Professor Kanter's Community Engaged Scholarship course (CES), Theater for Social Change (TRDA 3131W), focuses on the efficacy of using the arts to address issues within our society. Through their theater knowledge and service to local organizations, students examine produced works of representative 20th and 21st century playwrights, which address violence against women, gender inequality, homophobia, racism, trauma of war, Nativism, religious discrimination, and other injustices that continue to impact our society.
Students, through their service with GW's Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Law School, and School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS), were able to enhance the techniques used by the playwrights by performing mock depositions, medical screenings, patient-provider therapy scenarios, and so forth.
For information about Community Engaged Scholarship at GW: https://go.gwu.edu/ces
Semester Reports
Fall 2020
Professor: Jodie Kanter
Students Reporting: 8
Time Reported: 11 hours
A student who served with GW Law reflected, “I performed in a mock deposition. The first student to question me on the fifth piece was the best questioner of the day, in my opinion. She got the most information out of me and got to the most damaging parts of my case. She used a similar technique of the first student, hooking her questions with my language. After she finished the next student came back and did his questioning. He focused a lot more on having me explain the evidence than prodding for more and ended up with a lot less information than the other student. Seeing these two back to back was the most interesting, because you got to see how under the exact same circumstances, two different lawyers will end up with two totally different results.”
A student who served with GW's Department Psychological and Brain Sciences reflected, “This performance was a fantastic experience for me. I worked with a graduate student who is not going into clinical psychology or any psychology for that matter. Jonah exemplified a very trained therapist: he listened, posed questions, repeated my words, and suggested a possible plan that we could put in place to help me with my character's "addiction." While I may not struggle with addiction in real life, at that moment, having someone validate your experience and your emotions was incredibly powerful. This was an incredibly powerful experience.”
A student who served with GW's SMHS reflected, “This was a very informative and exciting dive into patient care as well as performance. To be a patient for a learner, I needed a lot of dedication and imagination to embody this character. All you know is the medical Background of the patient; we are not provided with any personality descriptions or overall demeanor. Therefore, this experience was a creative one. Even though we may all have the same case of this girl with asthma, everyone can portray her differently based on what they imagine her to be like. In this experience, a critical moment was watching a sample interview with a learner and an S.P. The learner acted and presented as a doctor – she even wore a lab coat. The SP, the patient, seemed very informative and knowledgeable about her case; she presented herself as an expert in this field as she knew exactly how to answer each of the learner's questions. She was so entuned with her character that it was as if this was a real-life scenario. I loved this experience and would definitely recommend it.”
