"This was a DEI workshop like no other through theater all of us as audience members shared experience with the performing artists and made for better and deeper discussions.”
- Faculty Attendee
- Faculty Attendee
The FIU Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity (AWED)’s theater program is taking its talents to schools across the nations.
AWED Theater is AWED’s applied theater program. Applied Theater refers to the practice of using theatre-based techniques as tools to discover and learn, to explore issues of concern to communities, to identify problems and actively rehearse solutions, and to provoke and shape social change.
AWED Theater is recognized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and supports a unique and impactful approach to leadership education, departmental climate change, and bias interventions through the development and presentation of research based interactive theater. Performed by professional actors in real-time virtually or in-person, AWED Theater engages audiences of academic or medical administrators, faculty, students, and staff in interactive learning on a range of diversity, equity, and inclusion topics including equity in tenure and promotion, search processes, sexual harassment, bystander intervention, and classroom teaching. The theater program has been incorporated into AWED’s Bystander Leadership Program, the flagship program of FIU’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant.
Jeffrey Steiger
Jeffrey Steiger, the Creative Director of AWED Theater, has partnered with AWED to build this next generation of interactive, educational theater. Mr. Steiger is also an Adjunct Instructor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Artistic Director of the New Theater if Medicine, and was the founding/former Artistic Director of the University of Michigan CRLT Players. He has presented his plays to over 100 academic institutions including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Nagoya, Japan.
The unique environment of FIU and Hispanic-serving geography of Florida institutions inspired AWED Theater’s dedication to highlighting intersectionality in its approach to theater and pedagogy. By drawing from real life experiences of faculty members, the theater allows participants to identify behaviors and unpack situations and dynamics relevant to their everyday work life. Following a play, audiences are engaged in a highly interactive curriculum where they will be able to identify behaviors that contribute to an adverse work environment, as well as be able to recognize how to act in order to create a more welcoming and inclusive work environment.
Though AWED is a department of FIU, AWED Theater is available for hire nationally and has been presented at universities and professional organizations across the country. One of AWED’s goals is to dialogue with faculty at other universities and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in academia as a whole, not just at FIU. AWED Theater has been presenting nationally at numerous organizations and institutions including the American Society for Engineering Education, West Virginia University, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, the University of Massachusetts, and Oregon State University.
Recent external performances include:
FALL 2022
- September 9, Georgia Southern University
- October 6-7, Albany State University
SPRING 2023
- January 6, Georgia Southern University
- January 19, University of Mississippi
- February 17, University of Texas at Dallas
- March 22, George Washington University, School of Medicine
- April 13, Drexler University, School of Medicine
For more information about FIU ADVANCE’s AWED Theater, please visit go.fiu.edu/awedtheater. To contract a performance, write awed@fiu.edu or jeffreyallensteiger@gmail.com.