Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

It's been such an unbelievable summer that I haven't really gotten time to sit and digest all this yummy educational/experiential goodness! Since I last blogged in New York, I completed that seminar, wrapped up the school year, left and returned from a Zora Neale Hurston Workshop in Florida, left and returned from the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Chicago, and am getting ready to go on a family vacation to Seattle/Vancouver tomorrow. Phew! 

My T.O. classmates/ new friends

Since it's easier for my mind to describe these events chronologically, I'll do a wrap up of the events in New York, then go on to Florida/Chicago in my next entries.

The last few days of the workshop were some of my favorite for two reasons: 1) I was able to meet Alex Santiago from a New York organization called the Forum Project.  Alex has worked with many groups in New York, including migrant youth and queer youth, and was able to give a lot of insight into T.O. work. Great resource for the future! He "jokered" (facilitated) our final performance scenes. 2) We rehearsed and performed our own forum theatre scenes! Our forum theatre scene was a short, but highly complex piece about a young woman teaching sex education in a small village in Africa. The antagonist bullies and threatens her because she is a woman and also an outsider who is teaching the children what he deems is "white" or "western" ways. The scene was beautiful in that it required the audience (spec-actors) to think about sexism, ethnocentrism, class-ism,  and the role of education in the span of ten minutes. It reminded me of the power of theatre-- being precise and concise with our words and actions. For this particular scene I did not play the antagonist or the protagonist, but rather one of the students in the classroom. It was great to be able to act again, since it's been so long! It was also interesting for me to want the spec-actors to replace my role as a bystander because that is the role most people identify with, even though I know it's most effective when the protagonist is replaced. This was my first time seeing and participating in Theatre of the Oppressed, and it was definitely memorable. Before this workshop, I never thought of theatre, or art in general, as interactive, but now I can see how meaningful it can be when it involves the audience. I would never dismiss more traditional forms of theatre, but this class definitely expanded my knowledge about what art is and how it can be used for different functions.

By the end of the ten days in New York, I was sad to go. Being in the hustle and bustle of the city is so exhilarating, plus I made so many great connections with the instructors and my classmates. Many of them are passionate educators/activists from all over the country and a few even from other parts of the world. But it was nice to return to my students and immediately apply some of the strategies and play some new games! We played Colombian Hypnosis, 3x3 by Bradford, pacman, and a few more games I can't seem to remember the "official" names. It doesn't matter how many times I read and reread about the activities in Games for Actors and Non-Actors by Augusto Boal, nothing really beats participating in it firsthand. You learn best by doing, right?

Next up, tales from Chicago!