Beyond the Bench: And the Oscar Goes To…
Authors: Travis J. Mader
Journal: Environmental Health Perspectives (2004)

Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.” At the NIEHS Center in Environmental Toxicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, they’re taking that concept a step further: two new programs within the center’s Community Outreach and Education Program (COEP) strive to educate people about environmental health problems in the world around them through the experience of theater. The Translational Theater Outreach and Education (T-TOE) division translates the center’s research science into plays, skits, and other forms of theater to raise awareness of health issues while providing a creative and interactive learning experience that empowers children and adults to adopt preventive behaviors to enhance wellness. The Public Forum and Toxics Assistance (PFTA) division uses Community Environmental Forum Theater productions to develop public awareness of linkages between toxic exposures and human health, and to promote dialogue on risk assessment and public environmental policy.

T-TOE projects serve Galveston and Harris Counties directly, and provide professional development to early education and primary school teachers across Texas. The main component of the program is the Theater Troupe, a collaboration of center scientists, teachers, and artists that develops and performs original theater productions about environmental health issues such as asthma, vaccines, lead poisoning, pesticides, and pollution for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. In fall 2004, two productions will tour Houston and Galveston in collabora tion with Houston’s John P. McGovern Museum of Health and Medical Science T-TOE productions move into the room through the “Positive Drama in Classroom” module offered through the NIEHS Summer Teacher Training Institute, which is jointly sponsored by the NIEHS centers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and UTMB. The module is composed of activities that encourage exploration of environmental science through music, art, dance, and theater. These activities aid in developing a myriad of life-essential skills, including the enhancement of cognitive skills, engaging in creative and critical thinking, exploring kinesthetic intelligence, improving oral language skills and reading comprehension, identifying causal elements in thematic games and exercises, and strengthening confidence.

Another interactive classroom module, “Ozone Theater,” was created in collaboration with the Houston nonprofit group Mothers for Clean Air. This module focuses on the health impacts of excessive surface ozone and positive actions that students can take to lead healthy lives. The module is designed for use by volunteer para-educators or professional teaching artists within a classroom setting.

The PFTA program uses drama in collaboration with communities that experience toxic exposures or desire a deeper understanding of environmental hazards. In communities from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur, the PFTA has offered Community Environmental Forum Theater workshops based on the “image theater” and “forum theater” techniques and formats developed by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal. In Boal’s innovative formats, audience members play characters in scenes and improvise new solutions to the community problems being presented.

These Community Environmental Forum Theater workshops create realistic dramas that show how environmental health issues affect everyday life in communities. They also encourage honest dialogue and informational exchange on basic toxicology, risk assessment, exposure levels and pathways, biomarkers, bioaccumulation and bioavailability, body burdens, toxicogenomics, and the distribution of disease susceptibilities within human populations. These dramas offer citizens, scientists, health care providers, environmental regulatory officials, and local governments an opportunity to realistically appraise risks and set goals for a healthier environmental future. The PFTA also offers a workshop in adapting forum theater techniques for use in environmental science classrooms through the NIEHS Summer Teacher Training Institute.

The PFTA recently trained a bilingual teatro of community para-educators and actors—De Madres a Madres Promotores de Salud—to use forum theater as a primary outreach for the center’s Project COAL (Communities Organized Against Asthma and Lead). Project COAL unites the NIEHS center with De Madres a Madres, a North Houston community-based organization supporting at-risk pregnant Hispanic women, and Casa de Amigos, a Harris County primary health care provider, in a community-wide effort to decrease childhood lead poisoning and residential asthma triggers. This program deploys the teatro as a way to assess needs, disseminate information, and evaluate results throughout the project. The PFTA also collaborates with Frontera de Salud, a health organization run by student health care providers, and UTMB’s Stark Diabetes Center in bringing bilingual diabetes management dramas to the impoverished Cameron Park community in Brownsville.