Okay, so I skipped a few things before, like giving you a bit more info on Theatre of the Oppressed and on the Forum itself. Well, it's been in the pipeline for a while, the first one was in Buenos Aires and it took roughly 3 years to organise. You heard right. Or rather, you read right. In 2006 there were only 5 or 6 practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed in Argentina and the easiest way they saw to network with other theatremakers around the continent was by email. Eventually, they all went for labs, workshops, internships or residencies in Rio de Janeiro and came out fully versed in the mysteries of Theatre of the Oppressed. That's the long and the short of it.
Then came the others, the Bolivians, the Peruvians, the Colombians, the Costa Ricans, and somewhere in there, the Salvadoreans and the Guatemalans. Today there are 60 + participants from Central America, when in 2009 there were only 2. The power of ideas huh? This is one powerful medium. Particularly when it comes to Forum Theatre.
That's what you've been waiting to hear all about. Especially after the last teaser in the last post. What is Forum Theatre you ask? I found out today for the first time. We worked up to it, too... and so shall you, so sit back, relax and grab a martini. Shaken, not stirred. Nick Cave in the background would make a great soundtrack to the explanation. I'm listening to him as I write. So here we go.
The fabulous gentlemen from the Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed took us through this step by step, starting with an exercise in which we all pair off and look like we're frozen as we shake hands. Then, one of the pair breaks off, looks at the alternative stories that can be told by their counterpart's body language and embody a new story, taking on a new position. Their partner waits for them to settle into position, then moves away, checks out their body language and responds accordingly. Repeat ad infinitum. Once we got that right, our facilitators or Kuringas, took us through the next stage, of trios doing this exercise. Once we had mastered that stage, all of us joined into one mass frozen scene, slowly joining into a scene after watching it and making sense of it in our heads. Once we were all into position, our facilitators went around asking us who we were and what we were doing. It was very interesting. The Spaniards all thought they were part of a demonstration in which the police was manhandling the protesters. The Central Americans all thought it was an indigenous village that was being raided and its villagers killed because they were unjustly accused of crimes. Our collective histories reflect our points of view and how we interpret actions, obviously.
The next step was to start weeding out personal stories to create a piece of theatre collectively. Oh how I love ensemble work, when done properly and guided by professionals. We listened to each others' stories of personal oppression until we settled on the most urgent one. It happened to be a Guatemalan man of K'iche origin who is HIV positive, a single father and suffering discrimination from every sector. Although it was moving to listen to other's stories, his carried such a systematic abuse of human rights that we could not ignore it. We get to turn it into theatre tomorrow morning.
In the meantime, I went to two works in that vein: La Petaca, from El Salvador [based on the short stoy by Sallarue] and Coisas de Genero from Brasil. Although they were both fantastic, there was an immediacy and realism to La Petaca that I recognised the scene they set immediately. A physically deformed girl in her teens suffers from beatings and verbal lashings at the hands of her family, who want to rid her of her hump so they can marry her off, as her mental retardation prevents her from helping effectively around the house. The way they speak is vintage farmer Salvadorean Spanish. It touched a chord deep inside me. Sometimes it was almost comical, if it weren't so true. A Guatemalan lady didn't seem amused by the expressions that caused me a bit of mirth, as opposed to the situations. The Kuringa then went through the whole of the work and deconstructed it with the audience's assistance. Between the subtle performances of the actors and the incisive analysis of the various types of violence and discrimination perpetrated, it was a highly effective piece of applied theatre. It made me proud to be these actors' countrywoman.
Coisas de Genero was grander. It took place in the Municipal Theatre, a Neoclassical jewel, that has European style wooden booths. It had lighting and stage design. It had a live Bossa Nova orchestra, that also dabbled in Brasilian indigeous and candomble rhythms. The scenario was one well known around the world: boy and girl are born without prejudices. Their parents then condition them into wearing certain clothes, playing with certain toys, getting married and dividing tasks by gender. Of couse, this turns into bitter war right at the end, with the wife getting the short end of the stick. The dancing and choreography were superb. Corporal expression through movement was beautiful. The costumes were breathtaking and imaginative. It was just a little too long for my taste. The point had been made 10 minutes before the ending. No matter, after that it was time for the Forum. Eh? What? Yeah, you'd forgotten that's what I started with: Forum Theatre. This was definitely an example of that and so was La Petaca. In both cases, audience members who suggested alternative courses of action for the oppressed character were invited to come onto the stage and perform their suggestions. Each performance was then deconstructed again from various perspectives, until either a solution was found or conciousness about the issue was raised.
Don't think it was all academic blah blah though. Real people with real opinions and examples would stand up to speak. And to top it all off... we all danced to Bossa Nova afterwards. I kid you not. The live orchestra kept playing and invited the audience to come up and dance. Truly magical stuff.
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