Amplify & Ignite: Creative Practice in and With Communities

How can we interrupt assumptions we hold that may hinder the growth of students, who are caught in a system rife with racial and socioeconomic inequities?  How do artistic processes and experiences intersect with equity practices?  Where are opportunities to activate artistic innovation and processes to create joyful & liberatory arts education? How do we build organizational practices that continually examine, reimagine, and sustain this work? These are questions we at ArtsConnection have been delving into deeply for over 8 years in order to ensure we intentionally uplift all the humans in our education and organizational spaces.  At the intersection of history and the advancement of humanity you will always find the arts. So, we have been facilitating ongoing practitioner research focused on how we can engage our humanity and bring equitable practices to the forefront of how we work by activating artistic processes. One result is our new framework which activates key artistic approaches to build belonging, agency and cultural humility. Another is the journey we took to collaboratively design and apply this framework organizationally. In this multidisciplinary arts filled workshop, Facilitators and Participants will experience, reflect on, and offer feedback on ArtsConnection's new research-based pedagogical framework for creating joyful and liberatory arts education. The goal is to work collaboratively to activate artistic practices, examine how working as an artist can disrupt classroom power dynamics, build student agency, and deepen student learning and motivation to learn.

As legislation across states like Florida, Texas, Utah, and others restrict conversations around equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), how can theatre education programs effectively train culturally responsive teachers? And how do we do this in our communities with the laws push against it? This session invites participants to collectively grapple with the challenges of fostering inclusive teaching practices within a rapidly shifting sociopolitical landscape. Through inquiry and visioning, we will explore how theatre education can remain committed to diverse voices and stories, even amid societal pushback and restrictive policies. This collaborative session aims to inspire actionable strategies and frameworks for addressing these pressing challenges. Together, we will explore strategies for equipping future theatre educators with tools to navigate and resist these barriers, including innovative curriculum design, advocacy approaches, and other ideas brought to the table by the folks in the room. I hope to explore ethical dilemmas and dream up possibilities for transformative education rooted in empathy, equity, and resistance. The session aims to create a space where educators, artists, and administrators can share experiences, learn from one another, and envision actionable strategies.

The first radio broadcast of a president's inaugural address was on March 4, 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was sworn in for his second presidential term. To acknowledge the centenary of this broadcasting milestone, NYU's Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) will explore how audiences perceive the inaugural addresses of US presidents when the words of the addresses are anonymized and presented as scored transcripts that reflect the speech cadence used by the presidents during their speech delivery. The workshop will use the 100-year history of broadcasted inaugural addresses to explore how identity impacts how an audience receives a president's message. VPL has experimented with a warm-up activity of sharing an anonymized scored excerpt of an inaugural address, asking participants to read it, and then sharing who they think was speaking. This workshop will expand upon that short activity and offer scored transcripts from multiple inaugural speeches from across the last 100 years for participants' consideration. Participants will interact with the anonymized transcripts in various ways, including selecting ones that resonate with them the most and then experimenting with speaking the text aloud. Participants will also explore how embodying the speeches using the scoring of the original speaker impacts their perceptions of the speech, its meaning, and its impact. The workshop will culminate in a reveal of each of the original speakers of the excerpts, followed by a discussion about initial perceptions from reading, discoveries from speaking aloud, and realizations once the actual identities of the presidents have been revealed.

I Got My Pride: How Exploring Identity Through Improv Can Increase Connection for Middle School Students
Presenters: Faith Soloway and Jaime Ullrich

In the dynamic landscape of middle school, connection is everything. The Urban Improv Residency Program has cracked the code, reaching over 1,000 Boston Public Schools students each year through a potent blend of music, improvisation, and meaningful dialogue. More than just an enrichment program, this innovative approach is a lifeline for young adolescents navigating the complex social terrains of middle school. By employing interactive games, nuanced role-play, and carefully crafted conversation starters, Urban Improv creates powerful moments of understanding, empathy, and personal growth. In this transformative workshop, participants will: Experience firsthand the techniques that help students break down social barriers Learn facilitation strategies that engage and inspire young teens. Discover how improvisation can be a powerful tool for social-emotional learning. Practice navigating challenging scenarios with sensitivity and creativity. Led by Urban Improv's most seasoned Teaching Artists, this session promises to be an immersive, eye-opening journey into the art of connection. Come prepared to participate, learn, and be inspired.

Their Issues, Their Voices: Creating Theatre of the Oppressed with Middle School Students
Presenter: Jordan Burnham-Bialik

How can Theatre of the Oppressed authentically address the systemic challenges middle school students face? In this interactive workshop, participants will explore practical techniques for helping young people create forum theatre about their lived experiences. Through hands-on activities, we'll demonstrate how to scaffold TO techniques that empower students to investigate issues ranging from academic tracking to family dynamics. Drawing from current examples of student-created forum plays, participants will experience a process that builds trust, maintains artistic rigor, and supports collective creation. The workshop provides concrete strategies for adapting Boal's methods to serve younger practitioners while honoring their capacity to analyze social systems. You'll leave with practical tools for implementing TO in middle school settings and approaches for helping students create theatre that matters to their lives. Come prepared to move, play, and discover how theatre can amplify student voices in your classroom. 

Theater of Union: Our Stories as Life Sustaining Projects?
Presenter: Annalise "River" Guidry
As artists who inherit a lineage of empire, how do we create and cultivate life where systems of domination have left ruin? Inspired by mushrooms and informed by indigenous, feminist and anthropological notions of "knowing-with," and, "a love ethic," Theater of Union is a decolonized theatrical pedagogy and praxis- with love as the foundation and knowing as the practice- to contribute to life-sustaining, world-building projects with theater as the vehicle.

