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Faces of Community-Engaged С��Ƶship: Amanda Giguere

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:03:54 +0000

Faces of Community-Engaged С��Ƶship: Amanda Giguere Arielle Wiedenbeck Thu, 07/17/2025 - 13:03

Gretchen Minekime

“This is not the time for siloed knowledge, and experts agree that violence is a complicated issue that will require innovative and collaborative solutions. How can violence-prevention researchers harness knowledge from other disciplines to translate research into practice, and how can we bridge the gap between research and the daily lives of real people? Enter Shakespeare.” ~Amanda Giguere, Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators

Amanda Giguere is a pioneer or, at least, the leader of a team of pioneers. Giguere is the director of outreach for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) and the founder of the Shakespeare and Violence Prevention Program. Since 2011, she and her colleagues at CSF, CU С��Ƶ’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), and other community partners in the violence prevention field have adapted and staged Shakespeare’s plays to see how the content and approaches can reinforce violence-prevention skills in K-12 students. To date, the program has reached nearly 140,000 students in 30 counties and more than 300 schools across Colorado, garnering national attention.

Giguere just published Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators to help educators everywhere apply the lessons of the world’s most famous bard.

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The first play CSF adapted for this violence prevention program was Twelfth Night. What sparked your initial idea to incorporate an anti-bullying message into the play?

As someone who works with Shakespeare, I am always thinking about how the plays resonate with the present moment. Tim Orr, CSF’s current producing artistic director, and I wanted to produce Twelfth Night in K-12 schools because that title was slated to appear in CSF’s upcoming mainstage season. This was 2011, and we were hearing a lot in the news about bullying. It was becoming a prevalent issue. There was even a new term coined for suicide deaths caused by bullying: “bullycide.”

In the play, the character Malvolio spoke to the present moment [2011]. This character is the target of a prank that escalates over the course of the play. His last line of the play is “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” The play’s scenario reminded us of present-day issues with cyberbullying. Malvolio’s story unlocked a connection to the present.

While we started this as an anti-bullying project, we’ve learned that Shakespeare’s plays invite engaging conversations about violence overall.

What research and evidence did you incorporate in Twelfth Night? What led to adapting more plays?

Research about the power and effectiveness of upstander behavior to address harm gave us an entry point to the plays. Shakespeare’s plays would be very different if the characters operated in a culture where upstander behavior was normalized and respected.

A 2001 study found that 57% of the time, bullying stops in 10 seconds or less if someone acts as an upstander (someone who takes action to protect others). There’s no one way to be an upstander, but if witnesses choose to take action, it’s often really effective. When bullying occurs, young people are usually more aware of it than adults are. Students can practice their own upstander strategies before they need to use them in real life.

When we first staged Much Ado About Nothing in 2014, our CSPV colleagues were concerned about the plotline of spreading a rumor that someone had died. We didn’t know how depicting a rumor of someone dying would impact young audiences. Would there be any chance that depicting the behavior could encourage the idea? So, we changed the play to “Hero has fled” rather than “Hero is dead.” That was 2014. In 2019, when staging Romeo and Juliet, we worked with the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention and learned that the research had shifted. We know now that talking about suicide, for example, does not plant the idea in someone’s brain. The latest recommendation is that it’s important to ask someone directly if they are having thoughts of suicide. That’s an example of research evolving and, therefore, our approach.

Every time we produce a play we start from scratch, look at what has shifted in the world, and what has shifted in the research. The second time we adapted Julius Caesar was right after the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol. So, a play about a planned attack at the capitol resonated differently.

In response to data that show youth are struggling with mental health needs, we’re currently adapting Hamlet and analyzing the mental health themes in the play. The 2023 Healthy Kids Colorado survey revealed that 28% of youth reported poor mental health most of the time or all of the time during the past month.

It’s neat to see how these plays written more than 400 years ago can bring the latest research to life.

How many students has Shakespeare & Violence Prevention reached, in how many schools, and in what areas of Colorado?

Since 2011, the program has worked with schools in 30 of Colorado’s 64 counties and reached 139,919 students from 315 schools. I should shout out to my colleague at CSF, Dr. Heidi Schmidt, for developing the processes we use to keep track of these statistics!

How do you know this program is making a difference?

