“Roleplay” has undergone several iterations since it was originally devised by Tulane University students in 2019. Now, it is returning to campus in the form of a documentary.
The film premiered at SXSW film festival earlier this year, receiving critical acclaim. A free screening will be held for Tulane students on Monday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Village Theatre at Lake Hall, as well as at the New Orleans Film Festival on Tuesday, Oct. 22.
“ROLEPLAY” follows the group of students in the show’s original cast as they transform elements of their own experiences in college — mostly surrounding sexual assault — into a collective narrative. An impetus for the original production was the finding that 41% of undergraduate women and 18% of undergraduate men had experienced some form of sexual assault on campus, according to the 2017 Sexual Misconduct Climate Survey.
Although the play’s action centers on a case of sexual assault, it is about much more than this, touching on intersectional issues like heteronormativity, toxic masculinity, race and privilege. The play also exceeds its significance as an extracurricular activity for its performers. At one point in the documentary, one of the Black cast members affirmed that rewriting the negative interactions that students, and students of color in particular, may have on campus was a monumental experience.
In 2023, the show returned to the Lupin Theater with a new cast and a revised script, meant to reflect the changed norms related to consent, language surrounding race and gender identities and political landscape. When I reviewed the show then, I remarked that it managed to avoid being a covert Campus Health PSA; its positive reception among students was largely due to the fact that it portrays the good, the bad and the ugly of campus culture in a non-judgmental way. In the words of associate professor of theatre Jenny Mercein, who also produced the documentary, recent screenings of “ROLEPLAY” at the University of Texas at Austin, Marshall University, Yale University and Missouri University have been similarly “catalytic.”
The film, directed by Katie Mathews, depicts the development of the original show in roughly chronological fashion, from its conception after the 2017 Sexual Misconduct Climate Survey to its sold-out premiere. Scenes and interviews from “behind the curtain” are interspersed with footage from around Tulane’s campus: the patio of The Boot on a Saturday night, a dorm room pregame and sororities on bid day. At one point, two cast members take the show on the road — that is, to Broadway Street at night — performing a scene in which a white female student attempts to convince a Black female student to go to a fraternity house where a Confederate flag is hung. The eerie effect of this scene — one in which the audience realizes that something surprising seems entirely familiar — is accentuated by the students coming back from surrounding bars who disinterestedly file past the actors.
The emotional effect of “ROLEPLAY” is likely to be especially pronounced among Tulane students. Though the documentary serves as a case study for the kinds of violence that occur on college campuses across the country, its specific setting is not at all obscured.
Mercein emphasized the film’s transformative power and the importance of its being screened at Tulane: “Students will be seeing their reality, their campus reflected back to them. The young people in the film speak directly to their peers, creating a feedback loop that can transform behavior on campus.”
You can reserve your seat for this Monday’s screening here.
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