Workshop Formats

Contact Marie to book or discuss workshop facilitation for your organization! Formats include:

• 2.5-3 hour sessions — Forum Theater for systemic anti-discrimination training, or mental health support infrastructure training, or structural competency training

• 75-90 minute sessions — InterPlay Methods and Popular Education for group dialogue, supporting integrity of communication in clinical, classroom, public-facing, and workplace settings

• 60 minute sessions — Often offered in a series, usually for several diverse groups of stakeholders (e.g., faculty and grads; clinicians, patients, and caregivers), culminating in final presentations at institutionally-hosted conferences or professional development summits

Workshop Methods

I lead workshops based primarily on 3 methods in which I’m professionally certified:

Forum Theater for Conflict Transformation

For 12 years, I’ve been leading research-based Interactive Theater programs focused on addressing “-ISMs” (racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and more) through systemic anti-discrimination education. Following what are more typically introductory formats—i.e., internal HR and “diversity trainings” or external “equity seminars” that increase participant knowledge—this workshop format takes participants to the next level by practicing with them in real-time how to intervene on and proactively address harmful bias and norms in their institutions and careers, especially from the position of would-be “by-standers.”

InterPlay Methods for Group Dialogue

For 10 years, I’ve been leading InterPlay methods for group dialogue and community-building in hospital systems, higher education settings, and professional development conferences. InterPlay methods help access our inner-knowing and group assets through affirming, meaningful, improvisational, and incremental storytelling, movement, and sound practices that help relieve distress and aid decision-making. Participants in sessions I lead report connecting to their colleagues more meaningfully than ever before, increased skill-bases in stress management and authentic expression, and renewal of their sense of professional/educational purpose.

Popular Education for Experiential Learning

For 15 years, I’ve been co-creating community engagement initiatives to include guidance and design for participatory research in social science, humanities, and medical settings, and professional development for educators and students. The interactive workshop events I lead based in popular education theory are shaped by emergent participant priorities, and help identify and analyze power dynamics and locally relevant solutions to inequity that that inform institutional outreach programs and community-led research, centering anti-oppression principles in project deliverables and documentation.

Workshop Design

The workshops I lead and co-lead are designed with 4 key approaches.

Theme-based

Workshops are tailored to a particular theme--such as addressing communication barriers in healthcare settings, highlighting community narratives about environmental injustice, honing inter-professional communication skills, or addressing micro- and macro- forms of -isms and -phobias in education settings.

Interactive and Inclusive

Workshops involve guided, incremental participation in story-based and movement activities that promote dialogue and discernment. Activities are often rooted in improvisation, play, and affirmation, and are always woven with particular skills-building goals and thematic content.

Workshops are appropriate for all people's bodies, mobilities, and health statuses. No prior experience is necessary, just a willing spirit to be in the room.

Embodying and Applying Theory

Communication for social change, cultural difference and qualitative inquiry, servant-leadership and communication ethics, anti-oppression and health communication theory and methods are used alongside a tailored mix of approaches detailed above.

In my book, the reason for theory is practice! My passion is to translate theory into accessible entry points for every type of learner and to set in motion rigorous, thoughtful applications for every type of communicator. For more than 10 years, I’ve taught university courses, developed K-12 curricula for diverse learners with grant-based programs, and created content for institutions conducting community-based research.

Building Skills, Building Community

The interactive communication workshops I lead help participants creatively respond to challenges they face, and cultivate everyday assets by building skills in listening, stress management, personal and shared reflection processes for conflict transformation, and advocacy strategies at personal, interpersonal, institutional, and public/cultural levels.  

Select Examples

Workshops are tailor-made for organizations and classrooms as stand-alone skills-building experiences for participants. As desired by collaborators, workshops can additionally result in participants’ development of a final guided and research-based, live arts presentation for institutional or public audiences.

Learn more at Client Partners list.

