THTR 261 – Community Engaged Theatre

CE-L Course

Over the course of the 2025 Spring semester, the Sewanee Theatre & Dance Department offered a Community Engaged Theatre Course taught by Assistant Professor of Theatre Sarah Lacy Hamilton sponsored by the Roberson Project. 

The primary goal of the course was to engage with Sewanee’s historic Black community, better known as the St. Mark’s Community, and to hear their stories of growing up and living in Sewanee. The course culminated in a performance featuring original scenes, monologues, and songs that were written, directed, designed, and performed by the students. Their goal was to reflect the stories of the St. Mark’s Community and bring awareness to the community’s history and future.

2023-2024 CE-L Courses

Professor Simpson’s Punishment Course (Political Theory)

Students spend 12-15 hours over the semester engaging with incarcerated folks and people working in re-entry programs. These community partners include Blue Monarch and jails in surrounding counties. A significant portion of this time occurs through helping at scheduled off campus events, such as volunteering at re-entry and support facilities. It also includes a pen-pal program between the jail and students. Community engagement with these individuals helps students better grapple with questions around a range of philosophical treatments of punishment. This engagement urges students to recognize the complexity of punishment and its effects on both the punished, their communities, and society at large. 

Professor Ezell’s Equitable Environmental Education

Working with Cumberland Forest School, Friends of South Cumberland State Park, Sewanee Outing Program, OESS Trails Coordinator, and St. Andrew’s Sewanee, students explore how their background, experiences, and identity shape their relationship with the environment. They understand pedagogical frameworks that guide environmental education programs and develop a portfolio of lesson plans and resources that help position them for early-career opportunities in environmental education.

Professor Kate Cammack's Drugs and Behavior

This course examines features of different drug classes, using pharmacological, biological, psychological and sociocultural perspectives. It identifies micro- and macro-level factors that contribute to vulnerability and resilience to drug abuse, and it examines evidence-based and experimental approaches to addiction treatment.  Students collaborate with a community partner to identify and apply evidence-based approaches to drug education programming. The service learning project is designed to help advance students’ critical thinking and real world problem solving, view complex phenomena from multiple perspectives, and develop transferable skills that apply to the outside world. Students work to understand community goals/needs related to drug education and prevention, and they apply course concepts/ideas to these community goals/needs. As their service project, students’ design a set of evidence-based infographics on various substance-related issues relevant to a nearby community, with an addendum that contains data-driven rationale and references.

Professor Jennifer Matthews' Grassroots Theatre: Theatre as Civic Engagement

In this course, students work with local community stakeholders and members to create theatre performances based on subjects important to the community partners. Through interviews, story circles, and improvisational theatrical techniques, students create short works of documentary theatre for public performance in the community. Through the project, students learn about the creative process through experience. Using devised theatre techniques, students collectively create a performance. In preparation, they study examples of community engaged performance, analysing various examples to discern the best model for creating this type of work. The creative process helps students to gain respect for the dignity and empowerment of others and a reverent concern for the world. By creating art with input from community partners, students engage with community-based dialogue, problem solving, and civic collaboration, all skills needed for full participation in a complex democratic society.

Professor Willis's The Many Faces of Sewanee

Community engagement in this course is manifested in what the students read about earlier peoples, institutions, customs, and events—both in Sewanee and beyond.  Through excursions, students assess the interactions of human and natural systems; how and why people live as they do in this area; and how local communities have changed over time. Students conduct research on some aspect of local life, conducting at least one oral interview with a member of the community. The interviewed community partners provide unique details about earlier times and help students understand contested topics. Through their research, students develop skills for interpreting the past, and they form human connections to the place and its people. Students present their research to their peers, and their final papers are placed in the University Archives to support future research (or curiosity) about Sewanee.