Theatre of the Oppressed

Had a really good past few days to make up for the bad graduation ending... a few days in a row of going out dancing, including going to see a great band (for free!) called Nation Beat which featured Mongo Santamaria's daughter with an incredible Brazilian/New Orleans type mix of music. Incredibly danceable, percussion all over the place. I sweated up a storm.

And then this weekend went to the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Minneapolis. It was amazing. I've never been to such an interactive conference. Lots of incredible workshops learning how to incorporate strategies from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (which has all kinds of communication games and theatrical set-ups that depict protagonist-antagonist situations within oppressor/ed contexts... more here) and themes from Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed which is a theory of liberatory, transformative practice of education.... it's hard to describe all I learned in such a short time but it was really interesting to try and be physical about images (more like dance to me) and to play out situations that would generate a lot of deep discussion and dialogue.

Some of the best moments included a workshop from folks from the Israeli/Palestine Viewpoints Theatre, who did this interesting project having us make statements ie."If you, like me have been beaten for using your native language." and then standing with either those for whom it was true or for whom it was not, then creating a movement and word that reflected your feeling about that statement at the others... hard to explain but really interesting to see how polarizing statements can be. There was an inordinate amount of white liberals at the conference and sometimes I felt the white guilt oozing around me..... but there was a hefty dollop of radicals there too and it was cool to be around people really interested in transforming institutional education in a creative, alternative way.

Another moment that sparked a lot of interest was a basic Theatre of the Op. workshop where we explored a lot of Boal's games (awesome for communication/self investigation/ dialogue) and then did a model of Forum Theatre. Forum Theatre lets participants or "spect-actors" play out a situation that represents oppressor and oppressed scenarios to create varied solutions. We had an interesting scene where an unknown man sits next to a woman who is alone on the subway alone at night. He was sitting right next to her and in her space and looking at her in a threatening way. An audience member might say 'Stop!' and replaces herself as the woman who is on the train and acts out what she would do to deal with the situation. Others repeated until several solutions have been acted out. It was really fascinating. The first woman stood up and moved away- the man moved next to her. She said really loud and firm "Get away from me! You're in my space!" and he didn't move. She maced him. Another "spect-actor" ran from car to car until she was up with the conductor. Yet another exited the subway car as soon as the man got on. Another woman engaged the man in conversation, etc... after each scenario we would talk about the challenges/benefits of each activity.

The activity brought up a lot of feeling and we ended up talking about gender issues and patriarchy, it was deep and difficult. I felt I had a hard time wanting to hear what the men in the room had to say. At one point one man began a story that had to do about race and we began to focus on him and his issue and I felt like we had been derailed from talking about the woman and her issues... it was hard for me to see him identifying with the woman's situation as opposed to kind of making the issue about him and not about a woman anymore... in the midst of talking about patriarchy.

I was definitely having an interesting time trying to balance my gut feelings and my analysis this weekend. It was great. And now I'm back to real life. Trying to think of ways to incorporate what I learned this weekend into the ESL classes and fighting off a cold. We went out dancing this weekend too and I got a good line from a guy I danced with who was very into dipping me. The opener, "I want to take you for a ride on my horse. She has eight cylinders." Before my friend and I left, he took us on a 'shortcut' which just happened to walk us by his new Mustang. Love Minneapolis.