Community Building. Problem-solving. rehearsing social change.
Augusto Boal created Theatre of the Oppressed for non-actors as a way to rehearse social change. In these workshops we use theatre techniques to explore issues facing us as a community and brainstorm responses to difficult and/or oppressive scenarios. I have facilitated workshops at universities, national conferences, and for professional organizations. The content is tailored to the participants and the organizational needs. Theatre of the Oppressed workshops are a fun and active way to navigate difficult topics. Past workshop titles include:
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Exclusion Response
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Creating Gender Parity
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Sexism Response
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Wage Negotiation
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Leveraging your Elevator Pitch
"Theatre can be done anywhere. Even in a theater. Anyone can do theatre. Even actors." ~Augusto Boal
Testimonies
"I can't believe I just spent the past hour laughing about sexism!"
~Participant, Responding to Sexism in Technology. Association for Computing Machinery- Women, 2014.
"(The workshop) opened my eyes to viewpoints I would have been otherwise unaware of." Participant, FemmeTech course, Sexism Response Workshop. UNC-Charlotte, 2016
"Sarah's workshop forced me to think about my language. I now feel much more aware and cannot wait to use this in real life!" Participant, Wage Negotiation Workshop for CheckTech Charlotte, 2018
"I feel like the workshop made me realize how much it really hurts when people discriminate against me and how I don't have to keep being silent, I can use what we were taught in the workshops to express how it makes me feel or deal with these situations better in the future." ~Participant, FemmeTech course, Sexism Response Workshop. UNC-Charlotte, 2016
"The lessons of diversity were able to be taught in a hands-on manner, which really helped me understand the way other people feel and why it is important to be considerate." -Participant, Exclusion Response Workshop. UNC-Charlotte 2018
"The Exclusion Response Workshop was beneficial towards me and other students because it helped the CCI community understand more about discrimination that occurs within the daily lives of people. The experience was enjoyable for me since I was able to share an discriminatory experience that happened to me when I was younger, and I believe it really opened a side to me that my peers may have not known about." -Participant, Exclusion Response Workshop. UNC-Charlotte, 2018