Speaking of dialogue... | Social Signal

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a production of Palestine, Israel & Me: A power play by Headlines Theatre, presented as part of the WUF's Earth festival. And while I don't usually go in for 'participatory theatre' (too often it feels cheap and gimmicky), this was different. Headlines doesn't make you participate, they invite you to participate in creating a compelling and thoughtful real-world dialogue through the art of 'forum theatre'.

Forum theatre (as I saw it) works like this: The actors play out a single scene involving an emotionally and politically charged inter-personal conflict. Just as the conflict comes to a boil, the scene ends, and the audience is left in the incredible, uncomfortable, unresolved tension of that moment. Then the actors do the show again, only this time audience members can 'freeze' the scene any time they see fit, and come onstage to take the place of one of the characters (called an intervention) and try to steer the situation toward safety and resolution. Neat, huh?

Only it's really hard! The actors (actually non-actors, in this case) did a wonderful job of staying true to their characters' motivations and beliefs, which made interventions very difficult... just like they would be in real life. In fact, the sense you come away with after the show is that this is a kind of rehearsal for real life, to help us get the tough things right. David Diamond, director of Headlines theatre drives home the importance of these rehearsals:

If a person in a workshop creates a moment, once, I do not believe it has anything to do with "acting". When that person takes on a role, though, and must do the same thing over and over again - hit a mark, get a cue, reach a rehearsed emotional place - this is a performance. In this moment, the citizen becomes an actor, and becoming an actor on the community stage leads to acting in a different way in the community. It leads to a different kind of self- and world-analysis, a more informed internal and external set of actions. For me, this is the essence of community development, and community development is the core of a healthy response to the negative impacts of globalization.

Despite a little difficulty getting started, the audience contribution was amazing. It's rare to see people modeling thoughtful conflict-resolution tactics in real-time, especially when the issues run so deep, especially when the topic is Palestine and Israel. After each intervention, our facilitator, David, would gather the cast together and question them about the relative success of their interventions, whether they created safety for the characters in the scene, and if so, whether that safety came at the expense of other characters. It was fascinating to see what worked and what didn't, and I learned a lot from watching other audience members translate their strategies into action.

Forum theatre is a unique type of dialogue because it's part conversation, part entertainment: it's exactly as engaging as it is meaningful. Throughout the show, David was constantly re-inforcing the idea that it's interventions that contribute to this form, not statements or debate. He wouldn't let audience members participate at all unless they were willing to come up on stage. And you know, at the time, I felt like he was completely ignoring the potential contributions of most of the room. But as the evening unfolded, what emerged was infinitely more valuable than an argument or debate precisely because we didn't get off track. We stayed focused on the characters, and through the characters we explored the issues. And when we were done, then we talked about it (just like in real life!)

The whole event was so refreshing, I can't even explain. Go see their next show -- you won't be disappointed. (And if you are, it's kinda your own fault!)

Some links to visit:

Headlines Theatre

Essay by David Diamond:Creating Community Based Dialogue

Wikipedia entry for Augusto Boal (founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, pre-cursor to forum theatre