This year, Sabine Denise Jacques and Mariah Lapiroff from the CES Joy and Justice team have been facilitating a theater club in Easthampton that centers self- and social-awareness, embodied connection, and belonging and joy for 6th & 7th graders.
They have been using the Brown Paper Studio theater practice to support collaborative thinking and play. Brown Paper Studio is an arts methodology designed to awaken creativity within individuals and groups and to utilize the resulting creative energy for peaceful social transformation; and a unique theater practice that uses art, games, movement and critical conversations to help young people express themselves and build relationships creatively. BPS is considered an applied theater practice, meaning it uses theatrical techniques to address community needs and social issues. Students have been able to notice what it means and looks like to feel comfortable and belonging in school.
Said Mariah Lapiroff, ““I so appreciated how, through art and creativity, we cultivated a space where students who came from different grades and experiences expressed they could genuinely be themselves and support each other to be silly, playful and joyful together.”
The students in Easthampton have expressed that the Brown paper Theater club feels like a second home for them, a space where they feel comfortable and valued. They’ve also expressed that they’d love to have more theater club opportunities like this one. Students in the theater club showcased their learnings to a group of selected peers, educators, and administrators in February, where they led invited guests through a series of exercises, games, and the performance of a short story they wrote collaboratively.
Reflecting on the opportunity to do more work like this in schools, the CES Joy and Justice team noted, “We’d love to bring this work to more schools. The work is helping people see each other in a joyful way, a lot of the ways that we facilitate, integrate, and play both with our young people and our adults. And not only do students feel like, “Hey, yeah, we enjoyed this, we want to do more of this”, but we’ve also had young people say that they’ve learned how to be a better listener. And so through that play they’ve learned different ways of engaging with each other, different ways of communicating with each other that can really build towards deeper understanding.”
Sabine Denise Jacques is a First Generation Haitian-American social justice facilitator, theater practitioner, actor, and Fulbright Scholar. She holds a BA in African-American Studies, a Multicultural Theater certificate, and her Masters in International Education with a certificate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In her role as a SJE consultant, Sabine facilitates experiences where school community members, students, and building leaders learn to have brave and generative dialogue about oppression in a way that leads to more connection. Sabine is passionate about arts activism within Black & Brown communities, believes in the power of storytelling and its ability to provide space for vulnerability, healing, & joy.
Mariah Lapiroff is from Berkeley, CA, and grew up in a Chinese and Jewish family with teachers for parents. She continually feels deeply influenced by and connected to her home, cultures, and community. Mariah is a social justice facilitator committed to culturally sustaining, equitable, and transformational practices. She has experience working as a high school teacher, as well as an educator at elementary and university levels. She holds an M.A.T. in Latin & Classical Humanities and an Ed.S. in Social Justice Education from UMass Amherst. She facilitates sessions on the topics of social identities, self-awareness, oppression and liberation, intergroup dialogue, and relational education approaches that foster student agency and belonging in joyful caring school communities. Mariah firmly believes that social justice work in schools must happen through intergenerational partnerships that center the voices, experiences and dreams of young people at the margins.
Both are members of the Collaborative for Educational Services Joy and Justice team. The team works with schools, school districts, educators, and students to bring current theory, research, and hopeful practices to the important work of building just, equitable, and truly inclusive schools and districts that aim to serve and support all people. Students are at the heart of that work, and the team is clear about that.
You can learn more about the Joy and Justice team and their work online at https://www.collaborative.org/consulting/joy-and-justice/