Storytelling as Empowerment: Voices from 'The Stories of Giving Birth'"
Bindi Kang

"The Stories of Giving Birth" (dir. Zhao Zhiyong, Beijing, 2019) is a groundbreaking theatrical production collaborated by professional artists and rural-urban migrant workers. Developed in a collaborative manner, "The Stories of Giving Birth" is a devised theatre work woven from archival materials gathered from more than 30 interviews with female migrant workers. This project illuminates the intersectional challenges faced by women at the margins of societal structures. Emerging from extensive community engagement organized by a local NGO Mulan Community Service Center, this production provides platforms for migrant women to voice their living experience that includes traumatic experience of abortion, persistent cycles of economic marginalization, and systemic familial and social neglect. Following the production's success, a subsequent interactive museum exhibition expanded the project's reach, designing immersive experiences that bridge diverse social backgrounds through personal narratives. After its initial success in the theatre house, in 2021, Mulan Community in collaboration with Beijing Yue Art Museum, launched an interactive art project called Personal History/Game Theatre + Exhibition The Story of Mulan Narratives of Grassroots Migrant Women Workers. This project featured the play, the women's stories, and their everyday items, documents, photographs, etc. Moreover, the creative team also designed an interactive game, inviting the museum visitors, to immerse themselves in the life journey of a randomly assigned female worker character. Through this method, the curators aimed to connect the experiences of the female workers with the largely middle-class and well-educated museumgoers. In my presentation, I aim to take this production as a case study, to survey how theatre serves as a consoling instrument among the members in the migrant wokers' community, as well as a communicative tool between this grassroots community and middle class art consumers.

This is My Body
Kimberly LaCroix

Working at the intersection of gender studies, theology, and philosophy, I am researching how applied theatre can be utilized to explore Judeo-Christian theology's influence on female embodiment. Then, in collaboration with the Gordon College theatre program in Wenham, MA, I will be working with a group of college students who both ascribe to the tenants of Christianity and identify as female. This work will culminate in an ensemble-devised production, performed on Gordon's campus, January-February, 2025. I hope this production will be a sort of Complete History of Female Embodiment, Abridged in the style of Reduced Shakespeare Company. In a world deeply obsessed with the differences between us- our gender, religion, political affiliation, all aspects of our positionalities- I am committed to joy, play, and common ground. This production aims to be a celebration of resilience, while likely also being a hobble through some difficult territory. ​​​​

BBQ starter! This is to help us see each others humanity first and foremost as we create a safer container for each other. Breathing exercise and calling in of ancestors. Discussion of question "How much of your thinking is your thinking?"- Introduction of Internalized Racial Oppression and Indoctrination into the status quo's ideas of ourselves, and how that has shaped how we identify. Introduction of the 7 C's- Walk and Talks, shifting partners, as we discuss each of the 7 C's.7 C's protocol revealed and activated. What actions can we individually take to activate the 7 C's protocol? By when?Creating Accountability pods to help lovingly support each other in our commitment to building the NEW through our new learning. Closing circle 💜

OUR STORIES: We Can Be Heroes/Heroines
Presenter: Dylan Russell
OUR STORIES: We Can Be Heroes Utilizing Generative Theatre Practice as Mental Health Modality in Community Settings. We are at an emergent moment where arts in public health and the arts as civic engagement are being accepted and integrated into the fabric of community well being. From music therapy being utilized to heal Parkinson's patients to the Massachusetts Cultural Council's first statewide arts prescription program in the US, we are seeing the arts accepted as a treatment for physical and behavioral health issues. Five years ago, I created OUR STORIES  - a community arts venture between Orange County Healthcare Agency and Laguna Playhouse. This program was created as a response to studies showing depression and isolation experienced by youth 16-25 and a belief that engagement in the arts could make a difference in this health crisis. Participants will experience an OUR STORIES workshop utilizing storytelling and devised theater exercises to explore the lived experiences that form one's identity. Activities tap into memories and stories of our lives and are shared collectively. This act of having others witness your story creates a shared place where we can bridge isolation and the differences that often separate us from one another. We discover the hero/ine within ourselves. This theatre in health workshop will demonstrate the healing that emerges from storytelling. We will explore the ways this work can be used in formal and informal settings to support development of students' SEL and create connection. Together, we'll collaborate to define a core set of outcomes for this learning and ways to bring transformational arts to your community or classroom.


Exploring Mental Health Through Story Drama  
Michelle Gram Giesen
In this interactive workshop, attendees are guided through a Story Drama or immersive storytelling experience of the picture book Dark Cloud by Anna Lazowski. The main character, Abigail, suddenly has a dark cloud following her around.  Participants will predict, observe, and identify how the cloud affects Abigail's social-emotional and mental health, and determine potential strategies to support the young girl. Participants will use movement, tableau, writing in role, role play, improvisation, poetry, large and small group collaboration, and more to experience the story rather than listen to it as passive audience members. The drama unfolds as the story unfolds. This workshop illustrates how drama can be explored as an inquiry process. Dark Cloud will be read in segments, with periodic pauses to use drama, movement, writing, and music exercises to investigate key moments, evaluate character perspectives, question choices, build environments, and explore present themes. This workshop offers step-by-step guidance to successfully implement Story Drama into regular storytelling sessions for Grade 1-8. Additionally, attendees will be provided a collection of 15+ Story Drama exercises that elevate and activate storytelling using rich picture books, a sample unit plan, and various assessment templates.