• Addressing collectively a complex social topic and looking together for solutions
• Playing conflict to solve them

Duration : 6 hours

Forum Theatre is a type of theatre created by the innovative and influential practitioner Augusto Boal. It relates to the engagement of spectators influencing and engaging with the performance as both spectators and actors, termed ‘spect-actors’, with the power to stop and change the performance.
The issues dealt with in Forum Theatre are often related to areas of social justice with aims to explore solutions to oppression featured in the performance.

The Forum Theater has been used by many practitioners since its creation, in various contexts. This has led to the emergence of different currents of forum theatre, among which the institutional version that we offered the participants to experience during the DYNAMIX TC in order to address some conflictual situations they were facing.

1) Mutual interview (25’)

To address the topic, ask the participants to gather by 3. Each person will have to think about a personal unsatisfying situation where they had to deal with conflict and then to share it with the two others in 5 minutes.
After hearing all the stories, ask them to make emerge what was at stake in the different situations and to reformulate the stories in short sentences that they will write down on small papers starting by “How to …”.
From the 3 situations, ask then the participants to choose the one they consider the most urgent/critical one. Collect the situations that were not selected.

2) Snow Ball (15’)

Ask 2 groups of 3 to join and form a group of 6.They will share the situations they selected and choose again the one they find the more urgent/critical. This will be the story they will work on for the Forum.

Each group have to create a scene with respect for the following instructions :
- Name your scene
- As a participant you cannot play your own role
- You should change the names of the characters
- You have to play as you are: you are not a character but a social role
- The scene needs to be short (5’-10’max). It has to show how the conflict arises but not how it was resolved. The scene ends at the climax of the issue.

One by one, the groups will present their scene to the others. As a small introduction to ease the understanding of the audience, they will give some practical information about the scenery :
- Who is who? Age, name, role (ex: women 31, daughter of X, etc.)
- Where and when is the scene taking place?
- Any other information that is essential for the understanding of the scene.

As soon as they will have finished playing, the facilitator will give the speech to the audience: What happened? What have they seen? Did they see the conflict? What is it about?
From their feedback the performers will know how to improve the scene so the conflict they wanted to illustrate will become clearer. Give them 20 more minutes to improve it.

Due to lack of time, all scenes won’t be played; ask the participants to choose once again the 3 stories (out of 5) they will work on by mean of the Forum.
The Forum will start with one group who will have 50 minutes for the whole process. A second will follow, then a third. Each group will start by playing its short scene. At the end of it, give the speech to the audience, by asking the following questions :
- What happened?
- Is there something we can do about it?
- Does someone have a proposition that he/she thinks could change the way things happened?
If someone from the audience has a proposition that can change the situation, he/she will go on stage to perform it. He/she can choose to take the role he/she wants to intervene with and the scene will start again from the beginning.
Once it is over, encourage the audience to formulate the conclusion related to this solution: “In this case, we can [what was tried by the new spect’actor] but then [what happened]…”.
Start the process again to allow different propositions to be played, and compile the propositions at the end of each scene. The whole process will bring to light the idea that there is no “magic” solution to social problems: every action causes new consequences that might be a source of new problems…
After 50 minutes, invite a second group to perform its scene and start the process again; then a third group, for 50 minutes again.

Conclude the session with a feedback (30 minutes) from all the participants about how they felt and what they learned.

• Small papers
• A big room for the groups to rehearsal and for the performance