Interactive Theater

"STOP!" A faculty member interrupts the performance. She comes onstage to replace the actor playing the professor of Stats 101, to try out her own strategy for transforming a student argument about diversity into a "teachable moment." The actors playing the students in Stats 101 prepare to respond in character. This is interactive theatre, in which audience members become active performers, taking advantage of the opportunity to explore multicultural dimensions of teaching in a "safe space" and get feedback from colleagues.

The MU Interactive Theatre troupe was founded in 2003, when MU joined a 3-year multi-campus program sponsored by the Carnegie Academy for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and the American Association for Higher Education. MU borrowed the Stats 101 script from the University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, which houses an interactive theatre program for faculty development. The MU troupe, led by Theatre professors Suzanne Burgoyne and Clyde Ruffin, has performed for faculty, teaching assistants, and classes.

A typical performance includes a 10-minute sketch in which a class or student study group encounters diversity issues they don't know how to handle. After the brief scene has been performed, the actors remain in character and engage in dialogue with the audience. Following small-group discussion, the actors begin to re-enact the scene, but audience members are invited to volunteer to replace the instructor and try out their own ideas to improve the situation. The interactive theatre methods employed draw upon the techniques of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, a social-action theatre form building upon Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

When the MU troupe performed for the Association for General and Liberal Studies confernce in Fall 2004, conference participant Robert Frankle called the session, "one of the best faculty development exercises I have ever experienced," noting, "I learned a lot about my own teaching as a result of temporarily playing the role of teacher in this staged diverse classroom. . . . the student actors were superb, so one really did think of them as real students and not as actors playing a part."

Ruffin directs the troupe's sketches, while Burgoyne trains the actors in interactive theatre techniques. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at MU is studying the effectiveness of interactive theatre for enhancing faculty awareness of multicultural dimensions of teaching.

Campus interest in the interactive theatre program has been growing steadily. In addition to the Ford grant, funding for the group has been provided by a number of campus sources, including The Chancellor's Diversity Initiative, The Vice Provost for International Programs and Faculty Development, The Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies, The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, The College of Arts & Science, The Program for Excellence in Teaching, and the Department of Theatre. After the first year, the group was invited to perform for Freshman Interest Groups, as well as faculty and teaching assistants.

In 2005, the troupe developed a new piece on heterosexism, which draws on data gathered during the Campus Climate Study done at MU. In WS 2006, the group is beginning development of the first of two sketches created specifically for the Ford Difficult Dialogues project.

For further information on MU's interactive theatre project-or to inquire about scheduling a performance for faculty or students--contact Suzanne Burgoyne.