Session V - Workshops : 29.11.2014 : 12.00 - 13.30 |
Radical testimonies of our time Lokesh Jain Auditorium TOP |
I
will begin with my performance “Akkarmashi” (The Outcaste) dramatising the
pain, sorrow, suffering, and torment of oppression in the name of caste.
The forum after the performance will bring out the different stories, and the thoughts
and voices of the people hidden inside them.
I will then share the TO journey of tribal women’s groups from Orissa,
Jharkhand, and West Bengal.
Finally, I will express how this inspirational source is reflected in my
creative journey.
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Session V - Workshops : 29.11.2014 : 12.00 - 13.30 |
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This workshop will
image the story of an oppression and initiate an action for reality. There is
a point of climax for the oppression.
For the oppressed it is the point of losing tolerance, and the beginning of the
resistance that initiates from her/his body-mind.
In Theatre of the Oppressed it is important for
us (actors and spect-actors) to explore our feelings and experiences and
introduce our own characters to support other characters in the story with whom
we closely connect. |
| Session V - Workshops : 29.11.2014 : 12.00 - 13.30 |
Chhaya Dialogue: Shadow Aesthetics in Forum Theatre Evan Hastings Hall 1 TOP |
In
the street and in our minds, the shadows of oppression dance against the fabric
of society. By facing the shadows and crafting dynamic aesthetic theatre about
undercurrents of oppression, objectification and violence, Shadow Liberation
creates engaging dialogues to provoke awareness and social action. In this
workshop, participants will be introduced to Shadow Liberation's process of
devising Forum Theatre from personal stories of the unseen impacts of Gender Violence
and Oppression. Through hands-on Shadow Theatre techniques, participants will
experience a sample of Shadow Liberation's process of devising Forum Theatre.
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Session VI - Panel 1 : 29.11.2014 : 14.30 - 16.30 |
Rehearsal for Revolution-Women Enact Social Change
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Women’s Lives, Women’s Words: Archiving Knowledge for Education CS Lakshmi Auditorium TOP |
The presentation will
explain briefly how and why for the last 25 years SPARROW has been archiving
women’s history and women’s lives in many different ways: through oral history
documentation, print and visual collection, exhibitions, publications, cultural
festivals, writers’ meets and workshops with students. Two projects based on SPARROW’ s mission and
activities will be discussed :
1. A project to link culture and education through
documentation, drama and dissemination.
2. Knowledge for Power, Knowledge for
Change - a project meant to set up audio-visual centres for girls of
school-going age, young girls and women in two villages in Maharashtra and
Tamil Nadu. |
| Session VI - Panel 1 : 29.11.2014 : 14.30 - 16.30 |
Rehearsal for Revolution-Women Enact Social Change
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Women as spect-activists - the Jana Sanskriti experience Sima Ganguly Auditorium TOP |
In Jana Sanskriti’s theatre
Spect-actors become, according to our Director, Spect-activists. Among our Spect-activists,
women are more in number than men. However, participation and sole authority
are not the same thing. In positions of leadership men are still the majority.
But women actors in Jana Sanskriti lead the way in human rights work. Jana
Sanskriti has 40,000 members in its organisation of spectators and the numbers
of women in this body are not small at all. This presentation will deal with how patriarchy
was fought in the society and in the family through theatre and how in this
process empowerment went from being a mere definition to an actuality felt by
the people. |
| Session VI - Panel 1 : 29.11.2014 : 14.30 - 16.30 |
Rehearsal for Revolution-Women Enact Social Change |
Breaking the culture of silence : a TO experiment with tribal artists in Gujarat in 1999-2000 Aditi Desai Auditorium TOP |
TO came into my life when I was creatively
dissatisfied, after conducting 60-70 street theatre workshops and performances
all over Gujarat and in few places of Rajasthan. Games for Actors and Non
Actors by Boal changed my life.
A MacArthur Fellowship gave me an opportunity to use
TO for two years with two teams of tribal artists. Amazing results came from merging
tribal art with TO, learning about the status of women and the reality
of women’s health, and challenging myths .
