Theatre for social change!

Using Theatre of the Oppressed, a method by Augusto Boal, by Maike Koolhaas and Jennifer van Exel

Register: please mail to c.demuijnck@artez.nl
Max. 40 participants
English spoken
Only for ArtEZ-students, ArtEZ students of all departments can participate

The goal of this theatre training is to enhance social inclusion and intercultural exchanges and to have a long lasting impact on participants, so that they can become the catalyst for social inclusion at the school. The training focuses on that lasting effect by using playful enactment of real life scenarios. The TO (Theatre of the Oppressed) theatre method trains a social-inclusive mindset by enhancing the group’s reflection in a hands-on-manner. By enacting real life scenario’s, testing out alternatives for both group- and individual behaviour patterns and ways of expression, the group is engaged in a social learning process. The method engages all the senses. It connects individual as well as collective experiences of the subject matter. Because of those things, the method is well known to intervene on existing personal beliefs and the level of behaviour. Hence the longer-lasting effect on participants of such TO theatre workshops.

Time to Listen, Time to Voice up!
This spring, three sessions of empowerment trainings are being hosted together with the BEAR student platform School of Missing Men, and guest-curated by two of its members: Yuchen Li and Janna van Welsem.

As an artist it is important to make your voice heard. Yet, due to cultural differences and social structures, certain voices are more easily heard than others. How does an artist with a privileged position, or an artist who is less represented, get their points across while taking account of diverse perspectives? How do we gain confidence in listening, sharing, expressing and articulating in a multi-cultural environment? And how does an artist speak up in the face of institutional power? When is it their responsibility to voice out? When is it their responsibility to listen? How do artists find their agency to bring about change in actions of solidarity?

In times when artists are still continuously asked to brand themselves or to have an individual position within the field, we are reexamining this idea by analysing how we relate to each other, through having social awareness and self-reflexivity, active participation and involvement, accountability and encouragement for individual and collective actions.

We aim for these trainings to have long-lasting impact, through which an individual becomes a catalyst for social change in the school environment, as well as, in the work field and everyday life thereafter.