With our very first Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship grant in 2011, we set up four or five weeks of touring, and it booked up quickly, which suggests there was demand for this kind of arts programming that addressed schools’ needs. After that initial 2011 tour, we repeated the tour due to continuing demand. Then, at the 2012 annual conference of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, we gave a presentation about our anti-bullying approach to Twelfth Night. Colleagues were intrigued about the connection between Shakespeare and violence.

We kept exploring more titles and realized Shakespeare’s plays have so many overlaps with the violence-prevention field. Since that initial production, we have adapted nine Shakespeare plays for the violence prevention program. The upcoming Hamlet will be our 10th.

When our actors visit schools, audiences are surprised by how fun and accessible Shakespeare can be. Teachers tell us that students who are not very engaged otherwise are surprisingly so during our visits. This program is also the first time many students see a play. Teachers and administrators frequently express appreciation for how our work aligns with and reinforces the school’s existing work. My favorite anecdotes are from teachers who report hearing the characters and the stories sneaking into students’ everyday language with one another. An elementary school teacher recently reported overhearing a student on the playground say: “Hey, remember Malvolio.”

The arts offer a powerful kind of learning. I think the idea of taking a play and seasoned professional actors and letting kids watch them work, in and of itself, is highly engaging. I believe any exposure to live theatre is violence prevention because you’re practicing empathy, thinking about the world from other perspectives, and you’re physically around other people.

The most important question we ask after workshops is whether students are likely to act as an upstander the next time they witness mistreatment, and historically, between 85-90% of students say yes.

My hope for this project is that we’ll be able to eventually stop doing it because we have a world of upstanders, and it will no longer be necessary.

Why your book and why now?

The program had been running for about seven years, and we were all excited by how effective the work is. I knew we were onto something here in Colorado—reaching 6,000-10,000 students per year with our in-person performances and workshops. But I wondered how we could reach beyond where our little van could travel. How else could we empower more people to integrate violence prevention into a theatre or language arts curriculum?

CSF, as part of CU С��Ƶ, has an amazing connection to world-class research. Not every theatre company has a violence prevention research center right next door! Plus, it’s CSPV’s goal to get the research into as many hands as possible. So, I started writing the book in 2018, with a goal of sharing this work more widely and getting this kind of applied Shakespeare into classrooms everywhere.

Although it is written for educators, the content is approachable for a wide readership, regardless of whether you’re a classroom teacher or someone with an interest in Shakespeare.

Really, the book offers a model for how we can consume a lot of different art forms through a violence prevention lens.

How has working in partnership with communities influenced your work?

Over the years, we’ve learned to leave more room for participants’ voices and solutions during workshops in K-12 classrooms. Our actors are trained to facilitate activities, rather than teach any predetermined outcomes. Their job is to get curious about the existing wisdom in each classroom they visit. They ask questions and use students’ ideas to reframe scenarios from the plays, inviting students to step in with their own strategies as upstanders.

Dr. Beverly Kingston, director of CSPV, says that we have a lot of scientific information about violence and preventing violence, but that information alone will not get us there. We need human connection and human stories. The actors who work on this project show up in schools, perform plays that depict a wide range of emotions and experiences, and then they work directly with students to talk about what they saw in the play. When people can authentically connect with others, slow down, and have a discussion about violence in our world, this builds really healthy connections and promotes social and emotional skills. Working with Shakespeare’s plays reminds us about what it means to be human—and this kind of community engagement helps us recognize our shared humanity.

Why do you think community-engaged scholarship is important for this campus?

From my perspective in the theatre world, it’s an important way to expose young people to the arts. The arts are the balm to the soul. Our actors performed in a rural community this past spring, and many of the kids had never seen a play. Afterwards, a student who had not been participating much in the post-show activities approached an actor and said: “That was the best day of my life.”

We truly never know what's going to stick with a kid. It's easy to forget we’re in this bubble on campus where, of course, we value learning and research and the arts and the sciences and the humanities. But, that’s not a given everywhere.

I see this type of work as a pipeline and a way of building excitement about higher education and meaningful work. It’s exposure to CU С��Ƶ for many young people and an important reminder for our staff, students, and faculty that we are not alone in our research and creative work. Through community engagement, we are building the next generation of scholars, artists, teachers, and citizens.

