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What activity did you lead?

The theatre exercise I lead was a devised theatre activity focused on the topic of stereotyping. The variation I conducted of this game may relate to global issues such as xenophobia and microaggressions, but the exercise can be altered to focus on other topics like gender roles or classism. In this activity, I took inspiration from the “Passports” theatre game, introduced to me by Drama Menu. When I led this exercise for my classmates, each of them was given a nationality they had to portray. Then, the other participants had to guess what nationality they were trying to imitate. Accents, movements, and speech were all allowed unless prompted otherwise. After the first round of getting to know the game, we began using some prompts to increase the difficulty and possibly spark more creativity from the participants. We used the prompts “greet someone”, “action-only”, “eat a meal”, and more. Through these micro-performances, I wanted the actors and audience (if we had one) to realize how we might implicitly categorize or perceive diverse groups of people a certain way in everyday life.

How did it connect to Tectonic’s work?

My theatre activity was related to Tectonic’s work because both their theatre pieces and mine are created as the performance continues and can be manipulated by others and the objects or information that were given to them. Through this form of improvised theatre, ideas can be experimented with in an unconventional setting as the performance follows no script and almost no pre-produced content such as set design or blocking/character placement. It was important for my exercise to be created in this manner because it would accentuate the implicit stereotypes we may place on others.

What you were trying to achieve?/What did you want the participants to get out of the exercise?

Through the exercise, I was trying to achieve the effect of allowing everyone to notice the unintentional classification of people into a confined box based on ethnicity, race, or nationality. Although this game might be portraying stereotypes to a more direct or extreme extent, it could still be applicable in the real world. During one of the rounds of the activity, the prompt “do an accent” was used. A participant who received the trait “Chinese” did an Uncle Roger impression; a stereotype used comedically by people attempting an Asian parent impression in English. Likewise, the trait “Indian” was followed by the participant pretending to be a tech support scammer and “Australian” was followed by a wildlife expert using common Australian slang. When I created this game, I came up with scenarios of how I would portray these nationalities and prompts in my own way. However, bringing this activity to my classmates opened up many new visions of what this piece could look like throughout its development. For example, I did not think of a movie impression or historical event or practice as a way to express a culture but someone else did. I hope this exercise helps people become more aware of unintentional stereotyping around them.

How could this exercise be extended in the future?

This exercise can be extended in the future by adding on more or different “groups” these temporary personalities can belong to. Two variations of this game could be:

1. Each person receives a number, the higher its value is the more powerful your character is (which becomes something quite similar to a warm-up activity we have done in the past.) Commentary on societal hierarchy, classism, and capitalism.
2. Each person receives a gender identity, exposing and commentating on gender roles and stereotypes.