Motivations:
Broadly speaking, my interest in teaching and using community-based theatre forms stems from a desire to empower students to think of themselves as “citizen artists” and to use their artistic skills as a mode of participation in civic dialogue. Similarly, I use theatre practices as a form of investigating and generating embodied knowledge and for building empathy and awareness. My primary interest in developing a performance about food production and distribution systems came from a place of personal interest—I wanted to know more about local and national food issues myself, and to share my passion for growing, preserving, cooking, and eating good food with my students.

Expectations:
My expectations for the project were based very much on past experiences with similar projects. I expected that students would struggle to accept some of the information that challenged their assumptions and worldviews, that there might be a period of hopelessness as they grappled with the size and breadth of the issue, and that our interactions with the community would be eye-opening, and would require a good deal of debriefing as we worked to integrate these new perspectives into our paradigms.

Modes of engagement:
As a group, we interviewed four different people connected with food systems in Spokane, and individually students conducted additional interviews for individual research topics. We presented our show (“disseminated our findings”) at a public performance that was free and open to the public at our local museum (an easily accessed and well known community institution).

Unforeseen Implications or Ramifications:
One of the most interesting (to me), positive aspects of our project came to light in a conversation I had with a colleague from our biology department, who had been simultaneously teaching a similar class for biology students. After our performance she admitted that she was stunned to see that the theatre students had found some hope amidst all the “discouraging evidence,” as her biology students had concluded that there was little that the “average citizen” could do. I believe this had to do with the interviews we conducted and the desire of the students to leave our audience with a sense of hope. Otherwise, this project had some of the usual bumps and rough spots—a “blow up” moment during the devising process, a miscommunication about which parts of the space we could use and a subsequent need to re-write part of the show, a lot of sleepless nights wondering if we were going to get it together in time for our performance date. I would also add that I ultimately failed to find us an interviewee from the other side of the issue. To learn about the perspective of corporate farming, we largely depended upon internet sources, which are not only often unreliable, but in terms of creating a show, are less impactful.