertise." Asking students to work in pairs as they go out into the community can solve many concerns about freshmen working in such a class.

Because the class lends itself to interdisciplinary collaboration, I strongly recommend cross-listing with other departments. While this is not always popular within theater departments, it is frequently persuasive with administrators. American Studies, Sociology, History, Ethnic Studies, Women's Studies and other humanities are obvious choices for cross-listing. However, you never know when a particular topic might be compatible with the sciences (for example, a production about environmental concerns in your area). 

A community-based theater class utilizes a wide range of student skills and may easily be a course that could satisfy curriculum requirements such as those in writing, in the creative arts or in multicultural studies. As a "Special Topics" class (which is how many of us teach this class), it becomes marginalized as a "one-time only" class or an "elective." Special efforts should be made so that we make a community-based theater course an important contributor to the core curriculum (both within the department and the college).

Q: How does one structure a community-based theater course?

Armstrong: I found that it was important to have both a creative and a critical component to the class. My classes reflect an emphasis on the creative aspect since they culminated in an end-of-the-semester production. In the Freshman Seminar class, students created an in-class performance about their own concerns ("Rites of Passage"). This introduced them to the techniques we would later use for staging. Then, mid-semester they read plays and critical articles by other community-based theater companies. During the time in which they were doing critical work in class, outside of class they were collecting stories/research for performance. The last part of the semester was spent rehearsing their performance. 

In my upper-level seminar, students had a brief period of introduction to critical concepts. Then they focused on research and writing for the production. Breaks in between these activities allowed us to view and read other examples of community-based work. After we created our production, students came back to their critical issues as they prepared reports on individual community-based theater companies. This allowed them to place their own work within an overall framework of the varied community-based theater activities all over the U.S.A.

I think that it is absolutely essential that you collaborate with local or regional community-based theater artists in creating your class. We had guest workshops with artists from Community Performance Inc. and saw other live community-based theater productions. These were turning points for the students. Only in a performance situation with a live audience can the students understand the significant differences between this kind of performance and what they know as "theater."

It is also essential that you collaborate with other community organizations in all stages of planning the class, teaching and preparing a production. Whether it is a social-service organization or a community oral-history project, it is important to build the activities of the community you are working with directly into your syllabus and schedule. 

Q: What are the goals of such a class?

Armstrong: 1.) A community-based theater class should create a place for students to utilize theater to reflect upon the political, social, and cultural dynamic of a particular community (and themselves). They should be able to understand the ethical dilemmas of creating such work, and they should be able to put abstract critical thinking into artistic representations that provoke dialogue within the community.

2.) A community-based theater class should contribute to the community within which it works in a significant way. The class work should fulfill a particular need within the community (apart from its academic and curricular goals). It should create an ongoing relationship between the students, the college and this particular community.

Q: What materials and activities are appropriate for inclusion?

Armstrong: My syllabus reflects some readings that were appropriate for undergraduate liberal-arts students. My list of sources may be helpful to an instructor who is undertaking an oral-history project. Oral-history methodologies can be complex and overwhelming to those untrained. While it's important to understand the issues, recognize that your aims are different from those of oral historians. 

Several videos were helpful. Those available from Roadside Theater were Red Fox's Second Hanging and Junebug Jack. 

Q: What concerns do you have about the above or anything else related to the topic?

Armstrong: Mainly, collaboration with other artists outside the academy is key. And, collaboration with existing organizations within the community is important. (For other issues relating to student growth and ethical dilemmas see my article in Theatre Topics, September 2000.)

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Original CAN/API publication: September 2001