For Erin Kaplan, theater isn’t just a performance. It’s a chance to have a conversation.
At 19 years old, she was a student at the University of Michigan and on track for a career as a lawyer when she participated in a program that taught theater to girls incarcerated at a youth correctional facility.
Kaplan, now a Sacramento State Professor of Theatre and Dance, says she ended up learning just as much from the girls as they learned from her.
The experience led her to change her career from law to teaching and to embrace a tradition of theater known as “Theater of the Oppressed,” which seeks to promote social change by directly engaging and involving audiences.
For example, Kaplan recently directed a student production at Sac State called the “Forum Theater Festival,” where student actors wrote and performed short plays about oppression. Audience members were then invited onto the stage to act out how they would respond in the situations depicted.
In this episode of “Beyond J,” Kaplan discusses with host Phillip Altstatt her journey to this theater tradition, how art can promote social change and the opportunities she is providing to her students to engage in this type of work.
Links:

Sac State professor, alum pair up to teach theater to incarcerated individuals at Folsom prison
Student theater production puts audience at the center of promoting social change

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