This exciting Arts and Culture workshop uses poetry, music, storytelling, masquerade, art and performance to engage the audience in policy issues, using a popular community-based theater known as ‘Theater of the Oppressed*,’ where theater is used as a tool for social change.
Staged in the open garden area, a theatrical presentation is in progress, but rather than being passive observers, the audience is asked to interpret various tableau ‘scenes’ and propose their own solutions to the issues they see. It is part performance, part policy discussion. Some of the issues the players present include equity, access, equality, power and dominance. They are engaged, the issues are passionate and the proposed solutions are real. A Joker (neutral character) moderates, as both audience and actors bring elements of the EC Arts and Culture Policy Framework to life – with mime, drama, dialogue, poetry and movement that elucidate both the issues that emerge and solutions being proposed.
*‘Theater of the Oppressed’ was created by Brazilian theatre visionary and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Augusto Boal (1931-2009).
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