The Theatre of the Oppressed

Information taken from http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/en/index.php?nodeID=3

The Theatre of the Oppressed is a system of Games and special Techniques that aims at developing, in the oppressed citizens, the language of the theatre, which is the essential human language. This form of theatre is meant to be practiced by, about and for the oppressed, to help them fight against their oppressions and to transform the society that engenders those oppressions. The word Oppressed is used in the sense of s/he who has lost the right to express his/her wills and needs, and is reduced to the condition of obedient listener of a monologue. It must be used as a tool of fighting against all forms class oppression, racism, sexism, and all kinds of discrimination.

These are the three techniques I have chosen:

IMAGE-THEATRE

Words are empty things that fill the emptiness (vacuum) that exists between one human being and another. Words are lines that we carve in the sand, sounds that we sculpt in the air. We know the meaning of the word we pronounce, because we fill it with our desires, ideas and feelings, but we don’t know how that word is going to be heard by each listener. Image theatre is a series of techniques that allow people to communicate through Images and Spaces, and not through words alone.

AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF THE OPPRESSED 

It is not necessary to be a Poet to write a poem, but whoever writes a poem becomes a Poet. We know that s/he who transforms reality is transformed by the very action of transforming. The aesthetic education of the oppressed aims at developing all aesthetic capabilities of citizens that have been limited since childhood by the authoritarian societies in which we live. We do not teach how to do it, but rather try to help the oppressed to discover or invent how s/he wants to do it, with her/his own ways and purposes. It is composed of: WORD (Poem, Declaration of Identity, Stories); IMAGE (Sculpture, using clean garbage; Transformation of well known images to give our opinions and feelings about them); SOUND (Creation of Musical Instruments with objects related to the lives of the participants; Music and Dance, based on the actions that we perform in our daily life); and ETHICS (Debates about special moments of Humanity when Ethical values were at stake, analysing those values, with the intention of provoking thoughts and discussion about the choices that were taken — ethical or un-ethical. The themes depend on the characteristics of each Group).

FORUM-THEATRE 

Music is the organisation of sound in time; plastic arts, the organisation of colours and lines in the space; theatre, the organisation of human actions in time and space. Theatre is a representation and not a reproduction of social reality. Forum-theatre presents a scene or a play that must necessarily show a situation of oppression that the Protagonist does not know how to fight against, and fails. The spect-actors are invited to replace this Protagonist, and act out - on stage and not from the audience - all possible solutions, ideas, strategies. The other actors improvise the reactions of their characters facing each new intervention, so as to allow a sincere analysis of the real possibilities of using those suggestions in real life. All spect-actors have the same right to intervene and play their ideas. Forum-theatre is a collective rehearsal for reality.