A series on the role of theatre in vocation, with a focus on how it supports community-building, the uncommon good, and vocational exploration and discernment for all our students.
Lights up on STUDENT after campus workshop using theatre to address a community need.
STUDENT
I didn’t know I could do this with theatre.
Enter AUDIENCE MEMBER who just saw a production created from the workshop.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
I don’t see a lot of theatre, but the topic brought me here. . . I learned stuff I had no idea about and I’m now asking what can I do.
Lights fade.
Stating that theatre builds community is like saying education promotes learning. It’s almost so obvious that we forget to celebrate this foundational aspect of theatre. We shouldn’t overlook this reality in our current moment, when so many long for a sense of community that has become increasingly rare. Being in community means having a sense of belonging, which first-year college students name is important in their college experience and colleges know is necessary for retention. Community-building is inherent in the field of theatre, so having an integral and well-supported theatre program on a college campus provides a vital response to the challenges of our time. Not only do theatre programs cultivate belonging on our campuses, but by doing so they also provide a model for vocational exploration.
At a key moment in my own college journey, I stood on stage during a performance and heard an inner voice. “Is this enough?” I wondered, as my character said unrelated lines. “Am I doing enough to help people feel less alone?” On stage, I portrayed one woman’s story, but there were so many stories to tell. Numerous people in the audience needed to be seen, and student actors needed encouragement to approach their craft as a gift and responsibility. As theatre students come to understand that their talents can meet the world’s needs—or satiate the world’s hunger, to invoke Frederick Buechner—community-based programming fosters their own vocational discoveries.
I’m still asking this question: “Is this enough?” I cannot deny that the national trend of cutting theatre programming in higher education in the face of financial stress influences my concern. It also confuses me. Research shows that retention is tied to belonging and theatre students are seeking clear pathways toward vocational return on investment, so why aren’t theatre programs better resourced and elevated across the country? Why aren’t more theatre programs investing in community engagement? Theatre is a vital resource for building community on our campuses.
I am addressing this concern both to theatre programs seeking new ways of communicating their value and to institutions looking to create a sense of belonging. Theatre programs: I’m not advocating you de-emphasize theatre productions, but rather that you re-emphasize community-building as a driving factor in your work. Institutions: I’m not asking you to add more work to theatre departments with limited support. Rather, I want you to see the gift theatre programs can be—when invested in—to help meet one of your most essential needs. I offer three ways to proactively create community through theatre.
Community-Driven Productions
College theatre programs can benefit from creating theatre seasons with the intention of meeting their community’s needs, keeping this guiding question in mind: what does this community need to see at this time? Unlike many professional theatre companies, most college theatre programs have a built-in subscriber base of students, staff, and faculty to tap into, which reduces the pressure to generate profits from ticket sales when planning a season. This dynamic can allow them to risk re-conceptualizing “big name shows” and encourage them to produce lesser-known scripts. Often college theatre directors choose shows based on the question, who do I have in the program? But approaching such decisions instead with the intent of building community produces a kind of magical outcome. People want to audition for, participate in, and watch these kinds of productions.
For example, I did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when an institution was cutting arts programming and used it to dramatize the importance of dreamers and artists in communities and the necessity of storytellers in society. The Laramie Project responded to a conservative campus’s resistance to supporting their LGBTQIA+ students and employees. During Covid, I directed Spoon River Anthology outdoors to remind our community that we would come back from the dead and allow people to congregate without masks. After each production, audience members commented that the purpose was clear and needed.
Choosing productions that focus on community needs helps bring more people from the community into the audience. The larger the audience, the freer people feel to respond more authentically and the more they feel a sense of belonging. Theatre departments can directly publicize that such shows are a response to a problem, demonstrating their active participation in addressing such problems. Dramaturgical program notes can name the production’s engagement with the issue at hand.
Perhaps most importantly, the natural by-product of attending a show is the audience responding in synch. Despite our differences, theatre aligns our heartbeats. Unified laughter, gasps, sighs, head tilts, applause—when we respond in these ways together, we create community. The Greeks were so familiar with this phenomenon, they made contributing to theatre productions a part of taxpayer responsibilities. Imagine returning to democracy like that!
Community-Based Theatre Projects
As part of their production seasons, theatre programs can create original works that address current community challenges by responding to this question: what does this community need to process? I’m currently concluding a two-year project about the impact of social media on college campuses. The entire community has contributed to the show, with the students writing its script. Large projects like this take more time but can be done as part of the curriculum with interdisciplinary collaboration and sponsorship of mission offices, building more buy-in and pooling resources. We can build these projects by listening to a community’s stories, using applied theatre practices as a means of processing and communicating, and then creating a script about the stories. This kind of production spotlights experiences that audience members may not have known about.
I have done this work with college-aged women in The Bible Women’s Project, with a local homeless shelter and college students in The Father Bill’s Play, and with students exploring sexuality and gender in The Strindberg Experiment. My preferred process uses story circles, because they build community and allow the ensemble cast to develop the play in rehearsals. In these kinds of projects, the storytellers share that seeing the final production is the ultimate gift. They take risks in sharing their stories, but do so purposefully, knowing that audience members will listen to their stories and potentially shift their perspectives based on the cast’s portrayals. Students share that they didn’t know their own craft held such purpose. They see their efforts meet a need. This is the work of vocation.
Community-Building Engagements
In addition to productions and long-term partnerships, theatre departments can offer other opportunities to come together, like story circles, improvisation nights, and open mic storytelling events. The guiding question? What theme is the community coalescing around right now? Such events leverage the entertainment factor but address community concerns and allow us to introduce these techniques creatively to help the community understand theatre’s broad relevance. We can also teach these techniques to students in class and help them become co-leaders, extending these practices to the larger institutional community to use in partnership with critical campus offices.
From 2016 to 2019, as part of a campus committee, I created social justice forums using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Partnering with the Office of Student Affairs at my current institution, I also facilitated story circles after the 2024 presidential election and subsequent inauguration. Together we then brought in a playback theatre troupe, and I guided students through a series of applied theatre exercises in an event designed to help them “find their people.” Despite the role that someone with my training can play in this work, the onus should not be on theatre departments alone. Theatre faculty should be invited to the table to help facilitate crucial conversations across campus in collaboration with other stakeholders as leaders. Our institutions have an opportunity to elevate theatre as a powerful resource for community-building, by involving everyone in this solution-oriented work.
Especially when theatre students participate in these efforts, they experience the impact of their craft. Their calling strengthens beyond the stage, and they see themselves meeting the world’s needs. Their responsiveness also builds a more integral theatre program, deepening the sense of belonging on their campuses so that the entire community might thrive.
Readers interested in exploring further the role of applied theatre in addressing community issues and fostering vocational exploration for our students will find Michelle Hayford’s essay, “The Vocation of Advocacy: Enacting a More Just World,” worth reading.
Tara Brooke Watkins is the head of Theatre Arts at Salve Regina University. She is a story circle facilitator and community engagement specialist with an emphasis on creating dialogue, action, and communal healing around charged topics like race, gender, gender identity, body image, sexual victimization, and homelessness. This work often leads to theatrical productions using communal stories, including plays The Bible Women’s Project, Tulsa ’21: Black Wall Street, The Father Bill’s Play, Shatter the Silence, and an upcoming campus production about the impact of social media on college communities. At Salve, she is the chair of the Mercy Culture Commission, which seeks to create a welcoming environment for all students, staff, and faculty. She was a participant in the 2025 NetVUE Seminar, Enhancing Vocational Exploration.