What’s next for you?

I’ll be speaking about and signing the book at С��Ƶ Bookstore on July 29. And in the fall, I’ll teach an online course for CU’s Applied Shakespeare program (Teaching Shakespeare), oversee the school touring productions of Hamlet and The Tempest, and I’ll visit Australia to speak about the Shakespeare & Violence Prevention Program at the University of Melbourne. But in the meantime, we are in the midst of the CSF summer season (two beautiful productions of The Tempest and Richard II now open—everyone on campus should see them!)

Amanda Giguere is the director of outreach for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) and the founder of the Shakespeare and Violence Prevention Program. Since 2011, she and her colleagues and other community partners in the violence prevention field have adapted and staged Shakespeare’s plays to see how the content and approaches can reinforce violence-prevention skills in K-12 students.

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Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:40:53 +0000

Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language Arielle Wiedenbeck Tue, 02/25/2025 - 12:40

Elaina Caywood

There are currently 7,164 languages worldwide; however, this number is decreasing each year. According to Ethnologue, a research center for language intelligence, about 44% of languages are endangered, and more than 90% of current languages will be extinct by 2050.

But, there is an effort to fight against language extinction. One of these efforts is based at the University of Colorado С��Ƶ (CU С��Ƶ).

With a grant from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship (PACES), Associate Teaching Professor Rai Farrelly and Assistant Professor Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo are working together with community members and CU С��Ƶ students to support and sustain efforts to revitalize the use of the variety of Zapotec within Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico.

Designed for elementary students, this poster illustrates the Zapotec translation for the English word “blue” in the center, surrounded by other Zapotec translations for places and things that are also blue, such as the sky and a butterfly. The places and things were selected based on what students would recognize in their communities.

Beginning with her graduate studies in Utah, Farrelly was involved in efforts to revitalize Shoshone and Goshute through developing materials and training teachers. Farrelly realized not only the importance of language documentation and revitalizations, but also the difficulties involved with such an endeavor. For example, due to the oral tradition of most Indigenous languages, there is often a lack of a written form—and therefore, a lack of written teaching materials. “The pedagogy piece is important,” said Farrelly. “You have to document the language, write the grammar, write the dictionary. And, without a way to teach it and materials through which to deliver it, it’s kind of just a place for linguists to learn about the language.”

Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo, a Zapotec speaker and community member, are colleagues in the Department of Linguistics at CU С��Ƶ. They joined forces to develop a Global Seminar based in Teotitlán del Valle, where CU С��Ƶ students had a chance to not only learn the variety of Zapotec in the community, but also assist teachers of Zapotec in assembling and creating materials.

Isabelle Altman is one of the master’s students at CU С��Ƶ who attended the 2024 Global Seminar, gaining not only valuable insight into language revitalization in practice but also the importance of collaboration on such a project. “I consider myself to be a documentary and revitalization linguist,” said Altman. “However, I didn’t realize the importance of language learning, pedagogy and curriculum design in a revitalization endeavor. I got to collaborate with students with a variety of specialties, including Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), linguistics and documentation. I believe that this collaboration between different areas allowed this project to be especially strong and effective in our creation of materials and connection with the community around us.”

As a prior research collaborator with Gutiérrez Lorenzo, Altman joined the Global Seminar to expand upon her academic career but found she appreciated the community-engaged approach of the project, stating that not only is it “unique” but also “extremely valuable.” Altman reflected, “By connecting and collaborating with the community in question, decisions can be made that involve everyone, but more importantly the community and its speakers. At the end of the day, the language belongs to its speakers.”

This Global Seminar provided Farrelly with another rich opportunity for community-engaged scholarship, an approach she has long appreciated. “The most important thing about community-engaged scholarship is that it’s driven by the community,” Farrelly explained. “A lot of academics come in with an idea of what they want to do, plow into communities and make decisions, then say ‘Thanks!’ and leave. PACES puts a lot of emphasis on mutual exchange, mutual benefit.”

Language Revitalization, especially the approach taken by Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo, relies heavily on input from the Teotitlán del Valle community. The community determines its needs and goals, guiding the direction of the project while collaborating with CU С��Ƶ students to create much-needed materials and strategies for teaching the language. The students, in turn, gain valuable skills and a new level of empathy and understanding of Mexico that “feeds into their awareness and understanding of what’s happening right now” in the U.S.

