Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE- As part of a campus diversity theme, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville's Multicultural Educational Resource Center, Teaching Excellence Center and the School of Education will host an interactive theater presentation, "Acting On Racial Issues: Creating an inclusive community," to improve the interaction between all students on campus with an emphasis on race and ethnicity. The event will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 9 a.m. in the University Rooms at the Pioneer Student Center on the UWP campus. All UWP faculty, staff and students are invited to come to the event.

Through the event, the Multicultural Educational Resource Center, the School of Education and the Teaching Excellence Center plan for those in attendance to achieve three very specific outcomes: learn about available resources and gain personal empowerment to deal with these problems practically, learn practical applications for communicating with one another, and walk away with a better understanding of other groups on campus to improve the ethnic and racial relations on campus.

Patrick Sims, assistant professor of acting and multicultural theater at UW-Madison, will lead this theater initiative. Sims is also the director of the Theater for Cultural and Social Awareness program. The TCSA program is an interdisciplinary outreach effort that uses a combination of live theater and personal narratives to explore the barriers to social justice in a variety of sensitive subject matters.

Tom Lo Guidice, director of UWP's Teaching Excellence Center, explained that during the performance, a situation involving racism and prejudice will be presented by the acting troupe consisting of UWP students, staff and faculty in a theatrical sense, and the audience will be called upon to act on issues that occur in real-life. "The forum along with the informational theater performance is very popular, and we've seen Professor Sims do this very successfully at UW-Madison," said Lo Guidice.

After the initial event and forum, the acting troupe will be available to perform for courses throughout campus.

"Countering prejudice and racism is a multi-faceted thing. I don't want to suggest that it can be solved by an improv group alone, but it's designed to be part of the overall goal of making UWP a welcoming campus," added Lo Guidice.

For more information about the event, contact the UWP Teaching Excellence Center at (608) 342-1798 or tec@uwplatt.edu.