The People Using Role-Play to Prepare for the Future
In theater groups around the country, physical performance is revealing better ways to handle life’s unknowns.
The spotlight falls on the stage, where two women are in the middle of a confrontation. On one side is Yolanda, an assembly-line worker at a houseware factory. She is speaking with her boss, first nervously and then with growing conviction, about a co-worker who has been flouting mask mandates. Yolanda lives with older family members in fragile health and she wants to feel safe on the job. After a few false starts, she finally asks her boss whether she’d intervene on her behalf.
This performance has an important twist: Yolanda is playing herself in a
