"Just Because We Laugh At Stereotypes Doesn't Mean We Believe Them"

As part of my graduate assistantship, I teach a section of the "Intro to Theatre" course (for non-majors). Today we were learning about improvisation.

During one improvisation, a male student chose to play a character in a stereotypically "flaming gay" manner. The scene went to the point where I felt like it had crossed the line between being tongue-in-cheek and being potentially offensive.

So, after the improvisation was over, I felt like I had to address the idea of stereotype. I began to explain that I wanted us to be a class who didn't perform stereotypes that might be offensive, or make our classmates uncomfortable.

A student raised his hand. "But the book says that the purpose of theatre is to offend people and make them uncomfortable."

Crap. This was true. The opening chapter of their textbook did give the standard "theatre is supposed to shake up the status quo" paragraph.

He wasn't finished. "And Avenue Q is full of stereotypes, and it's got a really stereotypical gay character, and everyone loves it!"

Then another student jumped in with a very serious "Look. The reason we all laughed at this character was because what he was doing was funny. Just because we laugh at stereotypes doesn't mean we believe them."

There was a murmur of agreement with that comment, and so I didn't press any further, told my class that my "Michael Scott moment" was over, and set up the next improvisation exercise.

But something about this still doesn't feel right to me. I mean, I don't think I'll get a chance to address the issue again with my class, but I don't think I handled it as well as I could have. Despite my students' assertions, I don't really think that our Millennial generation has 100% "stopped believing in stereotypes."

Had I been able to think faster on my feet, I should have turned it towards a talk about identity, and how stereotypes affect the way we see various identities. Maybe. But I don't know how to do that without marginalizing identities; the idea that some people are stereotyped and others aren't, etc. I couldn't even say "we shouldn't make fun of gay people because someone in this class might be gay" -- I started to, but shifted gears mid-sentence because that, in itself, sounded like it was making gay seem like less -- or different -- than the rest of us. Not to mention that when you say that, people all start looking around and trying to guess who the "secret gay person" is.

Have other teacher-readers dealt with situations like these before?