Spring 2026 Course: Open to All: Drama 457 A Collaboration of UW Drama and GenPride

This course invites students into the vibrant practice of community-based theatre, where lived experience and memory become the raw materials for performance. Partnering with GenPride—an LGBTQ+ senior living community—students will engage directly with elders to collect, honor, and transform their personal narratives into a devised theatrical event created for and with the community itself.

Students will study documentary and devised theatre methodologies, with particular attention to interviewing as both an artistic and ethical practice. Emphasis is placed on deep listening, collaborative authorship, and respectful representation. By the end of the quarter, students will transform interview material into a performance that honors LGBTQ+ elders’ stories - stories shaped by love, loss, activism, survival, joy, and time—stories often left out of dominant historical narratives.