Dialogue and Difference: Performing One Another

This innovative 5-credit course, co-taught by Lab co-director Derek Goldman, Lab Think Tank member Daniel Brumberg, and Professor Cory Grewell of Patrick Henry College, offered students the opportunity to use performance to listen across ideological divides. Dialogue and Difference grew out of In Your Shoes, a Lab project that brought together students from Georgetown University and Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian school in rural Virginia. Like In Your Shoes, this course used theater games and performance to create space for meaningful dialogue about complex political issues. The cornerstone of the course was ‘performing one another,’ an exercise in listening and performance in which two partners listen, record, transcribe, and perform the stories of one another.