Taking Action: Teaching Participatory Community-based Theater – Mark Weinberg

Mark Weinberg

Mark Weinberg taught a performance workshop, A Community-Based Theatre Project, at the University of Wisconsin in Fall 2000. Weinberg is the author of the book Challenging the Hierarchy Collective Theatre in the United States, 1992. He is also prominent in promulgating Augusto Boal’s techniques for social-change theater in the U.S.

Mark Weinberg: The students in the class, theater and film majors and three members of the community-based Milwaukee Public theater company, developed performances with members of Project Q, a youth group associated with the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Community Center in Milwaukee. After six weeks at the UW, we began to meet with Project Q members at the Community Center. After image-theater workshops during which the class members and the Project Q participants learned to work as a unit and explored issues about which we wanted to develop pieces, we created two Forum theater plays. The first was about a gay couple driven from their senior prom and the second was about the lesbian daughter of a conservative family coming home with her girlfriend for Christmas. The performance was given as part of the Community Center's grand reopening week and included a series of images of oppression and the forum pieces. Project Q got great press, the house was full, and the performance lively. The interventions by audience members were instructive, challenging and emotionally very charged.

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

Weinberg: Over the years I have tried to have such courses included as part of my load and as an elective for theater or other students. My successes have been few and far between. A number of years ago I taught a class in Collective Creation that was community-based (although all students were upper-level theater majors and the community was the campus). The project was very large and the students received three credits of Independent Study and the performance fulfilled their senior practicum requirement. They and I had to agree to work long and odd hours, but because the result was original work and the topic was of significance to the campus as a whole, I received support and the class was part of my load.

At my home campus I substituted a project with a Boys and Girls Club for a performance. Students earned one credit for a great deal of work and I was chastised by my campus and department for neglecting the regular theater program. Due to the vagaries of attendance by children at the Club (and many other difficulties with organizations like this one — see below), the project only partially materialized. I have been assured by the Club that the work we did there was very valuable and have been invited back, but could not get campus support and time did not allow me to commit for the entire semester.

The course at UW Milwaukee is part of the Theater and Dance Department's incredibly forward-thinking attempt to modify its B.A. curriculum to serve students and the community, in part in response to the UWM's "Milwaukee initiative," but more as an ethical response to two situations: the needs of communities around the school and the lack of traditional theater jobs for graduating seniors. I had been invited to campus to give some Boal workshops, the response was good, and I was invited to develop a course for last Fall. UWM bought out part of my contract from my home campus. I will be teaching a similar course this year. Community-based projects will be part of the required work for many theater majors in the future. I wish I could tell you how to create an atmosphere on your campus like this one. I can tell you that you can appeal to the ethical arguments made by the department and point to the many successful participatory theater projects in community and commercial venues. Perhaps you can establish a "participatory theater techniques" class and make community-based work the performance element.

Q: What materials are appropriate for inclusion? And how does one structure a community-based theater course?

Weinberg: I believe that there must be some discussion of the nature of community and of the role of the outsider/facilitator in community-based projects. To stimulate this, readings that raise these issues should be included. I structured the class so that discussion and experiential work were part of every class session before hooking up with the community group. This element of the class was not as successful as I had hoped, and I will structure the "theoretical" segment of the class around specific questions so that there is more focus and task orientation next time. I also believe that there is a need for reflection and the journal assignment was designed to aid in that. Again, it was not as successful as I hoped. I will have to provide some sample entries next time and collect it more frequently. (Two notes: The journal appeals to the powers that be because it is a writing assignment. It is, however, a lot of work if you take the students' writing seriously and comment fully — i.e., if you make even the written part of the class a dialogue.)

While I chose to use mostly Boal-based methods in my work because of my own proclivities and training, I think any techniques with which the instructor is familiar can provide a starting point. You might want to introduce the students to methods different than the ones you are using, but focus on the one you feel most comfortable with.

Most important, in my opinion, is the inclusion of practical work in a community (however you end up defining that word). While the class at UWM created a Forum piece for itself about an issue very significant to the class members (sexual harassment), it was not until we began the dialogue with Project Q youth that the value and potential impact of the work became clear. Lessons about the relationship of the "theater person" to the community members, the nature of performance, and many other things were learned by all project participants (myself not the least of them).

Q: What are the goals of such a class?

Weinberg: My syllabus lists four. The first and third — definition development and role questioning—were relatively easy to accomplish. The second goal — to learn Boal-based techniques — was far trickier. Being participants in a workshop in which the techniques are used does not necessarily lead to learning how to use them, or even to understanding what they are and can accomplish. Discussing the techniques can reveal much, but it is very difficult to know when to stop the work to talk about it more-or-less objectively rather than let the student-participants process in dialogue what happened to them during the exercises and games.

I think the class provided enough of an introduction to the techniques so that the students could do some analysis of them when they were involved in exercises a second time with the Project Q participants, but I certainly do not feel that I gave any class members enough technique training to make them comfortable as c-b facilitators of any kind let alone Theater of the Oppressed jokers. Students do, however, have an appreciation for the power of the work, and an understanding of other kinds of performance beyond commercial venues. Perhaps one of them will find her or him self looking toward community groups or c-b theater companies rather than the unemployment line in the future.

The final goal dominated the second half of the semester, and rightly so. Once we committed to a group, then the ethics of the work demanded focus on their needs and desires. While I think that much can be accomplished in a c-b course where the only work is performance development, I think that the half semester when the students worked without a performance focus provided them with a fuller sense of their own roles as members of many communities and gave them a chance to explore the techniques somewhat more fully.

The unwritten goal — community empowerment through the rehearsal for life provided by Forum theater — was not in the syllabus, even though it is, arguably, the most significant. While the class discussed this as the goal of c-b theater in general, I have concerns about this issue (see below).

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

Weinberg: While my concerns about material, training for class members and the inclusion of community-based projects are clear above, there is one concern I would like to add here. University students, even the least financially stable, are a relatively privileged group. In addition, students are (rightfully so, to some extent) full of and proud of what they are learning. I did not list the goal of community empowerment in the syllabus because I did not want the students to think that I was, or they would learn to be, the people who could bring to communities what they needed to solve their problems.

It is very important to me as a faculty member that students become agents in their own learning. At the same time, it is very important to me as a community-based theater facilitator that community members become agents in dealing with their issues. I hoped, in spite of the fact that the class members formed a group with practice in particular techniques, that they would not approach Project Q participants as if the class members were there to fix anything. The concern for de-centering power, for bringing the class members and the Project Q members together, was a major one for me.

A final technical concern. It is necessary to find a community partner group that can provide some consistent attendance. The Boys and Girls Club, for example, could not. It functions as a drop-off spot (almost a warehouse) for children of the working poor, and there is no way to get commitment from either the children or their parents to a performance project. Project Q members were willing to commit to the work, and the energy with which they fulfilled that commitment became the dominant emotional force. 

<<<Previous Page   Next Page>>>

Original CAN/API publication: September 2001