ABSTRACT
In 2014, Professors Judyie Al-Bilali, Megan Lewis, Gilbert McCauley, and Priscilla Page embarked on a two-year project titled Art, Legacy & Community that culminated with a production of Collidescope 2.0: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America, written, and directed by Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks. Chong and Wilks’s collaborative approach to theater making and their questions about race, citizenship, and belonging in American society shaped the programming and activities that Al-Bilali et al. crafted for students, staff, faculty, and community members that in turn prepared them to fully engage with Collidescope. Using interviews, reflections, and analysis, the author brings multiple voices together to offer insights on Collidescope as a process that shifts agency and ownership to actors in three unique ways: the making of brave space rather than safe space, the concept of upturning otherness with regard to casting across race and gender lines, and the use of devising as a strategy for the empowerment of actors. These three prongs serve as models for imagining new worlds on our stages and beyond.
