Rainbow of Desire and Joker Training

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20 to 27 October 2018

From spectator to protagonist

A progressive course for practitioners, facilitators and those with a grounding in the fundamental techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed.Ā  This training is designed to enrich and enhance participants confidence, experience and abilities with Boal’s method of theatre and therapy – the Rainbow of Desire – and the opportunity to analyse, deconstruct and embody the central and enigmatic role of the Joker.

ā€œWe must all do theatre – to find out who we are, and to discover who we could become.ā€

– Augusto Boal

In the 1970s junta-era Brazil, Augusto Boal developed forum theatre to help spec-actors explore options in response to external oppressors – cops, landlords, the military, the dictatorship itself. When he fled in exile to Europe, he discovered that the oppressors had ceased to be solely external, and infact had left the barracks and moved into spectactors’ heads, negating the need for a physical oppressor. In response, he used the foundation of Image Theatre to develop a therapeutic theatre to address and explore these cops-in-the-head.

A progressive course for practitioners, facilitators and those with already a solid understanding of the fundamentals and application the arsenal of techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed.Ā  This training is designed to enrich and enhance participants confidence, experience and abilities with Boal’s method of theatre and therapy – the Rainbow of Desire – and the opportunity to analyse, deconstruct and embody the central and enigmatic role of the Joker.

ā€œThe joker has the most responsibility in coordinating the creators, because everyone has to be involved creating. As the joker you have the responsibility to coordinate all the creations and the creators. But you also have to take care not to impose your own view. You are not superior to anybody. You have your opinion, you have your intelligence, you can have all the qualities you have, but you never say I am like this or I have more knowledge of this; that is the basics of it. Why is it called the joker?… A joker, a real joker, is a person who can help the people write a play, help people do the blocking of the play, help the people with the music, with the text, with everything … the responsibility is to learn more and more and know more and more, so that you can teach in many ways. That is a bigger responsibility. But you have to teach in a democratic way, to respect the other ones.ā€

 

This week-long training will explore two fundamental aspects of Boal’s work:

  • Rainbow of Desire – methods for exploring the dynamics of internalised oppression that can reduce our potency for social engagement and community participation, including Cop In The Head, the eponymous Rainbow itself.
  • The Role of the Joker – facilitator and difficultator, a bridge between actors and audience, a mediator and an agitator, a shaman and a trickster. The joker embodies the values, concepts and actions at the heart of the Theatre of the Oppressed, but is never dogmatic about them.

Participants can expect to gain:

  • a good understanding of the application of the introspective techniques and the games and exercises that underpin them
  • critical abilities to assess and enable their skills as a Joker through praxis and peer-review
  • opportunity to Joker a piece of Forum Theatre.
  • key skills needed to use these tools in a variety of situations (e.g. community empowerment, campaign development, group work facilitation, conflict transformation).
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€300/€500/€950

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Sergio

Germany

Location:

Germany

Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ā€˜civic reawakening’ in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.

Linzy Na Nakorn

Location:

Jeroen

Location:

Ella

Location:

Alex Swain

Location:

Nina Scott

Location:

Pròxims Cursos

El nostre Nom

Ulex: del LlatĆ­, (argelaga en catalĆ ) nom:

1. Arbust espinós de fulla perenne i floració, amb gran capacitat de regeneració i resistĆØncia. Les seves pues s’obren en entrar en contacte amb el foc i torna a brollar dels tocones carbonitzats. Planta successional que creix bĆ© en condicions difĆ­cils. Millora la fertilitat del sòl mitjanƧant la fixació de nitrogen, preparant el terreny per a una renovada biodiversitat.

2. Una opció tradicional per a encendre focs. Crema amb intensitat i lluentor.

3. Un projecte en xarxa que aporta nutrició i fertilitat als moviments socials europeus a través de la formació