Developing a multicultural theatre undergraduate program for the commonwealth of Puerto Rico: A professional problem dissertation

Abstract

Inclusion of minorities in traditional theatre education continues to be an ongoing issue. In traditional general education the pedagogy called multicultural education is one of the most recent attempts to achieve curricular inclusion. Multicultural pedagogy is defined as a variety of strategies used to accommodate cultural differences in teaching and learning. Instead of trying to create a melting pot, these approaches align with new metaphors that describe the classroom as a tossed salad, in which society recognizes and values each culture’s unique contribution while recognizing and building on the students’ cultural heritages. This professional problems dissertation designs an undergraduate theatre program that utilizes multicultural education in order to achieve curricular inclusion. The program is designed for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to provide an exemplary diverse culture that can benefit from a theatre program designed using a multicultural education model. As part of this project, I discuss the importance of non-traditional casting and the methodology on how to implement multicultural education. Finally, the incidents of a class taught through multicultural education are presented as an example.