Acting out: Using theater to discuss career struggles of women faculty in engineering

Abstract

In a workshop for untenured women faculty in engineering, participatory theater exercises were used to build community and facilitate a discussion among participants about their career struggles. Two key differences between participatory theater-based discussions and traditional round table discussions are the physical enactment of personal experiences and the collective brainstorming for (and enactment of) problem-solving strategies. At the workshop, the theater exercises built and strengthened a caring community for the participants, helped the participants recognize shared struggles and concerns, and had obvious immediate and potential longer-term positive impacts on participants. Thus, participatory theater may be a novel and useful strategy for women in engineering to discuss personal and professional concerns, find community support around and develop new ways of working through those concerns.