This study examined the gender beliefs and norms expressed by South Asian community members when intervening as bystanders in Peerformance, a publicly performed scene depicting a husband's controlling behavior toward his wife enacted by a peer-led theater group. Using a grounded theory approach, inductive coding and reiterative visual analysis of videotaped bystander interactions revealed that, while most community members confronted the husband, beliefs about gender roles and relations impacted how these confrontations occurred. The complexity of gender norms in bystanders' interventions calls for sociocultural tailoring; bystander programs must attend to the rich, within-group variations in community members' attitudes and beliefs.
Keywords: South Asian immigrants; Theater of the Oppressed; intimate partner violence prevention, applied theater/theatre; socioculturally relevant bystander program.