Taking Action: Teaching Participatory Community-based Theater – Amy Sarno

Amy Sarno

Amy Sarno taught a Fall 2000 course called Taking Action at Beloit College in Wisconsin. It combined a theoretical overview of theater as a means to improve the self and the community with the actual implementation of student project plans. One student started a Forum Theatre Troupe that works with on campus groups around issues of race and sexual orientation. Another did an in-depth study of drama therapy and psychodrama literature, and interned with a psychodramatist.

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

Amy Sarno: This was a troubling aspect for me as I was developing this course. The theater department at Beloit College is an excellent training ground for students who wish to work in traditional regional theater. For a small college, our acting, directing, design and theoretical courses cover a broad range of material and simultaneously allow students to delve deeply into whichever area they find most interesting. As a small department, we encourage our students to push their limits and take risks while they are in a learning environment.

When I was contemplating the design of this course, the department faculty was concerned that I would be offering a course that would not expand on our students' knowledge. The main concern expressed was how it fit into the core theater curriculum because our focus was in creating opportunities for the growth of theater artists. It was decided that Taking Action should not be a course offered through the theater department, but should be offered as an interdisciplinary studies course.

At Beloit College, the interdisciplinary studies (IDST) program is considered the fourth division in our liberal-arts curriculum. Every student must take one interdisciplinary course in order to graduate. It is assumed that interdisciplinary courses draw upon two or more fields of study to create new insights and techniques for academic study. The interdisciplinary program is very careful to differentiate itself from being multidisciplinary by requiring professors teaching IDST courses to carefully integrate the methods of analysis from each discipline throughout the span of the course. From the theater department's standpoint, Taking Action seemed to meld political action, humanist theory and theatrical performance to initiate community change. For the theater department, this integration of many fields served to create community activists rather than theater artists.

Yet, at the same time, the theoretical and performative aspects of Taking Action all come from theater practitioners from all over the world. Many of the theorists that we studied like Boal, Barba, Artaud and even Brecht incorporate ideas from political science, religion and anthropology; but every one of these major thinkers are people of the theater. Even the speakers that were brought in to work with the students were all classically trained theater artists. I was continually wrestling with the realization that if you take theater out of the traditional theatrical space and use it for a purpose other than entertainment, that many people feel as though it ceases to be theater.

I also discovered that this was a perspective that many of my students had as well. It was shocking to them that we would study parades or rituals as a theatrical form. I had to constantly remind my students to think of the audience members as thinking, sentient beings. The audience became a group of individuals for my students rather than an amorphous breathing body. The power dynamics of the theater were shifting for my students and because of that shift, Taking Action was an interdisciplinary course.

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

Sarno: For me, this was a tricky question because I was going to have to take students who were of two different varieties: 1) students who had never had any experience with theater; or 2) theater students who had never considered using theater as a tool for social change. Please keep in mind, Taking Action was being offered through the Interdisciplinary Studies program. When I had first thought about this course, I wanted to expose my students to working with a variety of community groups. I wanted to integrate them immediately into the community and to create projects that forced them to learn by doing. After all, in other courses that I teach, I always require students to have interaction with the community and to do projects with and for local non-profit organizations. Yet, at the same time, I realized that I was about to introduce students to a new conception of what theater could do.

I came to the decision that since I was working with a relatively diverse group of students who were intrigued with the course because it offered a way to creatively change society, but none of them had ever heard of community-based theater. I felt as though I had to start from scratch. I had to demonstrate to them that there is a history of this particular theatrical form that had evolved out of the theater. I had to sharpen their awareness of how they communicate with an audience. I had to force them to envision a form of theater that does not rely on sets and costumes. I had to challenge them to think more precisely and often more abstractly. Finally, I had to introduce them to various forms and techniques for interacting with community members.

I thought I could do all of the above in about eight weeks and allow the remaining eight weeks of the semester for students to implement projects they had conceived in the first eight weeks. I decided the first eight weeks would be worth half a credit and if the student wished to implement a project, he/she could sign up for a special project with me for another half IDST credit. In theory, it sounded good. It sounded efficient. In reality, it was too short of a time for students to hone their skills. I found that in order to insure my students' success, I had to add workshops and extra class hours to allow for experimentation. The work was exhilarating for everyone in the class (the course receive a 5.0 out of 5.0 on student evaluations in answer to "Overall, this was a good course."), but exhausting to teach.

In the future, I think I will attempt to structure the course into two semesters. The first semester will include activities developed for Taking Action and the second semester will offer students an opportunity to practice the skills they have learned in the first course in the community.

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Original CAN/API publication: September 2001