cfrancis blackchild is a Bucknell theatre professor who “directs, performs, teaches, and writes for and about theatre”, according to her personal website. In her theatre work and scholarship, blackchild focuses on the social functions and impacts of theatre. She has a focus in her practice on Theatre and Social Change and Theatre of the Oppressed, specifically using interactive performance in the Forum Theatre Technique. Through a course in the fall, blackchild is bringing Forum Theatre to Bucknell, to be presented in “Can We Talk About It?”, performed in Tustin Theatre Feb. 17, 18, and 19.

In the fall, blackchild taught THEA390, Applied & Interactive Theatre, a Community-Engaged Learning course in which “students develop an interactive performance centered on social issues of the students choosing.” blackchild sought to have students engage with the Bucknell community by conducting research and analyzing the campus from a different perspective. Ultimately, the goal of the course was for students to create an informed and well-researched script that presents a problem to the community and allows the audience to move forward with the issue being addressed.

Before beginning work on their own play, blackchild introduced Theatre and Social change more broadly, because many different techniques fall under that umbrella. Early parts of the class included Theatre of the Oppressed games and debriefs to figure out what they were, how they functioned, and how they focused people’s attention. They also did Image Theatre, focused on creating powerful images that are culturally significant. At the same time, the class was also doing social science readings to better understand inequity, power, and oppression. Students also took an implicit bias test to understand their own proclivities in thinking and interpreting the world and local campus around them, to really shift perspectives and be able to think both systemically and individually.

Then, students were asked to read through Bucknell’s College Climate Report from 2011 and identify issues they still see on campus today. The issues students connected with the most fell under two categories: Bucknell’s social culture and inequity on Bucknell’s campus, so the class of 10 was split into two parts to develop both scripts. In order to prepare for script writing, the students relied on outside research, information from previous classes, interviews and conversations with other students, conversations with professors, and their own lived experience as Bucknell students. 

“They look at community issues and try to figure out a way of engaging members of the community into a productive conversation about ways in which you can approach these problems,” said blackchild. 

The spring semester has since been focused on the production of one of the scripts developed in the fall. Because of the centrality of characteristics such as race and gender to the understanding of the characters, casting was very specific and unfortunately, they were not able to stage the script developed about Bucknell social life. However, the show that is being produced is entitled “Recurrence,” referring to the persistence of anti-black incidences at Predominantly White Universities/Institutions (PWUs/PWIs).  

A key note about the play is that it is a work of Forum Theatre. In this format, the cast performs a scene, then the audience has an opportunity to ask questions of the characters– why they reacted a certain way, why they hold certain views, etc.. Lastly, the cast performs the scene again, and the audience has an opportunity to intervene and attempt to change the outcome of the original scene. Forum Theatre is widely used to stimulate community dialogues as a means of fostering social change. blackchild describes the audience participation and intervention involved in Forum Theatre as “an opportunity to ‘rehearse for life’”. 

“The thing that’s important to think about is that this play does not have any solutions in it,” said blackchild. “It just articulates problems. And so one of Boal’s,” the creator of Forum Theatre’s, “ important and abiding tenants is the fact that the people who are oppressed, disenfranchised, or whatever you want to call it, actually know how to solve their own problems. They just tend not to have the autonomy, the resources to do it. And so what we’re doing and we’re hoping to have is that members from the audience are invited to enter the world and with the information they have, figure out a way of moving the situation for a more productive conclusion.”

Because of the community conversational elements, rather than a focus on the script in traditional theatre, cast members focused heavily on character work, as a way to activate the research put into the careful script development. To do so, they “spent a lot of time at a table talking about the kind of issues that these characters with these particular demographic markers might run into at Bucknell and how they may handle it,” said blackchild. As they developed the script throughout production preparation, blackchild also had the production ensemble consult with Professors Flack, Rojas, Holt, and Delsandro to learn more about Bucknell student life based on their personal research. 

blackchild has used her Forum Theatre practice at previous institutions. When she was at University of Miami, blackchild created an Applied Theatre Troupe that wrote four different plays about bystander intervention in sexual assault, one of which became the staple interpersonal violence prevention tool at their first-year orientation. 

“That was how they had this interactive experience, looking at… things that would stop someone from intervening even when they want to and ways to get around that block” blackchild said. “And so it’s a very useful thing.”

In addition to its effectiveness, blackchild also discussed the method’s versatility: 

“This is a campus that wants to do social engagement and it’s a social engagement tool. You can almost put most social issues in this perspective as a way of having productive conversations.” 

Overall, blackchild spoke very highly of the entire process of developing and staging this show with student involvement in every stage and of teaching a community-engaged learning course. 

“It’s a rewarding experience, so if you want to– if you have something you want to explore and you think community engagement is the way to go, go for it,” blackchild said.