MSU Forum Theatre Spring 2020

Forum will help you become a more productive change agent because:

  • You will have the opportunity to rehearse inclusive interventions in everyday campus scenarios.
  • You’ll be providing others at MSU the opportunity to rehearse interventions as well.
  • You will have the opportunity to weigh the opportunities and risks of interventions.
  • You will increase your capacity to analyze how to best help and do no harm.
  • You will gain knowledge and insight from the experiences of others.
  • You’ll have fun!
  • You’ll build community!

What is Forum?

In Forum, we use theatrical games and exercises that lead us toward writing our own play. The play will depict an unresolved problem that springs out of the actors’ own experiences with inequity. In performance, audience members are given the opportunity to step into the play and try a tactic for responding to the problem the actors have portrayed. The audience goes from mere spectators to “Spect-actors.” The process is facilitated by a “Joker,” who helps to ensure the performance and dialogue are productive.

But performing scares me!

All you need to be successful is a strong desire to make change and a willingness to create. Dialogue and learning is a way to begin the work of creating equitable spaces for all who live, learn, and work at MSU. Action is the crucial next step. Forum gives us all space to rehearse what that action will look like. Forum will help you to be better prepared to analyze a situation and make choices about how to intervene for maximum impact and minimum harm in a moment. In addition, rehearsals will be closed to anyone not participating in making our Forum play. The final performance will be invitation-only, and the Forum participants will give input into audience design.

Your Commitment:

Participants are asked to attend 90-minute rehearsals, once a week for approximately 10 weeks leading up to the 2-hour final performance.

Rehearsals will be every Monday, 6-7:30pm, January 20th through March 30th, 2020. There will NOT be rehearsal the week of spring break.

The final performance will be March 31st, 6-8pm.

Applications will be accepted through Jan. 10, 2020.

Application can be found here.

Note: Transforming Theatre Ensemble or TTE is an ensemble of professional actors that use theatre for professional development, whereas MSU Forum is an ensemble on non-actors who create original plays based on the problems they face related to inequity.

For more information contact Lynn Lammers.

 

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