Few of us are taught how to do civic dialogue. How do we develop and improve our ability to facilitate groups made up of individuals with potentially vastly different life experiences, identities, vested interests, and communication styles? Here’s one answer: Theater. When we want to literally incorporate new skills in our work, we need a body-based practice that can allow us to explore the interplay of subject matter, emotional response, social identity, and physical bodies in a physical space. That is the theater of civic engagement. And the methods of theater are learning tools that can and should be central to the training of public officials and community leaders who shape our interactions in the public sphere.

Drexel University is currently working to ensure that urban planners have the skill set to facilitate civic engagement, and its Masters of Science in Urban Strategy (MSUS) program has drawn on embodied and theater-based methods as a core training methodology. A hallmark of this graduate-level interdisciplinary urbanism program is its focus on civic awareness and community-based learning, exemplified through its course in Civic Engagement and Participatory Methods.

Civic dialogue can be taught, as can the skills to facilitate it. It takes getting into our bodies and practicing the gestures of democratic engagement until they become habit. Our classrooms and training rooms can be the studios in which we rehearse for robust civic dialogue that can transform our public sphere. We have the theater-based tools to get us there. Are we getting them into the curriculum?

Read the full article about building skills for civic dialogue by Jessica A Levy at Americans for the Arts.