At first, the shadow puppet workshop had me a bit puzzled.

Not that a shadow puppet workshop has to make a lot of sense, nor should such a workshop be out of place where I was, at a theatre symposium. But in the case of this symposium, entitled “Common Ground: Theatre and the Complex Communities of the 21st Century,” something so simple as a piece of skill-building utilizing the latest in 70s technologies, like overhead projectors and X-Acto knives, didn’t quite register as “21st century.”

But my moment of clarity came toward the end of the workshop, which was led by representatives Liz Schachtele and Peter Rusk of Minneapolis’ Open Eye Figure Theatre. Schachtele asked the participants what ways they could see using shadow puppetry to engage a group of people. Their answers–“low-budget,” “all levels of skill,” “fast-moving,” “simple resources”–indicate this is an activity that can involve a large and diverse group of people collaboratively making something of meaning. They can react quickly to issues and questions in their neighborhoods and communities with a minimum amount of work and a premium on working together.

That’s the nutshell of the emerging breed of theatre showcased at Common Ground, held last week at NDSU and hosted by the NDSU Department of Theatre Arts. Shifting the focus away from the dichotomous relationship of performer and audience, theatre groups across the country are finding that they can use their expertise to maneuver key groups of people into situations in which they can immerse themselves in dialogue, demonstration, and role playing. Theatre allows for the use of interdisciplinary skills (acting, visual art/staging, music, etc.) to maximize creative involvement and is highly adaptable place-wise, able to scale from the grandest stages to the simplest street corners and in communities of all sizes and shapes. All this adds up to theatre being in a perfect position to re-imagine itself in the 21st century as a facilitator of social participation and positive social change.

Fargo’s own Theatre B, whose program coordinator Brad Delzer was an organizer of the symposium, has offered a few examples of how this is done. For the 2012 production of the play “Re-Entry,” which centers around the effects of deployment and return home of active military members, the company partnered with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and delivered performances at alternative venues like the VA hospital and American Legion in Fargo. Counseling was made available following the performances for audience members grappling with the effects of their own deployment or a family member’s.

The benefits of such efforts include increased relevancy and expanded audiences at precisely the time when the resources that can flow from these are hard to come by. Broadening coalitions with other organizations opens the door for unique and unprecedented creative output to match the monumental issues they seek to face. Such alliances also embody the spirit of community and its ability to forge meaningful relationships from novel partnerships like, say, an arts organization and a veteran’s hospital, offering all partners an opportunity to cut through the chatter with new and different tactics to achieve their goals.

In a statement on the Common Ground website, Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman is quoted referring to our current “post-everything” age as a state of “liquid modernity,” a condition resulting from a splintering of the tried-and-true platforms of social discourse butting up against never-before-seen challenges. It’s easy to see how theatre can motivate and invigorate constituents within that new reality. It can cut through the chatter to grab attention. It can manage an immersive experience that can be equal parts comfortable and agitating. It can deploy a variety of aesthetic tools and experiences to explode the issues they’re handling. And, in what could be the most accidentally novel concept in the history of drama, they provide spaces in which people can gather, listen, and talk.

In case you were wondering, the shadow puppet workshop was also a lot of fun and thoroughly engrossing, a fact that might disclose the secret weapon in the theatre’s arsenal: the power to capture our imaginations and create new realities. As this movement grows, expect that power to move out from under the lights and into the public sphere.

Images, from top: a participant in the Common Ground shadow puppet workshop tests a design; Liz Schachtele, of Open Eye Figure Theatre, gives instruction to Common Ground attendees; a shadow puppet group cooperates on their presentation.