Why is forum theatre important

In close consultation, we can produce a play which resonates with challenges faced by the student audience. Alternatively we can work with the student audience to create and present their own forum theatre productions. Essentially, a scenario relating to a specific practice dilemma is enacted by actors.

Subjects for example can be as diverse as basic communication skills, breaking significant news and psychosocial interventions in psychosis.

Later it is shown how the oppression develops how bullying in school starts, how the person is discriminated in the work place, etc. Forum theatre play doesn't provide solutions.

It stops and the moment of crisis and allows audience to share their ideas. It is important that the ending of the performance was really strong and dramatic. Only when events on stage will provoke feelings for spectators, they will be motivated to look for ways to change something in this situation. Augusto Boal emphasized that the role of the Protagonist should be taken over and that spect-actors should be looking for what the Protagonist could do differently in particular situation to change it to the better direction.

Now different techniques are used. Some Forum theatre groups recommend to take the place of the Protagonist, others allow to take over the roles of Allies of both sides and of Neutral persons. But almost everyone holds on the same rule — the Oppressor should not be replaced. It would be the easiest way out, but it's not very realistic. In this way we would just eliminate the source of the problem and there would be no one left to fight against.

But the aim of Forum theatre is not to find magical solutions but to prepare for the real life situations, where our endurance, creativity and courage are needed.

A little bit of history, analysis and remarks of Augusto Boal about Forum theatre:. Frances Babbage: Augusto Boal. Routlege Performance Practitioners. Forum theatre is probably the most well known and widely practised of all Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Forum theatre moves from the familiar to the unfamiliar. It initially allows audience the security of distance and then invites, inspires or provokes them to abandon this in favour of full involvement in the "theatrical game".

Forum theatre presents its audience an unsolved problem; one that will matter to them since it impacts their own lives. The play is performed once, so the audience can observe the oppression it illustrates in action, and then repeated.

On the second time, the play will follow the same course until interrupted by a member of the audience, who takes over the role of the protagonist and attempts to redirect the action and ultimately to defeat the oppression. The rules are explained by the Joker facilitator , whose function is to invite interventions, assist the transition from spectator to spect-actor.

The first suggestion usually allows multitude of ideas to emerge. This method is not preaching a moral code. Choose a scene, which clearly shows a goal that seems impossible to reach for an oppressed person. It is important that one or more antagonists are involved in this process and that the issue is actually possible to solve for the oppressed person.

The scene can be chosen by the facilitators, but also by the participants if they have a specific situation that they want to share. The scene can also link to issues discussed previously in other activities. Examples could be facing microaggressions, for instance:. On the first day of school, a teacher is surprised that a Black Student or a Student of Colour can speak the national language fluently.

A Romani girl is new to her class. Suddenly, another girl says an expensive item she owns is missing. Others accuse the new girl of stealing this item and bully her.

Finally, the original girl admits that she lost the item but was too afraid to tell, as her parents would be angry. In an international exchange, two men are sharing a room. One of them is part of a sexual minority and the other man wants to change the room. The actors perform a play with a basic script in which an oppression relevant to the audience is played out.

We wonder if forum theatre, mainly through the physical engagement with challenging situations that it inspires, might also inspire children-participants to act in the real-world, and thus inculcate a type of agency.

Boal clearly hopes that his method will inspire real-world action; might the CPI, in utilizing some of his theater methods, inspire the same sort of real-world action? Another goal of the Theatre of the Oppressed movement, as we articulated in the first section of the paper, is to connect the audience to their own emotions by encouraging active engagement in the emotions shown in the performance.

Thus, we wonder how the incorporation of forum theatre in the CPI may contribute to how P4wC practices emotional and empathic pedagogy and encourages caring thinking. Ultimately, this discussion of forum theatre in the CPI presents numerous avenues for further research regarding how physical participation in challenging problems, which forum theatre promotes, develops agency, emotional literacy and empathy. Our goal with this paper, however, has been much more simple. We hope to have shown that Boal, as a compassionate educator and theatre practitioner, has methodological tools and theoretical insights that can supplement the P4wC movement, specifically with regards to physical engagement in philosophical inquiry.

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