Versus: Conflict Resolution through Acting and Roleplay
- Barbara & Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Acting Up Acting Out Drama School
- The Netter Center
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Community Partnerships Grant
The Netter Center’s University-Assisted Community Schools will partner with Acting Up Acting Out Drama School to offer Versus: Conflict Resolution through Acting and Roleplay to high school students in West Philadelphia public schools. Versus provides high school students a dynamic, interactive method to learn strategies for de-escalating and appropriately intervening in conflict – whether their own conflicts or in the mode of bystander intervention. Utilizing theatre for this purpose allows inherent interest in stories to entice teens to think about conflict in novel ways and leave them with a strong memory of that novel thinking. Teens witness the nuanced buildup to a conflict and its explosion from the outside, with enough emotional distance to apply critical thinking. The next time they find themselves on the inside of a conflict, with emotions running high, they will have those memories to draw on, encouraging them to act in ways that defuse the conflict. Versus is the next step in the Netter Center’s approach to work with teens as active shapers of their environment and essential actors in creating cultures of peace.