Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Applied Theatre Beyond Borders

From Executive Director Dale Savidge -

I had the pleasure of working with 15 people in San Juan, Puerto Rico the week of July 10th in a variety of applied theatre techniques. The purpose of the 3 day workshop was twofold: to teach them a few interactive theatre styles so that they might consider further training and to lead them in the exercises for their own personal benefit.

We did not begin as a homogenous group; 3 of us were from North America and the Puerto Ricans were teachers, counselors, pastors, students, actors, and dancers – some worked multiple jobs. What we did share was a love of theatre and a desire to use theatre in service to people. We were highly motivated and it took very little warm up on the first day to begin relating at a very deep level.

We tried sociodrama, role playing, bibliodrama and forum theatre. We used our own stories and stories from literature. We improvised for fun, and we improvised as a means of exploring psychological and cultural issues. We discovered topics we all cared about and we spent time enacting our explorations through imaging, scene building, forums and role playing. It was an exhilarating few days.

I was impressed by how easily theatre translates across cultures, even languages. Our interpreters were busy on day one (Spanish to English and vice versa), but as we grew accustomed to each other less of the workshop needed to be translated, because I became less verbal and also because we were communicating in ways that did not rely on words. We shared ideas, feelings and Puerto Rican cuisine. We discovered we had more in common than we had initially thought.

These days strengthened my belief in the power of theatre to unify, challenge, and change people. And it wasn’t that we set out to change each other – we each, in our own way, were being changed through our interactions with each other and through the experience of reliving our personal stories. The Applied Theatre Center is committed to extending these experiences to communities which will benefit in similar ways.

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