The School for Field Studies (SFS) in Peru asked me to give a teaching demo, when I applied to teach a course in political ecology. Because SFS promotes active learning, I thought about a role play (GALLERY(EE) - Confucius). To prepare, I used a video: ‘Voces de la Tierra’ that students made in this course (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gvpc6kbgyo&t=1s). It shows how indigenous communities in the Amazon resist being excluded from their native territories by a nature conservation area.

For the online application, I designed a role play. I wrote a short fictive scene and asked the SFS representatives to participate. Fortunately, both willingly collaborated and performed a starring role. In acting out their contrasting roles of a park director and a native community leader, they visually illustrated the power differences between these actors. The park director behind his desk with computer, enacting a bureaucratic sanction: “If you want to cancel this fine, you need to fill in a bunch of paper work in the Lima office”. This teaching experiment and some luck, gave me the job.

In this Fall 2025 course, the students enthusiastically played similar role plays and brought them to live with their imaginative acting. What is key in this didactic form is that students learn by actively performing a position and personally experiencing such phenomena. This can create an ‘aha experience’ that nobody will easily forget. My personal favorite was a scene in which three students beautifully ‘danced’ a conflict around the construction of a road. No words were necessary. Besides acting, dancing can bring another sensibility to learning about real-life situations.