Theater Delta — Dozens of touring scenes of research-based, interactive theater on health, social equity, and cultural difference, more than 50 sites across the U.S. — 1.5 hour sessions (with a team of professional actors and a facilitator), or 2.5-3 hour Forum Theater sessions (with professional facilitator), with Theater Delta clients including Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars to MIT Electrical Engineering + Computer Science

Health Rights Storytelling for People with Burn Injuries -- Four 2-hour workshops for a total of 60 participants facing burn injuries, economic inequity and family violence in rural Salima and Lilongwe, Malawi, with U Can Danc, Center for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, UNC Chapel Hill and NC Jaycee Burn Center faculty

Celebrating Courage: Holy Spirit Story and Song Workshop -- One 2-hour workshop with Tracey Brown Edwards and 60+ community members on multiracial, intergenerational organizing for civic change, building on legacies and models of Black leadership and Youth leadership in the rural south; The Lilies Project with ArtPlace America

Creative Communication for Clinical Pastoral Care -- statewide Clinical Pastoral Education conference workshop for 90 participants, InterPlay forms for healthcare storytelling and addressing compassion fatigue, UNC Healthcare and ACPE

Our Bodies, Our Stories: Performance Workshop for Intergenerational Movement-Building -- for NC Environmental Justice Network Summit, afternoon session with 40 intergenerational participants, co-led with scholar-activist-artist Pavithra Vasudevan

Neighbor to Neighbor Listening Circles -- Alliance of Carolinians Together (ACT) Against Coal Ash in Walnut Cove, Goldsboro, NC, InterPlay storytelling/witness methods, on what residents love about where they live, what they know from living near coal ash

Light in the Tunnel: Journeys with Cancer -- weekend-long public workshops toward an InterPlay performance event rooted in creative health communication for patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals; Raleigh, Asheville, and more

Body as Sanctuary -- workshop for persons experiencing loss, facing illness; UNC Union Art Gallery, Dr. Renee Alexander Craft/Cosmo Whyte’s “I will love you everywhere, always” book release, for Maleikka Hardy Williams

Duke Cancer Institute -- InterPlay afternoon workshop for patients and caregivers, (flyer) and InterPlay evening workshop for oncology healthcare providers (flyer), Duke Cancer Institute media

Cancer Centers of NC -- workshops and retreats for patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and social workers at Cancer Centers of NC; movement/dance, story/performance, with live sound healing musician Rev. Stacy Grove; mindfulness-based stress reduction programming partnership with Harding Birkhead, M.Div., RN

Amani Homes -- Youth Drug Rehabilitation Program afternoon performance workshop for teens and univ. students, Lamu Kenya

University of Nairobi, Kenya and Kilimanjaro Arts Collective, Moshi, Tanzania -- Cross-Cultural Understanding Dance Exchange workshop, Oral Literature + Performance (UoN) and community capacity building (Moshi, TZ)

Sonja Hanes Stone Center for Black Culture and History -- "Race, Gender, Toxicity" performance workshop engaging Cherie Moraga's play "Saints and Heroes" with black feminisms students (Dr. Tanya Shields), offering Breast Cancer Action + global performance for social change theory + methods

International Women's Day -- "Embodying Women's Poetry and Political History" dance/movement and poetry workshop for participants in southeast US International Women's Day

LGBTQ Center of Raleigh -- "Taking a Stance: Conflict Transformation and Embodied Action" public workshop in Theatre of the Oppressed and InterPlay methods

Forward Together, NC NAACP Freedom Summer -- "Embodying Justice" dance/movement, storytelling, InterPlay + community-building workshop for statewide youth leaders and clergy in Moral Freedom Summer; all night teach-in at NC Old State Capitol 

Youth Organizing Institute -- "School to Prison Pipeline and Re-shaping the Prison Industrial Complex" dance/movement and story performance improvisation workshop for youth activists; all-day regional teach-in

Oral History and Performance interactive lectures and workshops for classrooms -- Topics like "Researching Race, Income, and Access in Public Education", "Land Displacement and Cultural Communication for Restorative Justice", "Ethnography in Action", "Creative Communication and Women's Leadership", "Rhetoric and Movements for Social Change", "Dance/Movement, Theater, and Adapting Oral History," "Ethics of Service Learning and Community-Based Interviewing", and more