This story appeared in the Spring 2020 Letters & Science magazine.
Sandra Adell discovered the magic of theater when she was invited to perform in a skit at the Wisconsin sesquicentennial celebration in 1998. Since then, this professor of Afro-American studies, who has an extensive background in comparative literature, has built her entry level class on African-American dramatic literature around the principles of acting and theater, using drama as a key to unlock her students’ imaginations and get them to discuss difficult issues surrounding race and ethnicity.
Adell: Theater changed the way I teach, because it made me more open. I became more creative in the classroom. And that’s not an easy thing to do, especially when you’re teaching Black literature and theater, written by African-Americans, to a group of predominantly white students.
We usually start with Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, which some of them may have read, and then two or three weeks later, I add material where you really cannot avoid discussing the ugliness of racism, for example, the popularity of blackface entertainment on this campus in the 1920s. This is often the first opportunity many of the white students have had to talk about issues pertaining to race and racism in a classroom setting.
We read some serious plays but we also do fun stuff, like performing scenes from some of the plays. This is not an acting class, but I let them know from the start that we’re going to do some scenes.
Last semester we went to see University Theatre’s production of Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park. The students were required to take notes and write a play review. And they came back the next week having written these great reviews. They saw the strengths and the weaknesses of the play. They even talked about blocking, lighting, and set design because now they have the language for it. I’ve turned them all into writers, I’ve turned them all into critics, reviewers. I’ve turned them all into scholars. They like that.
These students have had some serious discussions about race and the impact that racism in this environment has on students of color. They also learned a lot about African-American theater.
My hope is that if nothing else, they’ve acknowledged that racism is a systemic problem. And if there’s any kind of sense of responsibility, it’s what they do with what they’ve learned and what they pass on to the young folks who’re coming behind them.