Decarcerating the University: A Roundtable Discussion

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• Decarcerating the University:A Roundtable Discussion
• Courtney Erin Colligan (bio), Aaron Moore Ellis (bio), Nicholas Fesette (bio), Donatella Galella (bio), Megan E. Geigner (bio), Lindsay Livingston (bio), Ariel Nereson, Leticia L. Ridley (bio), and Misty Saribal (bio)

This roundtable discussion took place on Zoom on June 6, 2024, and grew out of the learning that I have experienced through the collective work of the voices assembled here: through various gatherings and actions, often at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference, this group of scholar-artist-activists has pushed our field to directly engage with the concerns of abolition and decarceration. Their Zine, included in this issue's Online Section, offers theatre, dance, and performance studies direct actions as well as philosophical inspiration for decarcerating our campuses, classrooms, and studios, and relations with one another and our own minds. I encourage readers to consult the Zine in their research, teaching, and community engagement efforts toward abolition. This roundtable is a way for those conversations to continue and to respond to ongoing crises and current world affairs. —Ariel Nereson, Theatre Journal coeditor

Misty Saribal (MS):

Our first question is, how can performance studies contribute to what contemporary abolition elders are calling for, which is the abolition of campus police and any ties to the prison industrial complex? I'm thinking about Davarian Baldwin when he talks about how higher ed campuses should be ground zero for police abolition, in part, he argues, because some campuses have the newest police departments, and some of them still do not [have police departments].¹ However, we're presently seeing, with the campus Palestinian BDS solidarity demonstrations and encampments, the unfinished but necessary Cops Off Campus movement, which is a great group that I have been involved with. And when I see [list(s) like] Eight Actions to Grow Abolition,² I always want to add to the list—make friends with people in the arts and theatre departments! We have great props, we know how to stage protests, direct chants, perform and communicate in live, spectacular, and impactful ways.

I want to start with an example of how performance and theatre contribute meaningfully to these abolition movements in material ways, to ponder how our skills might help with campus abolition movements. To get to my example, we did a disorientation [End Page E-1] tour on Louisiana State University's campus before the pandemic, and we happened to just randomly find in the prop closet a giant black wooden coffin that said, "RIP Education." And I decided everyone on the tour should carry this giant coffin around while we viewed areas of the campus connected with slavery, military, sexism, heterosexism, racism, ableism, and capitalist exploitation. The resulting spectacle and disruption to the campus status quo was something that I'm pretty sure wouldn't have happened if the disorientation tour had been led by the American studies, philosophy, or biology departments. So you could take that in many different ways, but I want to open that because sometimes within "traditional organizing," there is a bias toward antitheatrical methods, and that's a damn shame.

Ariel Nereson (AN):

The language you were using to share this with us makes me think of antitheatrical prejudice, but also the current traffic of "performative," and what that means as something that indicates a lack of genuine investment in something, which is the opposite, of course, of what a lot of campus organizing is trying to indicate. And I know that Meredith Conti has written about the critique of high school students responding to gun violence, and being called crisis actors, so I think that language is so important, and that we know how to use it.³ I appreciate your bringing that forward.

Leticia Ridley (LR):

I think that if we look at the legacy of protest specifically in the United States, I think of something like the Black Panther Party and how they wore a specific costume to the protest, that the gun was a prop and also a tool, but sort of thinking about how the language of theatre has always been integrating with protests in these movements and about how we can usher...