Performance & Media

The Engaged Men and Masculine People Narrative Project involves students, staff & faculty either sharing a personal anecdote or message of support that addresses any one of the following questions/prompts: 

• What does it look like to be an engaged man on campus?
• What does it mean to you be a bystander against gender-based violence? 
• Examples of moments in which you felt you were a successful bystander, or moments that you wish you had known how to intervene. 
• What does a bystander look like within your field? 
• What does it mean to be a bystander during quarantine? Who's risk becomes heightened & how can we keep each other safe? 

Tricklock's Reality-Based Bystander Intervention Training

In partnership with Tricklock, and the Women's Resource Center, the grant has developed a bystander intervention program in which students can develop and hone their bystander skills in a reality-based, low-stakes environment. Studies have shown that practical applications and skills building create confidence in those who may otherwise feel too unprepared to intervene in harmful scenarios. 

Background of Tricklock's Reality-Based Training Programs

Juli Hendren is a founding member and the Executive Director of Tricklock Company, a 27-year-old non-profit arts organization based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, dedicated to supporting new theatrical work, connecting communities, and cultivating international diplomacy through the performing arts. Tricklock partners with various organizations to create safe, healthy, inclusive, and welcoming communities for all people utilizing theatre through teaching, internships, and reality-based training. Tricklock Company hosts an ensemble of actors who work in reality-based training. We partner with various organizations employing actors trained in a specialized style of interactive performance to teach communication, safety, mediation, and verbal de-escalation. Tricklock works with law enforcement, schools, community leaders and members in this unique role-play training.

Hendren is also the Albuquerque supervisor for C WORX, a reality-based training organization that works with law enforcement throughout New Mexico and Colorado, focusing on communication, mediation, verbal de-escalation and mental health awareness. Hendren began as a role player in 1991 and was promoted to supervisor in 2009. Hendren manages a team of 10 role players overseeing all scenario creation and role player training. She meets with law enforcement 5-10 times a year to evaluate real-life cases in the community, adjusting the scenario curriculum to reflect law enforcement training needs. Hendren coordinates between 20-40 training's a year in New Mexico and Colorado, including police officers, police service aids, 911 operators, security guards, mental heath specialists, detention center officers, and law enforcement training facilitators. Hendren and her teams with C WORX and Tricklock train in this style of reality-based training's for additional community-based training such as bystander training and community building. In 2019, Hendren supervised 34 crisis intervention training's with over 600 participants. Hendren is also the administrative director of Positive Policing, a reality-based training initiative that focuses on connection and healing with law enforcement and front-line communities across Albuquerque.

More information about the C WORX and the methodology of reality-based training: C WORX Training, formally the Crisis Company LLC, began as an experiment with the US Department of Energy and the University of New Mexico theater department. This unusual partnership was an effort to increase the effectiveness of reality-based training by employing professional actors as role-players. The experiment was a huge success and the Crisis Company was born. Over 25 years later, C WORX has troupes in New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, and California. Our role-players are trained in communication, verbal de-escalation and mediation theory, mental health awareness and our proprietary role-play training methodology.

Since 1989, the C WORX professional role-players have specialized in the accurate portrayal of persons in crisis and/or suffering from chemical, mood, thought or personality disorders. Our expertise in portraying believable characters is punctuated by the ability to employ active listening skills, and to operate the C WORX proprietary role-play training technique. This system guides the participant through the scenario and provides positive and negative reinforcement regarding the demonstration of skills learned. C WORX proprietary role-play training technique is an interactive learning experience between the participant, the facilitator and the role-player. This highly effective adult learning process is an active, skill developing exercise that embraces visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles.