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. 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.
“We must all do theatre – to find out who we are, and to discover who we could become.”
– 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. 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.
“The 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.”
This week-long training will explore two fundamental aspects of Boal’s work:
Participants can expect to gain:
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación