Using Applied Theater Practices in Classrooms to Challenge Religious Discrimination Among Students

Abstract

AbstractThe authors illustrate how applied theater practices were used in media literacy classes to educate students about acts of religious discrimination in their societies. These practices helped students acknowledge their role in reifying or dismantling these prejudices in and through their classroom interactions with their peers from other religions (in academic discourse, the religious other). The analysis demonstrates how students created and performed plays in interfaith teams with the objective of examining their prejudice about the other. In scripting and performing together, students developed new, affective bonds based on personal experiences of working as teammates. This change in their interpersonal relations with their classmates encouraged students to imagine new possibilities of coexisting with differences.