But,
the status of women in the team did not change.
Questions
to be discussed :
1:
Does TO remain merely a technique or become a part of life for women artists?
2: Looking at today’s changing scenario, what changes do we introduce in
TO in order to make it more effective? |
| Session VI - Panel 1 : 29.11.2014 : 14.30 - 16.30 |
Rehearsal for Revolution-Women enact Social Change
|
My experiences in using theatre and TO with women Sushama Deshpande Auditorium TOP |
I will briefly
narrate some of my experiences in theatre first, including my performance of
Savitribai, and being interviewed for the project ' Women in
Indian Theatre' by
Betty
Bernhard of Pomona School. I then narrate how I discovered Theatre of the
Oppressed, and attended workshops with Boal.
I discovered the flexible way of TO, used TO to create a play
with sex workers, and the LGBT community, and am using TO techniques in
Theatre. Finally, I
discuss some questions this raised for me, regarding the use of TO in Indian culture. |
Sunday 30.11.2014 |
Session II - Panel 2 : Part 1 : 30.11.2014 : 09.00 - 10.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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Critical Engagement with Young People in the Indian Context- the scope and challenges of Liberatory Pedagogies Anita Ratnam Auditorium TOP Benson Issac |
Efforts to address emerging forms of exclusion and violence have proved
immensely challenging as these demand dislodging entrenched notions of self and
society, and fostering new ways of thinking, feeling, seeing and acting.
While the use of TO has opened several possibilities, it has also thrown
up complex questions in terms of what it means to endow experience with
meaning, to reflect on self-hood and our subjectivities, and to redefine
identities, values and worldviews in the contemporary Indian context. Based on
Samvada’s experiences of youth sensitisation, mobilisation,
empowerment and education, the scope for the use of TO will be juxtaposed
with frameworks of liberatory pedagogy that have guided each
intervention.
The need for grounding such interventions in a critical analysis of
societal structures, in an understanding of youth-hood as a site of personal
and social change and in a holistic understanding of youth-work will be
highlighted. |
| Session II - Panel 2 : Part 1 : 30.11.2014 : 09.00 - 10.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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|
Jaya shares her experiences of using and working with TO methods in
urban communities. Her sharing is a combination of confessions about cops in the head and
personal memoirs of working with Boal and his team.aya shares her experiences of using and working with TO methods in urban communities.
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| Session II - Panel 2 : Part 1 : 30.11.2014 : 09.00 - 10.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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Augusto
Boal's Joker System is not as well known or practised as his remarkable range
of TO techniques. The principal aim of
the Joker System is to question the reality of the world as it is represented
in the dramatic text (and as it is conventionally reproduced in performance) in
order to explore alternate ways of representing and interpreting that world.
Thus, there is simultaneously in the performance both the play and its
analysis.
The presenter has used the system to work with children and youth, activists,
developmental workers covering a range of human themes like trauma, gender,
sexuality, conflict and so on. The seven steps in the Joker System are used to
develop a new performance piece. This presentation will explain the seven steps
and how this constitutes a powerful process-based approach for personal and
social transformation. |
Session IV - Panel 2 : Part 2 : 30.11.2014 : 11.30 - 13.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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Dissenting voices in Maharashtra Ramu Ramanathan Auditorium TOP |
There
are some groups which are integrating the idea of radical human rights movement
in Mumbai and Pune. I will
talk about these groups and individuals. The
source of their inspiration is the Ambedkarite-Marxist movement and its
ideology. How the
wounds of the assault and humiliation and injustice have given these
groups the energy to fight back. I will try to provide an overview of what is
happening in Maharashtra today.
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| Session IV - Panel 2 : Part 2 : 30.11.2014 : 11.30 - 13.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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Does the system intend to liberate the children? Abhishek Goswami Auditorium TOP |
Working with teachers and teacher educators for their professional
development, I came across several theories on consciousness. But amongst all
the theories of consciousness, only Freire and Boal propose it as a concrete,
practical and applicable concept. Their formulation is based on the
understanding that social change is not possible without change within the individual.
