Dialogues on Diversity:

Dialogues on Diversity is the nation’s premier social justice, diversity awareness theater company performing more than 100 Performances, Lectures and Workshops in N. America annually.  DOD uses theatrical models to make our message of difference, inclusion and social justice accessible, engaging and entertaining. We offer a range of fun, interactive, and informative programs designed to educate and entertain, or “edutain,” through satire and parody. We’ve discovered that humor helps people open up when engaging with complex and complicated issues.

Award-winning, and highly praised, our programs have been profiled by major media outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post and Fox News.

Ron Jones 

Ron Jones has been an educator, writer, actor, and social activist for over 25 years.  He is an EMMY Award winner who is currently Executive Director of Dialogues on Diversity. He has created a range of performance, lecture, game, and workshop platforms designed to help individuals and organizations address issues of cultural difference in a more open, healthy and respectful way.

His approach is to bring “Compassionate Activism” into our discussions and actions around social change.  Only through understanding the mechanisms of bias and oppression can we work to dismantle them.  Too few Americans know the stories of deep, complex and sometimes, shameful stories that make us this beautiful experiment.

Learning our collective stories is the only way to change hearts and bring lasting change.

Maria Schaedler

Maria is a Brazilian-born educator and artist with extensive work experience and knowledge in theater, music, arts and literacy, and cross-cultural engagement. Maria Schaedler-Luera has served as the Manager for Arts Integration for Any Given Child Sarasota at Sarasota County Schools and serves as a drama teaching artist for the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. Her company, Atomica Arts, has a simple mission: To explore the building blocks of extraordinary.

She studied with theater director Augusto Boal and has taught classes and workshops that focus on Theatre of the Oppressed techniques for the American Repertory Theater, Harvard Extension School, Lesley University, and several other non-profits in Boston and Sarasota. She worked at the Harvard Art Museums developing, coordinating, and teaching gallery classes to immigrants in English, Portuguese and Spanish and at the Community Art Center in Cambridge, MA leading the Community Programs and Public Art Initiatives.

Will Luera            

Will is the Director of Improvisation at Florida Studio Theatre, Director of Big Bang Improv, serves as the Artistic Director Emeritus of ImprovBoston. He is the co-creator of Healing Moments for Alzheimer’s, a non-profit organization that provides education, advocacy, and ministry for persons with dementia and their caregivers. He is a conflict mediator with a focus on EDIA issues in the workplace. He is the Simulation Coordinator for Real Academy, who specialize in immersive simulation training for human helpers, offering a profound opportunity to further integrate improvisation into impactful training methodologies. He sits on the boards of CreArte Latino, a Latino-centric cultural community center in the Sarasota area and Miss Sarasota Softball, an organization focused on empowering young women through educational-athletic programs. Will also was a part of the 2022 cohorts of Leadership Sarasota and Art Equity and the 2023 cohort of the Gulf Coast Leadership Institute. Will tours globally as an improv comedy actor, instructor, director and performs and teaches regularly all across North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

PROGRAMS:

Civil Discourse – A presentation or workshop style program that helps people understand the problems and solutions to having effective civil social discourse.

Get Out Of Your Bubble – A Diversity Orientation program designed to show how we are on the diversity spectrum.  We have both privileges and challenges.

MLK & Shared Dreams – A performance-based lecture that talks about MLK’s lesser spoken legacy of “Intersectional Advocacy” as represented by his “Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.

The Black-Jew Dialogues – An award-wining two-person comedy that shows the need for cross cultural and cross generational engagement for the sake of more sustained change.

The Creations of Hispanics – A two-person comedy that teaches about how the U.S. created a single culture out of many.  It also speaks to the challenges in losing essential parts of your culture.no matter where you are from”

The Diversity Formula – A customized and interactive performance program that helps medical and technical students to engage in cultural competence.

The Immigrant Journey – A live theatrical production that tells the stories of Latino and Hispanic immigrants and their experiences in the United States, highlighting the challenges and triumphs they face.

Rhythms of Latin America – A music and dance spectacular that explores the vibrant rhythms and traditions of Latin American countries, from the Caribbean to Central and South America. From Caribbean Beats to Amazonian Rhythms and much more.  This dance explosion will dazzle the audience as well as give them a chance to learn a bit on their own.

Her Investment – A performance that gives the history Black people have had with the financial system for over 150 years.  It especially focuses on the intersection of gender and race bias that women of color continue to have in entrepreneurship.

The Waiting Hour – A performance lecture that tells the story of a Black Union soldier who speaks of his own “Freedom’s Day” It examines the significance of Juneteenth should hold not just for African-Americans, but every group that is still waiting for full inclusion, as well as the social and political significance then and now.

HellFighter – A performance lecture (or independent film) which gives a 5 generation look at institutional and systemic bias in America.  It also tells the story of how soldiers of color were treated by their own government.

The Movement – A 16-character modern-day Black History show which covers the time from the passage of “The Voting Rights Act of 1965” to January 6th, 2021.