The TWISTS Project at Virginia Tech and Cal Poly offers a new model of public engagement with the complex relationships between science, technology, and society – serving as forum where “active citizen engagement with science and technology” can “be worked on, and learned” (Leach & Scoones, 2006, p. 59). Performance has increasingly been recognized as a powerful tool for framing complex ideas in public dialogue and student education in an accessible manner (Pearson & Holligan, 2002). Combining cognitive, affective, and active learning, performance provides an opportunity to engage the complexity of individual relationships with science and technology, creating the opportunity for a move from an educational model of learning (only) scientific “facts” to one of (simultaneously) grappling with science-technology-society relationships (McKibben, 2005; Odegaard, 2003).
Public engagement scholars Leach and Scoone (2006) suggest that, “stimulating active citizen-science engagement, involves building the capacity of citizens for presenting and negotiating perspectives… Such reflections emerge most effectively when people are exposed to others’ views and lived experiences” (pp. 59-60). Performance is an ideal medium for making competing and sometimes contradictory perspectives on socio-scientific issues visible and accessible – providing resources for audience members to understand and express their own perspectives on socio-scientific issues, as well as the perspectives of others. We believe that change in these capabilities provides our audience members – whether scientist, theatre artist, or member of the public – with an increased ability to participate meaningfully, productively, and robustly in personal and public decision-making practices related to contemporary scientific and technical controversies.