The Way It Should Be: Towards Healthy Masculinity

My thesis paper explains how my research on the pervasiveness of gendered violence provided the material we used to devise a show. I analyze what causes the issue of specifically gendered violence, instead of just “violence”. I focus on the gender binary and how it creates an unhealthy practice of masculinity, which is a major contributing factor to gendered violence. My ensemble used that research to create devised pieces during the process, which we molded into an original show we titled Beyond Us. To start, we identified why the topic mattered to us and why we were all in a room together to make a theatre piece. We identified our big questions regarding the topic and followed them. This guided our devising process. We were all so passionate about the topic that we ended up making pieces that went in several different directions. Within the last week of rehearsals, we had to pare down our show and focus on what we really wanted to say with the time allotted. We stuck with the pieces that were more personal for us rather than those based in the initial research. Beyond Us served as a platform for us to speak on why gendered violence matters to us and how we want to make change