Arts-in-Action

In January 2002, Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, Texas, staged what was at the time a brand new and somewhat controversial play, The Laramie Project: a work that explores the community and cultural response to the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard.  Elizabethe Payne was then a Stages board member and Chair of the Education Committee. In support of the play, she brought together a team of high school teachers and Education graduate students to create curriculum and design ways to use the play to generate conversation with urban high school students about gay and lesbian identities, about difference and violence.  The play curriculum, student matinees, and the facilitated discussions were highly successful and teachers reported continuing the conversations in their classrooms long after the event. Through the years, Dr. Payne has built on this experience in creating other arts-based approaches to discussion of diversity in schools, and the arts are a central part of QuERI’s work in schools.  QuERI’s Arts-in-Action program uses the visual and performing arts to both engage students in exploring and expressing their experiences as LGBTQ students and to increase the visibility of LGBTQ issues and identities in schools through the presence of their art.