Taking Action: An Innovative Approach to Injury Prevention Using Theater

Michele Schombs, BSN, RN, CEN
Shahenda Khedr, BA
Francesca Sullivan, BSN, RN
Robert Curran, D.C., EMT
Jason Sample, MD, FACS

A challenge facing injury prevention is community engagement and behavior change. Theater performers by nature of their work are masters at engaging audiences and have the talent to keep people coming back. This workshop will demonstrate the unique work our Trauma Center is doing by employing performance techniques to engage our populations in behavioral changes that might reduce injury. Instead of didactic lectures we can offer interactive performances to our most at risk patient populations and help them create solutions using time-tested theater techniques. For policy changes, instead of simply sending letters we suggest invitations to a “legislative theater” performance working collaboratively with communities and policy makers to create changes that enable injury prevention efforts.

Forum Theater is about community self-empowerment. Developed by Augusto Boal in the early 1970s, it was used to empower communities during their struggles for justice by helping them examine their problems, collectively find solutions, and design ways to remove barriers. Another related form known as Legislative Theater works with policy makers and the community to expose weaknesses in proposed legislation. Legislative theater uses direct feedback from impacted community members during live sessions to develop policy changes. Working with communities and policy makers is at the core of injury prevention efforts to reduce the burden of injury.

Our trauma center recently published an innovations journal demonstrating the potential impact of Forum Theater on communications with marginalized populations. Our current work is focused on sharing these tools for community engagement with our regional trauma centers by offering a workshop. The current format is a 20 hour, 10-week virtual facilitator workshop. Participants learn from theater professionals how to be theater facilitators and use these tools to address injury prevention needs within their own catchment areas. Our future work will examine if combining these theater models can create real world solutions in injury prevention to reduce the burden of injury.

Participants attending the Taking Action 90 minute workshop will have an opportunity to experience different theater mini games, including our innovative theater game used to examine implicit bias. The final demonstration will be a brief Forum Theater performance providing participants an opportunity to participate as Spect-actors, with a focus on Injury Prevention/Trauma patient populations.

1. Discuss concepts of Theater Techniques and their application to healthcare education. (15 min)
2. Demonstrate current work using theater, our current collaborations, & regional workshop development (10 min)
3. Participate in an Interactive Theater warm-up session (Theater mini games)(20 min)
4. Participate as Spect-actors: A mini Forum Theater performance (30 min)