“With the PACES grant, what we’re able to do is hire two graduate students in linguistics to build this online Zapotec resources hub where we’re having three entrance points: one for linguists or people interested in the language, one for the teachers of the language and one for students,” said Farrelly. “So, it’s going to be this really cool repository of materials and language, hopefully audio files and just different resources for Zapotec.”

The online hub has been a great source of collaborative work, both between CU С��Ƶ students from different disciplines and community members within Teotitlán del Valle. Angelica, a collaborator within the Teotitlán community, uses the PACES stipend to continue teaching the Teotitlán variety of Zapotec year-round using the resources within the online hub.

Along with creating colorful posters and books to teach Zapotec, Farrelly, Gutiérrez Lorenzo and their team hope to expand their Zapotec Learning Hub and generate some excitement about the language. On a larger scale, she hopes that the team will create “some model or mechanism that really works with Zapotec” and can encourage other linguists and communities to apply what she has learned for revitalizing other endangered languages around the world.

But why does it matter if some languages are lost?

“Language is such a big part of our identity,” said Farrelly. “What’s encoded in all of those languages is a lot of information—about nature, animals, cures, the history of the world—that will all get lost if we lose the language. We lose the essence of a lot of cultures, of ways of being.”

This summer, Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo will again lead their Language Revitalization Global Seminar to Teotitlán del Valle, where they will continue to develop materials and teaching approaches to revitalize this specific variety of Zapotec within the community. For more information, visit the Global Seminar page.

As many languages face endangerment or extinction in the coming years, Associate Teaching Professor Rai Farrelly and Assistant Professor Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo are working together with community members and CU С��Ƶ students to support and sustain efforts to revitalize the use of the Zapotec languages within Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico.

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Photo Credit: Rai Farrelly

Graduate Students Benefit as Engaged Arts and Humanities С��Ƶs

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:20:59 +0000

Graduate Students Benefit as Engaged Arts and Humanities С��Ƶs Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 02/21/2025 - 13:20

Alexandra Wilson

Since its launch in 2018, the Engaged Arts and Humanities (EAH) Graduate Student С��Ƶs Program at CU has given 40 students the opportunity and resources to combine their academic disciplines, the tools of the arts and humanities, and their unique individual interests and apply them to public and community-engaged scholarship projects.

“I believe the program’s focus on lived experience, equity-oriented partnerships and mutually beneficial community-engaged scholarship has been key in creating an inclusive community of learners,” said Lisa Schwartz, Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship Program Manager and EAH founder.

The two-year fellowship, now co-administered by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship (PACES) and the Center for the Humanities & the Arts (CHA), encourages students to work collaboratively with communities to create meaningful, lasting change and allows students to broaden their networks on and off campus. Students co-design mutually beneficial projects with community partners, receiving a $5,000 stipend over two years and up to $1,000 in project funding.

Professor Jennifer Ho, CHA’s faculty director, works with the CHA team and Schwartz to oversee and implement the program. “I’m thrilled that the CHA is partnering with PACES on this program. When Lisa Schwartz first told me about the program, I could see the vitality and mutual intellectual and creative aims of having graduate students use their expertise in service to community-engaged projects. Lisa’s leadership of the program is part of the secret sauce to its success, as is the passion of the EAH scholars for work outside the traditional walls of academia.”

EAH Fellow Amy Hoagland’s 2021-22 project with CU Science Discovery and Cal-Wood Education Center serves as a prime example of the program’s impact on the surrounding community and her future as an artist and advocate for environmental justice. Combining her passions for art and science, Hoagland initiated a series of outdoor events with youth and families, providing opportunities for the “mourning, celebration and collective recognition of the impact of climate change.”

Hoagland creates artwork to “provoke thought and change in people’s relationship with the surrounding landscape.” While continuing her work inspired by EAH С��Ƶs, Hoagland received a 2022 Windgate Fellowship for sustainable art presented by Honoring the Future.

“I cannot express my gratitude for EAH С��Ƶs and Lisa Schwartz’s mentorship. It has all been incredibly impactful on my practice. It will positively impact my future projects, too,” said Hoagland.

