HDEV 463 is not your garden-variety Human Development course. For one thing, the course has an enrollment cap of 12 students. For another, those 12 students are graded on how well they can express their own emotions — physically and through playing games.

Although it may sound like child’s play, HDEV 463 is serious stuff… even if you might not be able to tell by watching its students in action.

The course, officially titled “Multicultural Playback Theater,” is offered solely to students majoring in Human Development, and is taught by the School of Education and Human Development’s Director, Jane Connor.

Playback Theater, as it is endearingly referred to by its students, is essentially an offshoot of PSYC 239: Multicultural Psychology, also taught by Connor, which examines how behavior is influenced by experience and how such experiences are shaped by social variables such as race and class.

But Playback Theater takes the principals of social and cultural interaction explored in Multicultural Psychology and gives them a unique thespian spin. Students in Playback Theater apply the concepts of multicultural awareness to individual and group vignettes — think “Whose Line is it Anyway” with added social pluralism and without Drew Carey.

According to the University course guide, Playback Theater is a “form of improvisational drama in which actors act out stories and experiences.” Such theater games are designed to enable students to “understand better the feelings, needs, thoughts and experiences of themselves and others through the sharing and enactment of stories.”

“What we basically do is take stories that deal with multicultural experiences and react to it,” said Nicole Murphy, a sophomore human development major enrolled in the course.

“It requires you to step outside of your own box,” Murphy said. “Everyday is different.”

As a “natural form of expression,” Playback Theater is an undoubtedly unique form of education.

“It’s expressing your feelings though improvisational acting… and expressing your feelings in papers,” said Daniel B. Schwartz, a senior psychology major and former teaching assistant for Playback Theater. “It’s not like any other class.”

Further defining Playback Theater as a “narrative psychology,” Schwartz said the course is “definitely a class HDEV majors should try taking.”

“A lot of people get the impression that it’s BS, but there is a lot involved in it,” Murphy said. “We do play a lot of games, but what we actually do has a lot of structure to it.”

Once the students of HDEV 463 have honed their expression skills, they will share what they are learning with children at local after-school programs in hopes of helping them develop their own expressive abilities.