In this presentation, I shall trace my journey in theatre
from a child artist to a teacher educator of drama in education. The question I
shall ask: ‘Does the system
really wish to liberate the children?’ |
| Session IV - Panel 2 : Part 2 : 30.11.2014 : 11.30 - 13.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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Liberatory education for doctors Navjeevan Singh Auditorium TOP |
First of all, what is education? Can illiteracy and education
co-exist? Is going to school, college etc essential to being
educated? Is not education, in itself, liberatory? But liberation from
what?
Coming to doctors, is an educated Doctor a Good Doctor? Does the present
medical education equip the young medical student with the qualities essential
in a Good Doctor?
If not, what needs to change?
Can a liberatory pedagogy such as TO transform a
‘merely competent’ physician into a Good Doctor- the kind of doctor we all desire?
I will share some of our experiences at the University College of Medical
Sciences, New Delhi, with using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques with
medical students and doctors. |
| Session IV - Panel 2 : Part 2 : 30.11.2014 : 11.30 - 13.30 |
From Monologue to Dialogue - Liberatory Pedagogies in the Indian Context
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In
September this year a motley group from the U.K and India came together for a
project, “Act for Change in India: Healing minds”. The aim was to encourage
open discussion about mental health, destigmatise mental illness and improve
access to health care. The medium was
Forum Theatre.
We discuss two facets from our experience on this project. First, how
the use of TO facilitated the making of a powerful play that diverse
communities could relate to. And second, the challenges we faced in the
application of the Forum Theatre structure to mental health. |
Discussion - Is there a
'real TO’? When does TO become ‘not TO’? |
Compassionate Connections Neela Gupta Auditorium TOP
|
The essence
of TO lies in empowering every human being to be able to think, speak and act independently. TO inspires the audience to become
'spect-actors, to help build
a happier, just and compassionate society. Boal calls this a non
violent aesthetic movement which seeks peace, not passivity.
For
the ‘Spect- actor’ to walk into the shoes of the other requires
deep listening and empathy. There are several techniques and
processes which help us get rooted in these
skills. Non Violent Communication is one of them.
What
if we blend TO with Non Violent Communication which takes us deep into
ourselves and connects us with another human
being, explaining through its 4 step process
(Observation, Feelings, Needs and Requests) what drives us. Would it help if we had
access to know, understand and be empathetic to where we are coming from and where the other
person is coming from and then
create a middle ground from there? |
Session V : 30.11.2014 : 14.30 - 15.30 |
Discussion - Is there a 'real TO’? When does TO become ‘not TO’?
|
s a resource for facilitation Lalitha Iyer Auditorium TOP |
| I often find myself working with
large groups. My task usually is to help the groups surface their emotions and
work through them so that they come to an agreement on the way ahead. I’d like
to share a couple of situations where I find what I learnt in TO very relevant.
In Appreciative Inquiry, the facilitator tries
to discover what is working well and amplify it. I find TO activities very
useful even though they seem to focus on conflicts and oppression. Columbian Hypnosis
or Carnival in Rio are useful in breaking set patterns and hierarchies.
Role
plays are helpful in identifying typical challenges in collaborating or coming
together. When I find the group bogged down in their negative experiences, I
have been able to build on the role plays with a Forum play which releases the
group from hopelessness. |
| Session V : 30.11.2014 : 14.30 - 15.30 |
Discussion - Is there a 'real TO’? When does TO become ‘not TO’?
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The Importance of Naming Radha Ramaswamy Auditorium TOP |
| I will share my understanding of the differences that I
perceive between Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) as created by Boal
and Theatre for Living (TfL) as conceptualised and practised by David
Diamond. Exploring my own evolution as a TO practitioner, I examine
some modifications and adaptations that provoke the question: when does TO
cease to become TO and demand another name? |