A key aspect of EAH С��Ƶs is the experience of selecting, interviewing and developing a relationship with a mentor who is a community-engaged scholar within the university or broader community (Read the EAH scholar mentor interviews here). PhD student Idowu Odeyemi shared his experience working with Professor Briana Toole, founder and director of the Corrupt the Youth program.

“Professor Toole’s community greatly intersects with mine; it was very easy to form a connection with her. She was helpful in terms of how I can develop my ideas for the sort of community work that I want my project to be about,” said Idowu.

A number of scholars have incorporated their work with EAH into their MFA thesis and PhD research. Brenda Aguirre Ortega is one such student. Through sharing and developing her ideas with members of the EAH cohort, as well as securing additional funding, Aguirre-Ortega’s multitude of interests evolved into her establishing and co-facilitating an after-school program at Columbine Elementary School, combining her passions of teaching, music composition and mathematics. In an interview discussing her experience with community-engaged scholarship, Aguirre-Ortega emphasized the program’s impact on her.

“At first, I only knew that I wanted to create a project in a school and that it would have something to do with music production,” said Aguirre-Ortega. “The idea became more tangible when I started sharing it with the EAH cohort. We were all beginning projects, and we helped each other develop ideas.”

EAH С��Ƶs is now welcoming new graduate students for the 2025-2027 cohort. Visit the program’s webpage to learn more about deadlines, eligibility and the application process.

Since 2018, the Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student С��Ƶs program has given 40 students the opportunity and resources to apply tools of the arts and humanities to public and community-engaged scholarship projects.

The program is now welcoming new graduate students for the 2025-2027 cohort. Visit the program webpage.

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Harveen Gill leads a group meditation during a presentation on her work as an Engaged Arts and Humanities С��Ƶ at Research and Innovation Week.

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Harveen Gill leads a group meditation during a presentation on her work as an Engaged Arts and Humanities С��Ƶ at Research and Innovation Week. (Photo Credit: Arielle Wiedenbeck)

PACES Reading Group Kicks Off Jan. 30

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:18:32 +0000

PACES Reading Group Kicks Off Jan. 30 Arielle Wiedenbeck Tue, 12/17/2024 - 12:18

Gretchen Minekime

Start off the new year by joining the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship (PACES) for the inaugural meeting of our monthly reading group.

Connect with colleagues for an in-person kick-off with food, drink and good company.

Our first article will be “Re(building) Trust with Indigenous Communities: Reflections From Cultural Brokers” (Riley & Kaneakua), from The Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement (JHEOE), Special Issue – Volume 28, Number 3, 2024. We will discuss how boundary spanner identity and intersectionality impact research collaborations with community partners. Our own Associate Director Jeanne McDonald was among the guest editors for this special edition of JHEOE.

Subsequent readings related to the themes of boundary spanning, reciprocity and mutual benefit—key concepts in community-engaged scholarship—will be selected by group members.

We’ll meet from noon to 1 p.m. on the last Thursday of each month.

Please respond before Jan. 23.

Start off the new year by joining the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship (PACES) for the inaugural meeting of our monthly reading group.

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Community-Engaged С��Ƶship: A Pillar of the School of Education

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 19:26:38 +0000

Community-Engaged С��Ƶship: A Pillar of the School of Education Arielle Wiedenbeck Thu, 11/14/2024 - 12:26

Alexandra Wilson

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, CU С��Ƶ’s School of Education’s building dedication and open house brought together over 300 people to honor the school’s research, student work, donor support and community impact. Alumni, donors and K-12 partners joined university faculty, staff and students to celebrate the achievements and future goals of the school with an afternoon of dedications, building tours, activities and a showcase displaying the school’s community-engaged research.

“In an applied field like education, we can’t build knowledge in the abstract or in an isolated ivory tower,” said Joseph Polman, associate dean for research at the School of Education. “We need to be working with and in communities and sites where powerful educational practices and policies are being developed, tested and refined, to serve the needs of actual people.”

Faculty and students present their projects at the community engagement showcase in the new Ofelia Miramontes and Leonard Baca Education Building, Oct. 4, 2024.

Patrick Campbell Photography

The school’s devotion to supporting its students, and its commitment to advancing public understanding of education, shone through at the open house poster session where faculty members and graduate students showed their community-engaged research. The showcase highlighted how community-engaged scholarship not only enriches the educational experience of CU С��Ƶ students but also bridges the gap between the university’s academic research and community education needs.

