20 pages., via online journal., What happens when one controversial text meets another in performance? How do diverse audiences from rural and metropolitan areas respond to powerful yet provocative material? The Kennesaw State University Department of Theatre and Performance Studies sought to answer these questions with Splittin’ the Raft, a dramatic adaptation of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as interpreted by ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Funded by the National Endowment for
the Arts, the ensemble toured seven North Georgia communities, ranging from inner-city schools to rural mountain towns. The struggles faced and the conversations encountered prove the
lasting legacy of American slavery. Socially engaged theatre can create a unique forum for constructive dialogue within communities. This article highlights the healing conversations inspired by this student production and explores some widely contrasting responses to renovated slave dwellings in two Georgia communities, Oxford and Sautee Nacoochee.
3 pages, This article provides a brief overview of Farm Dinner Theater (FDT), a novel intervention that positively influences the health and safety behaviors of senior family farmers and their family. The FDT uses principles of adult learning and engages the audience in conversations about their health and safety experiences. The FDT was developed through interdisciplinary community-engaged research and tested using a repeated measures design with 553 intervention and 317 comparison participants. Significant changes were reported and the FDT is now being used by Extension through the use of a toolkit developed by the project.
