Thanks go to Jasmina and Goran of Mediaartes (www.mediaartes.info) for being such perfect hosts of the Joker Training in Ohrid, Macedonia last week. It’s been a while since my last Joker training and it was wonderful to revisit all those wonderful opportunities for teaching and in the process re-learning for myself the art of the Joker. Thanks also go to those brave new Jokers whose mistakes allowed me to make the teaching points, and who one day will return the favour and give me a few tips on how to improve my own Jokering. Two realizations I made in the...
This line from the WB Yeats poem The Second Coming kept popping in my mind last week while I was in Graz for the World Forum Theatre conference. OK, not exactly this line, it was more the version Joni Mitchell sings in her song of the poem, which goes like this The best lack conviction, Given some time to think, And the worst are full of passion, Without mercy. Certainly Augusto Boal’s death has left the people who knew and worked with him feeling bereft, but I dont get the sense that things are falling apart, now the centre has...
Many thanks to GAIAC and AE2O in Porto for organizing Rainbow of Desires workshops in Portugal last month. There are times in workshops where I find myself rambling on about the newest discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and have to stop myself from going down the rabbit hole and get on with the ‘processes’ which are so much better a learning tool than stumbling around in a desert of words. Nevertheless, the findings of eminent Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and others are I think very relevant to Theatre of the Oppressed, and to our understanding of perception, will and action (amongst...
Last week I was in Belgrade, Serbia at the request of Cynefin project officer Aleksandra Markovic, to give a masterclass to Theatre of the Oppressed Jokers. During conversation before the training about where the emphasis should lie there was an interest in Cop in the Head techniques. These are Augusto Boals methods for addressing internal oppressions those spectres within us that inhibit our ability to achieve what we desire. Boal is always careful to make clear that the cop might be in the head but its headquarters are outside. In other words, these psychological obstacles originate from what has happened...
You can fly here for a penny before tax, baggage costs, booking fee etc. It’s in the European Union and its capital was one of the cultural powerhouses of the 18th Century Enlightenment. And yet the papers here are advising half its population to either leave or stay indoors for fear of violence from invading hordes. The police predict high casualties in this section of its society, and the hospitals are on full alert and reassure in the press that they are prepared for the onslaught. The country is Austria, the invading army are football fans from across Europe and...
A good friend of mine working with Israelis and Palestinians using Forum Theatre recently sent me a link to a video of an action they made to clear huge blocks that were stopping traffic passing between two Palestinian villages. Israelis and Palestinians resisting the illegal occupation together, side by side with all their strength pushing aside these barriers. It is a powerful symbolic action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qI9hcAcEtU Israeli soldiers eventually arrive and shoot rubber bullets into the crowd. The interesting thing is that while the Palestinians in the theatre group are keen to continue with such actions rather than do Forum Theatre...
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