“Throughout history and even to the present day, far too much research based out of universities has been extractive, and only of benefit to the academic researchers. To work toward a more just and humane world, university-based scholars must seek to build equitable partnerships with stakeholders that serve the needs of communities, not the needs of researchers,” said Polman.

The faculty and students’ commitment to social justice is evident throughout their research, which strongly reflects the school’s values in promoting and facilitating equal opportunity for all students throughout the country. Their research explores and confronts a range of systematic issues present in the education system, such as language barriers within classrooms, ethnic and racial discrimination within school systems, economic disparities leading to a lesser quality of education, and the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

The research of faculty members and graduate students continues to lead to an array of impressive project outcomes, including a documentary by A Queer Endeavor, CU С��Ƶ’s nationally recognized center for gender and sexual diversity in education. Created in partnership with Denver Public Schools, Reclaiming the Narrative focuses on LGBTQ+ students’ intersectional experiences within schools, giving queer students a platform upon which to share their experiences and thus promote social change. You can discover more about their work.

Undergraduate members of Puksta С��Ƶs, a scholarship program focused on civic engagement and facilitating positive change on campus and within external communities, presented their community-engaged project that tackles systematic barriers in education. Through a partnership with the Longmont Latino Chamber of Commerce, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) K-12 students, along with their guardians, are invited to participate in workshops that provide the necessary tools to assist them in their journey to college. Puksta С��Ƶs intend to provide a ‘first-generation scholar guide’ to help high school students reach their potential and fulfill their dreams of a high-quality college education. Visit their website for more details on this project and the continuing work of the Puksta С��Ƶs.

The School of Education and University Hill Elementary School presented the outcome of their five-year-old weekly after-school mentoring program. The Cultural Mentoring Program joins together Education and Ethnic Studies majors with 5^th graders belonging to the Latinx community. The program strengthens cultural identity among underrepresented students and fosters relationships between CU С��Ƶ and University Hill students.

These projects are just a few examples of the School of Education’s collective humanitarian approach towards community engagement. Through striving to build equitable partnerships that prioritize the needs of the community, and with the help of funding from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship, the School of Education continues to raise awareness and inspire change on a national level.

“The School of Education has a shared commitment to democracy, diversity, equity and justice. To live this out, we absolutely need to be doing community-engaged scholarship,” said Polman.

CU С��Ƶ’s School of Education’s building dedication and open house brought together over 300 people to honor the school’s research, student work, donor support and community impact.

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The Impact of Playback Theatre: A Unique Opportunity to Connect With Yourself and Your Community

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 17:25:52 +0000

The Impact of Playback Theatre: A Unique Opportunity to Connect With Yourself and Your Community Arielle Wiedenbeck Wed, 06/26/2024 - 11:25

Arielle Wiedenbeck

“I want you to write a story about CU С��Ƶ’s Impact Playback Theatre Ensemble (Playback) from the perspective of an audience member,” my supervisor exclaimed to me one day during work.

She went on to explain that, in short, it’s an interactive, improvised theatre production where performers “play back” emotions, experiences and stories shared by audience members.

Interactive? Sharing emotions? As an introvert, those can be words that warrant an automatic decline when describing a social event. Despite this, I accepted the assignment. What was I getting myself into?

Oftentimes, getting out of your comfort zone can lead to amazing things. I had a feeling this was going to be one of those things.

Walking into the performance space the first thing that struck me was the noise: a bundle of musicians picked and prodded at their instruments, and across the room performers stretched their bodies while exchanging chit-chat. It was a delightful hum that, despite all happening separately, felt cohesive. A bit of foreshadowing.

As I took my seat alongside other audience members, the performance moderator, James Walker, thanked us for coming and opened up the program. To break the ice, the performers did an introductory exercise. Each said their name and something on their mind, and the next performer began acting out the experience just described before finishing with their own name and something that’s been on their mind. So on, so forth. There was a comical grandiosity to the performances, an exaggeration of facial expressions and movement. With introductions made and everyone present warmed up, the performance began.

