Published in Training Journal, May 2005

Adrian McDougall pulls back the curtains to reveal the benefits of using drama to aid understanding and facilitate debate surrounding issues of diversity.

Theatre isn't all grease paint and men in tights, you know. Well that's partly it, but theatre has a role to play other than to amuse the middle classes and employ out-of-work actors. There's something fundamental about the impact any form of live performance can have on an audience that establishes drama as an ideal means of making messages memorable and meaningful. And when it comes to communicating issues of diversity, drama seems to be an increasingly popular option.

Just look at the growing schools theatre market, or TIE (theatre in education) as it is known. Road safety, sexually transmitted diseases, drugs, bullying - you name it; where there's an issue, there's a play. Clearly, these are not fluffy bunny issues. The subject matter is sensitive and potentially emotive, and the learners often unwilling to learn or quick to find fault. Yet against all the odds, drama holds its own.

And so it is in the world of diversity. Diversity training is a delicate process which by its nature reveals sensitivities and pushes political correctness to its limits. And when it comes to raising awareness of the issues of diversity and embracing differences within a workforce, there's a variety of learning techniques to hand. From tree-hugging to horse-whispering, diversity training takes many forms and achieves varying levels of success. But in the last few years, more and more organisations have turned to drama, not only to demonstrate the many facets of diversity at work, but also to address culture change on a much larger scale.

Effective Strategies

So what of the benefits of an effective diversity strategy? Diversity defines your organisation from top to bottom. It drives its creative capacity and provokes its bitterest disputes. As well as a security against costly tribunals and towing the legal line, diversity is inextricably linked to your organisation's culture and long-term goals. Indeed, as well as preserving public image, diversity training is an opportunity to develop a working environment based on greater inclusion, trust and respect. An organisation that embraces its diversity rather than fears it is better at retaining staff and developing talent. Long term, that means it's a happier place to work.

Embracing diversity also means that differences in age, religion, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity and social background are promoted as a creative resource, not a barrier to progress. Not only that, it opens up your organisation to a much wider market, both in terms of talent through your recruitment processes and by increasing your customer base.

Extolling the virtues of a truly diverse workforce is one thing, of course. But getting your people to buy into the theory of diversity is another. Leading by example and rewarding best practice go a long way to creating a working environment based on support and acceptance of difference, but winning hearts and minds is fundamental to maintaining it.

So how do you win hearts and minds? We all have prejudices, whether we like to admit it or not. And it would be comforting to believe that the vast majority of us would be sensible enough not to allow them to affect the way we interact with colleagues. In reality, though, we all have our politics and our beliefs, shaped through our parents, our upbringing, our education and our friends - beliefs that are not about to change overnight.

Moreover, if it means challenging deep-seated beliefs, should we be trying to win hearts and minds at all? After all, it's one thing to tell people what is and what is not acceptable to do and say at work, but telling people what is acceptable to think is quite another. And is diversity not about accepting and valuing difference? Well yes, though at some point along the 'your opinion is as valid as anyone else's' route, opinion becomes prejudice.

It's clear, therefore, that diversity throws up significant challenges for any prospective learning solution. The issues involved are sensitive and emotionally involving ones, which each of us will approach from a slightly different standpoint and relate to in different ways. Far from being a scientific process, therefore, learning about diversity is very much artistic, and as such it requires an approach that is respecting of and responsive to needs on both a group and individual level.

Forum Theatre

One of the many reasons drama lends itself so well to diversity training is that it is non-directive. Rather than prescribing best practice, it presents a conflictive situation and empowers learners to resolve it themselves. This is the essence of drama-based learning, or experiential learning as it is known, and it works on many levels.

Experiential learning takes various forms, and one form that has particular resonance in the field of diversity is forum theatre. Forum theatre is a performance involving at least two actors and a scenario that reflects a key learning point. As the performance unfolds, the audience is required to direct the actors to resolve their dilemmas.

CentreStage Partnership has been using forum theatre for several years to address issues including grievance resolution, coaching techniques, customer service, presentation skills and diversity. One of CentreStage's ongoing development programmes, for a regional constabulary, aims to equip employees at all levels with a greater understanding of diversity within the police force as well as to develop a culture based on acceptance of difference and openness.

The workshops consist of a number of scenarios that portray examples of prejudice, and generally feature three characters: an aggressor, a victim and an intermediary. In one scenario, a WPC deals with the chauvinistic and patronising comments of a male colleague, and delegates must script the characters according to how they would deal with the situation.

It's a powerful device. By directing the actors and thereby influencing the way the characters they see interact, delegates find out what effect their decisions - as well as their choice of language and behaviour - have on the outcome of the situation.

