"There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something."
- John Dewey

Jessica ‘Decky’ Alexander is a professor of drama/theatre education at Eastern Michigan University and  Director of Engage@EMU, an office whose mission is to cultivate community and university collaboration. Both as a performer and as a faculty member, Decky has used the mediums of theatre and performance to foster voice with underserved and underheard individuals and communities.  

 

Alexander’s current creative and scholarly endeavors include the use of theatre for faculty development; community performance, and community-based learning. Through Engage@EMU, the Family Empowerment Program, a supportive services program in affordable housing, and the Prevention Theatre Collective,  a high school theatre program, which creates  theatre to assist in the prevention of substance abuse and use.

 

Recent projects include: Homebound, a podcast on intergenerational dialogue between seniors and young people during COVID 19; Vital: A Fugue on Aging, An Ethnographic Performance on vulnerable seniors and caregivers , and In the Neighborhood, an art creating and community conversation in collaboration with the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.  

           

Recent publications include: Disrupting a Disruption or Live Everything, in Community Engagement 2.0? Dialogues on the Future of the Civic in the Disrupted University,  and Addressing the Student Debt Crisis: Steps Universities Can Take for Academic Leaders 2019) and the forthcoming Applied Theatre & Youth compendium published by Routledge.