翻转脚本

“你把这个家庭置于危险之中.”

“你不能回家了.”

“你得靠自己.”

每一个字都充满了恶毒，刻骨铭心. And while Julia Grace Palmer ’19 knows they’re just part of a 澳门金沙线上赌博官网-produced theatrical production about AIDS and HIV stigma, remembering that these words are real gives them an even heavier weight.

在制作过程中, AtticRep’s “End Stigma; End HIV/AIDS”, Palmer plays a daughter trying to share good news with her family: after years of fighting HIV, 她现在已经检测不出艾滋病毒了, a major treatment milestone that means she can’t pass on the virus. 但是她的家庭——一个父亲, 妈妈。, 还有两个哥哥——仍然拒绝她, refusing to even let her touch any food or plates in the house for fear of contracting the virus. This scene draws from a 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 research project on actual abuse endured by HIV-positive people.

“This kind of stigma still is the biggest issue HIV patients face,帕尔默说。, 政治学专业. “It keeps people from getting tested, it keeps them from getting care.”

But Palmer’s performance isn’t meant to be a tragedy. 三位一体的制作，由教授领导 罗伯特Huesca, 沟通, 罗伯特·雷斯蒂贾科莫, 人类交流与戏剧, draws from a technique called forum theater, which gives the audience a chance to flip the script.

Fellow performer Rohan Walawalkar ’20 says this means performing every scene in the production a second time. 然后, audience members can demand changes in actors’ behavior, 替换字符本身, 甚至创造新的.

“The first go-round, you’ll see a person being oppressed, everyone in the room is highly on edge. You can taste the tension in the air,” Walawalkar says. “But we perform every scene a second time, the audience can intervene. 一旦第一个人突破了, there’s just this cascade of people wanting to make changes.”

While this performance technique is an invaluable way to spark dialogue, location has been just as important a factor for the 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 group. Rather than staying within the comfy confines of the Attic or Ruth Taylor Theaters to put on their play, 该团队已经在治疗诊所进行了表演, 避难所, similar spaces before crowds full of HIV-positive people throughout 圣安东尼奥, Huesca说.

“有人对我们大喊大叫, ‘That’s not what happens; that’s not what HIV-undetectable means,’”韦斯卡回忆道. “And that leads to some unbelievable moments.”

And not all of these moments involve shouting.

在一次演出中, an audience member witnessed a scene where a man berates and then abandons his devastated younger brother—just diagnosed as HIV-positive—at a medical clinic. 干预, the audience member stepped in for the actor playing the older brother, simply kissed the younger brother on the forehead.

“I never understood the power of theater until I saw this,Walawalkar说, 谁打算在医学领域工作. "论坛剧场", I could see these same techniques working to improve patient experience in hospitals and clinics.”

For a student who came to 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 “expecting to be in a lab all day,” Walawalkar says he “can use an experience like this to connect the humanities to the medical field.”

Those connections also strengthen 澳门金沙线上赌博官网’s relationship with the community, 20届的Chiara Pride说, an anthropology and political science double major who is the president of PRIDE, 澳门金沙线上赌博官网LGBTQIA学生组织.

“去看澳门金沙线上赌博官网的学生, 有些人可能认为他们是孤立的, 或者我们不必担心艾滋病毒, to see that we are recognizing the stigma in the community, is going to open up the conversation around HIV,骄傲说.

While the group wrapped up their final performance on campus July 23, each student continues an individual research project, 由安德鲁W. Mellon Foundation, relating to the production. Pride is examining models of structural vulnerability and structural competency in clinician and patient interactions, while Walawalkar is focusing on forum theater’s potential to reduce stigma, Palmer is exploring the barriers to HIV care faced specifically by the Latino community.

对帕尔默, doing this type of research at 澳门金沙线上赌博官网 means her work doesn’t end when the script comes to a close.

“I’m interested in social justice and community involvement, but I never thought I’d have a chance to combine the two,帕尔默说。. “This is real life, this isn’t just a story: this is something you have a part in. Here, you can make a difference if you stand up for something that you saw was going wrong.”