If they want to, they can rewind the action and try different approaches. They can even swap the actors around and find out how factors such as age and gender can affect the dynamic of the scenario. And because it's re-playable in an infinite number of ways, it's immediately responsive to the needs and opinions of the course members.

As in life, a resolution is not necessarily going to be the outcome of every piece of forum theatre. However, the value of the exercise lies in the doing. Like any form of experiential learning, it enables learners to take risks and to consider new approaches to existing problems without the consequences of failure. Thinking creatively in this way is not something the workplace is quick to encourage, yet it's something that is vital to long-term change and development within an organisation. By experimenting with new ideas, learners are more likely to return to the workplace with a fresh perspective and with the knowledge of what worked well in the simulated environment.

Forum theatre also promotes empathy and understanding. Living out a scenario through the eyes of its characters brings the issues to life in a way other learning techniques simply cannot do. It focuses delegates on the effects of individual actions on other people and addresses the issue of responsibility. What is more, when you have learners taking ownership of issues in this way, they are far more likely to want to talk about them.

How Communication Helps

Of course, communication is central to diversity training. For one thing, by enabling people to talk about the issues you give those people a voice as well as enhance their understanding of the effects on others of the barriers of discrimination and oppression. In addition, prejudices can arise unwittingly, where the most harmless aside can be misconstrued as sexist bigotry or racist stereotyping. Assumptions, preconceptions and a lack of knowledge and understanding can all lead to instances of unintentional discrimination. But with communication comes an understanding that what one person regards as prejudice may not necessarily be regarded as prejudice by others.

However, the nature of diversity means it is not naturally conducive to honest debate; our concern with maintaining political correctness means we tend to shy away from giving opinions. Perhaps because of personal experience or for fear of rocking the boat, individuals and groups are often reticent about speaking up on the issue. And when they do speak up, it may be merely to demonstrate they are aware of company policy.

The fact is, though, that an organisation's diversity policy is necessarily black and white, while the issues at the heart of it are not. And while a thorough knowledge and respect of company policy is vital, there is only limited gain to be made from focusing solely on best practice. Indeed, in order to address the root causes of prejudice, you need to create a safe environment in which differences of opinion can be explored. To a great extent, that means striking a delicate balance, for while it's important to present the issues in a provocative way and debate them openly and honestly, it's also important to maintain a light-hearted approach to the learning process and not allow the issues raised to spill over into the workplace.

One way of doing this through forum theatre is to empower delegates to represent opposing characters. Taking the scenario of the harassed WPC as an example, one group of delegates might 'own' the WPC, another group her male colleague and another their line manager.

One of the benefits of this technique is that delegates don't all approach the scenario from the same angle. So as well as deciding how the victim should confront the aggressor and at what point they should bring the problem to the attention of the manager, learners must also consider the situation from the manager's point of view, deciding where intervention is appropriate and how it should be conducted. Equally, certain delegates will be voicing the opinions of the aggressor and bringing arguments to the debate based on prejudice.

Encouraging Debate

So is encouraging conflict actually constructive to the learning process? It might be tempting to think that empowering delegates to represent the beliefs of the aggressor is simply reinforcing stereotypes. However, creating conflict through drama does not mean an immediate degeneration into crass and derogatory abuse. Experience tells us that delegates are able to distinguish between brainless insults and reasoned arguments to justify a character's point of view. We come back to an earlier point - that prejudices can be born out of ignorance, mistaken beliefs and fear, and while those prejudices are ultimately unacceptable, it is of great value to address their root causes.

Indeed, this form of forum theatre is an extremely effective means of sparking debate and encouraging learners to consider points of view other than their own. Furthermore, because the conflict is based on a fictional scenario, it is in effect a simulated debate, where differences of opinion are those of fictional characters, not of the delegates. As such it is a safe environment. The learning points, however, remain very much real and memorable.

Learning Points

And so what are those learning points? Forum theatre workshops such as those run by CentreStage seek to enable learners to deal sensitively with instances of discrimination, either as a victim or as a colleague/manager. They also seek to promote empathy and understanding, both of the effects of discrimination and the possible reasons for it, as well as promote tolerance and acceptance of difference.

Diversity training is an opportunity for organisations not only to address company policy and its people's adherence to it, but also to examine how differences within a workforce can be valued rather than feared. It's a shift in thinking which for many organisations represents a massive culture change. Yet as with any artistic process, such shifts are necessary and bring with them huge benefits. Diversity may be a daunting prospect and ask a lot of questions, but drama remains a realistic and extremely effective response.

Key Learning Points

Embracing diversity brings with it many benefits, not least developing an environment in which differences are valued as a creative resource rather than a barrier to progress. Drama is an ideal means of raising awareness of the issues of diversity, promoting empathy and creating a safe environment in which conflicting points of view can be explored.