Theatre of the Oppressed: Forum-Theatre for social change (to face homophobia)

Aims of the tool

To give ideas about the effectiveness of active methods like Theatre of the Oppressed, Leosje, anti-rumours training for LGBT people inclusion.

Description of the tool

This video presents Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) methodology, which helps empower oppressed individuals to respond to discrimination and oppression assertively and can be used as one of the ways to change society. This documentary is a visualized product of the project FHOFIJ -Facing Homophobia for an Inclusive Job in the frame of Erasmus+ KA2 funded by the European Commission. The main aim of FHOFIJ project is to apply the methodology of the TO as a tool for social inclusion for LGBT people in the field of labour market and education. However, TO as a methodology has a wider range of use and is applicable in the context of gender, social, cultural, ethnic, racial or other inequalities and oppression. The Theatre of the Oppressed provides a space to stimulate a change in people and in a society but differently than, for example, in the ideological theatre. A discriminated social group can here express their own perception and desire to change on the one hand and can experiment with various ways to reach the desired world, on the other hand. A short documentary is based on the real people’s experience of taking part in the TO training course(s). During the process participants share their personal stories of being oppressed, which later becomes a Forum theatre play to be presented to the audience. During the Forum play the audience becomes spect-actors; they can stop the play, replace some characters and explore their own strategies. A maieutic role, called Joker, helps the audience to deepen the research through the dialogue, never imposing his or her own idea. Although other kinds of theatre involve the audience in the action, Forum play is the only one where they become protagonists of a research to get a real transformation. A transformation that has both sides: personal and collective. Nothing magic! But a rehearsal for reality.

More about the project:
https://www.facebook.com/FHOFIJ.Project/
Video
https://fhofij.tumblr.com/VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTA1b4rlTXI