Part I: Fluid Sculptures

James started by asking audience members to share a current and prominent feeling in their life. I and the rest of the audience exchange the classic “are you going to talk first?” raised-eyebrow, darting glances. To my surprise, I found myself responding first.

Me: I’ve been struggling with a bad bout of insomnia. I’m exhausted during the day, but when I try to fall asleep at night, I’m wide awake.

James: Where in your body are you holding that emotion?

Hmm. Where is it? Everywhere? I let my focus leave my brain and float down my spine, out into my arms, searching for the abnormality.

Me: In my chest and behind my eyes.

I don’t really know if I mean it, but the simple question forces me to dig deeper into the feeling, look directly at it rather than glance from the safety of my periphery.

James then asked me to describe the emotion.

It feels bad, I think. But what does “bad” really mean? Again, I let my focus travel inward. I discover my sleepiness feels fuzzy, scratchy. Like I’m swimming in television static. I share this with everyone.

James took a step back, and a group of performers positioned themselves in a cluster. All at once, they were twisting and contorting. The musicians erupted into a cacophony. A performer held their eyelids open to mimic my drowsiness. Another,close to the ground, mimed a tossing and turning motion. Each performer narrated their chosen piece of my experience, in what appeared to be a growing breathing glob.

James asked how I felt about the sculpture.

Me: Honestly, it was kind of haunting.

We all shared a laugh. I realized that, for the first time that day, I was making light of something that felt like a burden.

As other audience members shared their own experiences and the performers played those emotions back tenfold, I started to feel us all relaxing into a sort of ridiculousness.

Was it all a little weird? Sure? But was it fun? Yes!

Part II: Pairs

In this section, audience members were asked to reflect on an experience that inflicted opposing feelings. Performers then split into pairs, one emotion per person, and acted out the feelings.

An audience member shared that while he was deeply proud of a huge project about to launch, he also felt like it wasn’t good enough. Another person, a professor, described how they were so proud to work with most of their students but felt consumed by anger and disappointment brought about by the few students who weren’t putting in the effort they should.

Although the performances of each emotion were silly and over-the-top, I sensed the process was validating for people. It wasn’t about which emotion was right or wrong; it was about how they both existed together, despite their contradictions. As someone who’s fallen into black-and-white thinking patterns for much of my life, I especially appreciated this part of the evening.

Part III: Stories

The final section of the performance was the heart. Members of the audience were asked to think of an important story in their life, give it an interesting title and share it with a fellow audience member. Then, James asked if anyone wanted to share the name of their story or the name of the story they heard from their partner. Finally, one audience member agreed to share their story in full.

The story was titled “I Love My Best Friend, But She Has To Go.” It chronicled the lifelong friendship of two women—the audience member, who we’ll call Erin, and her best friend, who we’ll call Jamie. Their friendship, spanning many years and a host to experiences and challenges, found the friends at last living in the same state. However, living so far away from her husband took a toll on Jamie; although it pained her, Erin realized she had to tell Jamie she should move back with him.

During the performance, I noticed that the comical grandiosity I mentioned earlier was no longer present. The actors took a more serious, restrained approach. Again, I was in awe that this was accomplished through improvisation. It was as if an invisible string tied the actors together, and each performer and musician could feel the pull and respond accordingly. Bright, shining tones amplified the happy parts of Jamie and Erin’s friendship, while moodier, duller notes pulled you into the weight of their somber moments. Everything operated as a seamless unit. I felt sure that a connection so strong could only come from a commitment to the craft—hours of practice forming genuine relationships with fellow cast members.

I found myself sneaking glimpses at Erin’s reactions, studying how her features moved as she watched years of friendship collapse into mere minutes. Emotion washed over her, and it washed over me. I was reminded of my own best friend. As the performance scene closed and the two characters embraced on stage, heartbroken but knowing their separation was for the best, I teared up. It was in that moment that I felt it—the tug of the invisible string that connected me to Erin, and Erin to another audience member and so on and so forth.

When our stories were played back, it wasn’t just to us. It was to everyone. Something that felt so individual became shared. The weight of it, the importance of it, the meaning of it all was held and known by everyone in the room—from the smallest things, like a bout of insomnia, to the big things, like the heartbreak of letting something you love go.

After the dress rehearsal concluded, I stopped James on my way out to tell them how much the performance affected me, especially Erin’s story, and how I felt connected to the people in the room.

