The Nephilim on Broadway: A Forum Theatre Analysis

This paper focuses on the microaggressions most typically used against biracial individuals to make them conform to dominant single-race norms of identity. This project takes an interpretive approach paired with a thematic analysis to analyze a series of performances. The performance artifacts were analyzed for major themes and implications pertaining to microaggression defense and social environment stasis in collaboration with an ensemble of eight individuals from a public university in California, who are educators or who are studying to be one. Using Augusto Boal's Theatre of Oppressed (1979), specifically both Forum and Image Theatre techniques, participants discussed and solved three different classifications of microaggressions-microinsults, microinvalidations, and microassaults (Sue et al, 2007) that may occur in a classroom. The results were analyzed using Christy Byrd's (2018) eight rhetorical devices that could be used to defend against microaggressions. The thesis demonstrates the need for educators to cultivate the skills to acknowledge and work through microaggressions in situ, as they occur rather than silencing or deterring them in the classroom environment.