Forum Theatre & Theatre of the OppressedForum Theatre & Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed

Inspringtheater is part of a global movement using Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre of the Oppressed is developed by the Brazilian theatre maker and political activist Augusto Boal. The starting point is that theatre is not being made about, but by people in a oppressed position. It doesn’t speak about a target group, but about a source group. People from the source group are central and play an active role in the process from the beginning until the end. When a play is being made, the actors are preferably people from the source group.

Theatre of the Oppressed is participatory theatre. That means it is not only to watch, but mostly to do. Everyone is making the story together. When played for an audience, the audience is invited to participate and come on stage. It is not about sending a message, but about having a dialogue.

Theatre of the Oppressed consists of a range of methodologies, exercises and games that are all part of the process in which stories of people in oppressed situations are told and tools to deal with these situation are being explored. In the end it is not about individual behaviour, but more about revealing and exploring a system that causes certain behaviour and trying to change this with the aim of making humanity more humane.

Below a description of a few of the methodologies of Theatre of the Oppressed mostly used by Inspringtheater:

Image Theatre

Image theatre is a form of theatre which makes use of still images. The actors take still positions and these images tell their story. Image theatre has a lot of applications. For example, it can be used to show (an interpretation of) a system and explore it by position different stakeholders in the system as an statue in relation to each other. Image theatre can also be used as an accessible way to stimulate people to tell their own experiences and/or it can be used as a starting point for a (forum theatre) performance. Image theatre is at the basis of most methodologies of Theatre of the Oppressed.

Newspaper theatre

In newspaper theatre, a written text is the starting point. This can be a newspaper article, but also a different kind of text such as a part of a book, a song or even the declaration of human rights convention. Often this results in piece in which one person is reading and simultaneously other actors are portraying the text. The format can vary using images or more movements, with or without spoken text. The goal is to make a text more tangible and/or to show different aspects, consequences or interpretations of a text.

Forum Theatre

Forum theatre is the most known methodology of Theatre of the Oppressed and also most used by Inspringtheater. In forumtheater a situation of oppression is played out for an audience (the forum). The play always ends bad for the main character. Important is that the audience is part of the source group and therefore identifying or at least recognizing the situation. After the performance the audience is invited to reflect on the situation and to take over the role of the main character and try to give the piece a different turn. The audience makes the transition from spectator to spectactor. In this way different behaviour can be tested and immediately it can be seen what the effect is from certain behaviour. Forum theatre is “practising for reality”.