Changing Ways Encuentro: April 20, 2013
We staged three intervenable scenes with three cop in the mirror scenes leading into each of those scenes. We had time to invite interventions for two of the scenes. We chose where to start with the interventions with a vote from the spect-actors. They chose to do the scene about getting a crack addict, who is threatening a formerly incarcerated individual's freedom, out of his house followed by a scene about how to cope with the stigma of being a life, particularly when your significant other's family does not want them involved with you.
We had space and time for several interventions in each scene, with a lot of very helpful and practical information from the community, particularly around having allies, when and how to call on those allies for help and knowing your rights.
Although the evening was intended to be a space for the problems affecting the community at large, the work we did was a bit a hybrid between Rainbow of Desire and Forum Theatre in that we started with very personal stories, worked at a personal level, then zoomed out to see if this is a community problem and attempted to create enough of an aesthetic distance to invite interventions that could work and provide information for the community at large, not necessarily with all of details of each particular, personal story. However, this isn't how the evening went. In the second scene, some of the interventions were exploring resources and allies in general, while others where dealing very specifically with Johnny's particular situation, where he wouldn't accept that any intervention was possible because of the strength of the antagonist. In this particular case, Forum Theatre is not a useful tool. Forum theatre is only useful when there is some hope of change and possibilities. If the situation is impossible, we can use Rainbow of Desire techniques to see what is going on with the protagonist in the scene and to see how they might best gain tools and perspectives on the situation, that although may not be changeable, they could gain insight into their role in it and if they can or want to do anything in themselves to change their relationship to the situation.
We had space and time for several interventions in each scene, with a lot of very helpful and practical information from the community, particularly around having allies, when and how to call on those allies for help and knowing your rights.
Although the evening was intended to be a space for the problems affecting the community at large, the work we did was a bit a hybrid between Rainbow of Desire and Forum Theatre in that we started with very personal stories, worked at a personal level, then zoomed out to see if this is a community problem and attempted to create enough of an aesthetic distance to invite interventions that could work and provide information for the community at large, not necessarily with all of details of each particular, personal story. However, this isn't how the evening went. In the second scene, some of the interventions were exploring resources and allies in general, while others where dealing very specifically with Johnny's particular situation, where he wouldn't accept that any intervention was possible because of the strength of the antagonist. In this particular case, Forum Theatre is not a useful tool. Forum theatre is only useful when there is some hope of change and possibilities. If the situation is impossible, we can use Rainbow of Desire techniques to see what is going on with the protagonist in the scene and to see how they might best gain tools and perspectives on the situation, that although may not be changeable, they could gain insight into their role in it and if they can or want to do anything in themselves to change their relationship to the situation.
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