Shirley Dunlap has spent her summer traveling around Iowa with 13 students. Their goal: to distribute culture and diversity through theater.

Minority Theater Workshop is a part of ISU Theater Department. The workshop has traveled to 25 sites around Iowa performing the play Dancing Spider, the story of a West African dancing spider named Ananse.

Workshop director Shirley Dunlap looks back on a successful summer of touring and travel.

“It has been an incredibly rewarding experience. In Storm Lake we were invited to help calm the storm between the community and labor relations at two meat packing plants. Our performances are open to many different cultural groups, and that is what theater is all about, teaching multiculturalism through the arts,” Dunlap explained.

The workshop was composed of students from Iowa State, Ames High and Ames Middle School.

“We were really blessed with a variety of people in the company,” Dunlap said.

Associate Professor Gregg Henry founded Minority Theater Workshop with the purpose of introducing other cultures into the theater program, according to Dunlap.

The workshop seems to have reached that goal.

“We’ve been very pleased with the growth of the workshop. They have brought unfamiliar scripts to the attention of the audience and given those scripts a sense of life and energy. In the short time Shirley has been here, we have seen the workshop grow and prosper, both on and off campus,” associate professor of Theater Jane Cox said.

“I like to think we taught the kids something as well as entertained them,” performer and Daily Opinion editor Tim Davis said.

“This was the first of an annual summer tour the workshop is going to do. Next year we will be even more successful,” Dunlap said.

Anyone can become involved with the group. There will be a class this fall called Minority Theater Workshop open to all students.