James told me something I will never forget: “The closest distance between two people is a story.”

The Critical Conversations Project: Playback Theatre in Rural Colorado is funded in part by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship.

Note: All quotations are paraphrased based on written notes and memory. These are used to capture the flow of the experience and create narrative. Any misrepresentations are not intentional.

Photo credit: Michael Ensminger

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SCENIC and Pueblo’s East High School: A New Approach to Science Class

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Thu, 30 May 2024 17:29:59 +0000

SCENIC and Pueblo’s East High School: A New Approach to Science Class Arielle Wiedenbeck Thu, 05/30/2024 - 11:29

Arielle Wiedenbeck

What is a regular Tuesday for many students at Pueblo East High School is a special day for students in Ms. Turner’s chemistry class. This group of students has been working for the entire semester with CU С��Ƶ graduate students on projects about air quality, and today they get to present their months of hard work to their peers and CU С��Ƶ representatives at a symposium.

The projects stem from a partnership between Pueblo East High School and the Science-Engineering Inquiry Collaborative in Rural Colorado, otherwise known as SCENIC. Developed by Daniel Knight and Michael Hannigan, both professors in CU С��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the SCENIC program aims to provide STEM education resources to underserved, rural K-12 schools. This is achieved with collaborations between the schools and CU С��Ƶ graduate students to create projects that are “student-driven” and “inquiry-based,” per the program’s webpage.

This is the first year the program has partnered with Pueblo East.

“It is always nice to see a school execute a successful first symposium,” said Knight. “Pueblo East pulled it off by conducting well organized, original posters and preparing their students for the presentation.”

This year, students utilized air quality monitoring technology called Pods developed at CU С��Ƶ to investigate air quality in particular areas of interest related to their lives. Some of the areas students measured were the cafeteria kitchen, the gym and even inside wind instrument. Aunalise Sandoval and Aryonna Pineda decided to measure the air quality at their local zoo.

“We went to different animal exhibits…both indoor and outdoor,” said Aunalise. “The indoor enclosures picked up way more data than the outdoor enclosures did. I really liked this project.”

Both Aunalise and Aryonna said that they had never been to the zoo before this project, and they appreciated the opportunity to explore a new place in their community.

Another valuable aspect of the project was the hands-on experience students had with the Pod.

“It was fun to set it [the Pod] up and see how it collects stuff. I’m kinda used to just doing on-paper stuff. The fact that we got to compare air quality…I’ve never really done a project like that,” said Ricardo Garcia, who chose to measure the air quality in the school’s cafeteria kitchen. “I found it really fun to do and more interesting than just writing stuff down.”

Students in the class learned how to operate the Pod and received guidance on their projects from Patrick Weicko and Mateo Ramis, both CU С��Ƶ graduate students.

“I was really excited to see these pretty shy and reserved students share my excitement in their projects,” Weicko said. “All their ideas had come from personal questions about air quality in their lives, and the questions they had for me really reflected how invested in their projects they were.”

The students shared a similar appreciation for their CU С��Ƶ collaborators.

“They really put a lot of time and effort into the project and helping us,” said Pineda.

Ramis hopes that the program has a lasting impact on the students and their community.

“I come from a really big city, there’s a lot of pollution there, and I don’t think we do much [about it],” said Ramos. “If [the students] get to help people in the future, and it could help air quality wherever they are, I think that would be great.”

Weicko also expressed how essential Emma Turner, the teacher whose classroom the SCENIC project worked with, was to the success of the project. Outside of the times Weicko and Ramis could meet with students, Turner went over the materials and content with the students.

SCENIC wants to integrate high school teachers into the program even more.

“We are looking forward to providing a workshop for our K-12 teachers next year,” said Knight.

For Weicko, SCENIC has also helped shape the future of his professional goals.

“This program has taught me how important these kinds of outreach initiatives are,” said Weicko. “In high school, college was not optional for me, and hearing how many students did not see college as a path they were interested in was eye-opening. I want to continue this sort of outreach through my PhD and onwards, to at least give students an idea of what an engineer/scientist is and hopefully encourage them to go to college.”

The SCENIC program is funded in part by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged С��Ƶship.

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Faces of Community-Engaged С��Ƶship: Amanda Giguere

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