Dr. Melissa Friesen returned from a two-week trip to Italy last July with more than the usual souvenirs.
The professor of theatre and communication at Bluffton University also brought back ideas for her classes, including Theatre for Social Change, a class she has developed and is currently teaching for the second time.
Friesen, also the chair of communication and theatre at Bluffton, outlined her participation in the directors’ symposium, “Theatre-makers: Theatre for Social Change and Community Engagement,” during a campus colloquium Jan. 9.
Hosted near Spoleto, Italy, by La MaMa Umbria—which is affiliated with the experimental theatre company La MaMa in New York City—the training program allowed Friesen and 14 other participants from around the U.S. and the world to work with internationally known theatre artists.
Through eight hours of workshops each day, she and the other theatre educators and artists—ranging from college age to the mid-60s—experimented with techniques for using theatre to address social issues.
Leading one of the workshops was a member of the Combatants for Peace program, which works to help Israelis and Palestinians find common ground despite their polarized backgrounds. Other facilitators were an Argentine who now teaches at the University of San Francisco; an American playwright and performer; and the co-founding members of an Italian theatre company.
In addition to hearing presentations, Friesen gained hands-on experience from the theatre artists. Several of their workshops drew upon Brazilian director Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed,” a form of theatre that works with non-practitioners to explore issues of social oppression. “Others borrowed techniques from psychodrama and drama therapy, as well as devising techniques for developing new theatre pieces,” she explained.
“One of my primary reasons for attending this workshop, in addition to experiencing Italy, was to gather techniques, exercises and strategies to use in my own classes, and perhaps to find inspiration for new projects,” she said. “I was not disappointed, and came back with a treasure trove” especially relevant for the Theatre for Social Change class.
She added that theatre-for-social-change techniques like those she experienced engage the “moral imagination,” which peacebuilding scholar John Paul Lederach defined in a 2005 book as “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world, yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”
Such techniques “allow us to flex our creative muscles as we grapple collectively with people both similar to and different from ourselves on important social issues,” Friesen continued, calling her two-week immersion “both exhilarating and exhausting.”
Helping make it possible, she noted, is the generosity of the Mary Nord Ignat and Joseph Ignat families, who established the endowed chair in theatre that she holds at Bluffton. Thanks to them, she said she is able to participate in such professional development opportunities. In 2011, for another example, she spent a month as the community engagement coordinator for Cornerstone Theatre Company in Fowler, California. She has also attended workshops on Broadway as well as various theatre educator seminars.
With the Nord and Ignat families’ help, Friesen is eager to continue exploring theatre as a medium for social change. “Theatre involves the whole person. You’re dealing first and foremost with human stories that have a potential to connect your audience members to rich and difficult topics,” she said.
“If you can imagine positive possibilities for future transformation, that’s one step toward positive social change. Theatre helps unlock that imagination for a better future.”
