Popular Theater helps individuals and disempowered groups gain confidence and skills to create positive change in themselves and their surroundings. It draws energy and insight from the languages and lived experiences of the people who take part in it.
Lively, improvisational games with rhythm and movement help group members get to know each other, and themselves, and build trust, collectivity, and a common sense of purpose. Popular Theater involves the entire group in selecting and defining issues, developing scripts, and telling their story.
The Trainer uses techniques such as Forum Theater and Image/Improv to help participants explore issues and their connections to the wider society. Some are drawn from the methods of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed. Others have been developed by the international P.T. movement and by Ras Mo.
In our approach, the Trainer also guides the group through an artistic inventory of interests and skills, and teaches new creative forms through learning-by-doing.
Sometimes the process culminates in a formal performance that dramatizes a problem: its causes, effects, and especially practical, positive responses. But Popular Theater is not only used to create plays.
Popular Theater can also help groups:
* plan programs and events
* deal positively with diversity
* set organizational development goals
* do strategic planning and evaluation
* devise more effective curricula
* improve skills for education and outreach
* orient staff and cope with group problems
* develop more participatory processes
We adapt the forms and formats of Popular Theater to the needs and budgets of different organizations. Popular Theater can overcome barriers of language, gender, age, race, and class, to release creativity in any setting where people get together for a purpose.
How to reach us:
Bay Area Popular Theater Project
640 orange Street
New Haven CT 06511 USA.
Telephone (203) 605 0925.
e-mail: rasmo@igc.org