workshops & trainings

In addition to the I Want My Jacket Back interactive lecture/performance, Dr. Freitag offers a variety of workshop and training sessions that may be adapted to fit the needs of your campus or community. Dr. Freitag is also available for consultations with prevention coalitions, Sexual Assault Response Teams, local crisis centers, and student groups. 

Forum Theatre for Bystanders

In this 4-hour workshop, Dr. Freitag introduces actors and non-actors to Forum Theatre for Bystanders (FTB), a community-based prevention approach that focuses on increasing bystander responsibility and reducing victim blaming. Using Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques as a starting point, participants will learn the basics of FTB for use in sexual assault prevention programs. Workshops can also be focused on intervention in homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, or other systems of oppression.

Image Theatre on Gender & Sexuality

In this 2-hour workshop, Dr. Freitag offers participants the opportunity to explore gender and sexuality issues through Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Suitable for actors and non-actors, this session guides participants through games, exercises, and image theatre sequences to catalyze reflection and dialogue on gender and sexuality issues. 

Sexual & Partner Violence against LGBTIQA Individuals

This 2-hour training session will explore struggles and barriers faced by individuals who identify across the lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, queer, or asexual spectrum when sexual assault or partner violence occurs. Dr. Freitag explores the prevalence of sexual assault and partner violence against LGBTIQA individuals, specific barriers that may affect an LGBTIQA individual seeking or getting help after violence, crisis resources specific to LGBTIQ-identified individuals, and ways to support LGBTIQA survivors of sexual and partner violence.

Being an Ally for Social Justice: A Bystander Intervention Skill-Building Workshop

In this 2-hour workshop, Dr. Freitag uses the experiences of session participants to generate potential strategies and challenges for intervening in situations that promote oppression, inequality, and violence. Dr. Freitag uses participant-generated examples to facilitate rehearsal of intervention skills and shares tips for allies from her years of bystander intervention-focused work. This session can broadly explore oppression issues or offer a narrower focus on specific forms of oppression including sexual violence, partner violence, stalking, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and ableism.

Performing Humor as Resistance

Dr. Freitag invites participants to explore the use of humor in interventionist performance seeking to disrupt oppressive power systems in this 2-4 hour workshop. Focusing primarily on the prevention of sexual violence, this session opens with dialogue about the risks and benefits of using humor and ends with original comedy scenes created by participants. Best suited for participants comfortable with performing, this session will invite play, creativity, and risk. 

A Comprehensive Approach to Sexual Violence Prevention

In this session, Dr. Freitag offers a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to sexual violence prevention that offers practical and effective approaches based on shifting cultural norms and primary prevention. Dr. Freitag explains why focusing on prevention over risk reduction, education over programming, dialogue over persuasion, and quality over quantity are key to an effective social justice-driven approach. 

Dialoguing Pop Culture

Because of its wide-ranging audience appeal and impact, media literacy and critical consciousness of popular culture—especially music, film, and television—should be considered part of a comprehensive model for gender violence prevention. This session explores ways that popular culture can be utilized—rather than demonized—for sexual violence prevention. Facilitators will explore case studies from their own educational programs using popular culture in order to provide ideas for how to choose which popular culture element to engage, how to facilitate critical dialogue, how to gauge the effectiveness of the dialogue, and how media literacy and critical consciousness act to intervene in a rape culture. (2-hour training session co-presented with Megan Jones-Williams; additional cost may apply)