PTO 2012 Conference Workshops
2012 Pre- and Post-Conference Workshops
3-day Pre-Conference Workshop
Jana Sanskriti Process and Forum Theatre: Scripting Play and Power Instead of Playing the Script
Workshop Facilitators: Sanjoy Ganguly and Sima Ganguly
- Tuesday, May 29, 2012 from 1 pm to 6 pm
- Wednesday, May 30, 2012 from 1 pm to 6 pm
- Thursday, May 31 from 1 pm to 6 pm
- $300
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Sima Ganguly |
Come learn Forum Theatre and other Theatre of the Oppressed techniques as practiced by Jana Sanskriti Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in West Bengal, India. Jana Sanskriti, arguably the largest and longest-lasting Theatre of the Oppressed movement in the world, was deeply admired by the late Augusto Boal. You may be familiar with Jana Sanskriti’s work from the film by documentarian Jeanne Dosse, Jana Sanskriti, a Theatre on the Field, or from Sanjoy Ganguly’s book, Jana Sanskriti: Forum Theatre and Democracy in India. Sanjoy and Sima Ganguly’s trip to PTO 2012 in Berkeley will mark Jana Sanskriti’s 2nd workshop visit in the US. |
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Sanjoy Ganguly
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This exciting three-day workshop will invite participants to script Forum Theatre performances, but under the guidance of two experienced and dynamic facilitators with decades of experience in theatre and in social-movement organizing. In the process of creating the Forum Theatre performances, participants will engage in games and exercises, experiencing those techniques as social metaphors that reveal relationships of power. Together participants will analyze both oppressive and oppressed characters in their complexity. The Forum plays will be structured with the help of the workshop facilitators. Some rehearsal of Forum Theatre will be included as part of the workshop experience. Participants will also likely offer a short presentation of their work during the opening session of the full PTO conference on Thursday night. For more on the exciting work of Jana Sanskriti, you may wish to check out their website: http://www.janasanskriti.org/ Join us to find out more about what has drawn tens of thousands of people to join the work of the powerful, enormous movement that is Jana Sanskriti. |
2-Day Pre-Conference Workshop
Let's Make the Road by Walking: Lessons in Popular Education and Cultural Organizing from the Highlander Center
Workshop Facilitators: Ebony Noelle Golden and Elandria Williams
- Wednesday, May 30: 1 pm - 6 pm
- Thursday, May 31: 11 am - 4 pm
- $200
The vision of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed includes building a movement for justice that reaches across and connects artists, activists, popular educators, and community leaders. That vision starts with people working together. Come share, learn, and create as we dive headfirst into using art and culture as organizing strategies and popular education/Pedagogy of the Oppressed as strategies for creating lifelong change-makers and effective campaigns. We'll explore some key things: What helps people come together? What helps people move together? How do art and culture play key roles? What are the connections between popular education/Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Theatre of the Oppressed? How can these activities grow and change the world? Bring your knowledge of what you have done in your groups and organizations and a willingness to move your body and develop collective art, strategy, and wisdom towards challenging and transforming the oppressive systems in our lives.
The goals for this 2-day workshop are:
- To bring together a diverse group working for social change to talk about popular education and cultural organizing
- To hear from artists, educators, organizers, and activists about ways to help build broader movements for social change
- To enable participants and facilitators to learn from each other about ideas and strategies for social change, both historical and current
- To enable participants to relax, reflect, discuss, and have fun!!
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Elandria Williams |
Elandria Williams is on the Education Team at the Highlander Research and Education Center. She coordinates youth and intergenerational organizing for the Seeds of Fire program and does much of the work around economics and alternative economies. She has been involved in activism and organizing since she was a youth, and worked in popular education and community organizing around anti-oppression, anti-racism, nonviolence, education reform, and intergenerational education with various organizations. She is also on the coordinating committee of the Solidarity Economy Network, Southern Grassroots Economies Project and the Black Immigration Network and is on the board of the Pedagogy of the Theatre of the Oppressed.
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Hailing from Houston, TX, Ebony Noelle Golden is a cultural worker, conceptual performance artist, Cave Canem Fellow and creative director of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC (BDAC). She also serves as artistic director of Body Ecology Performance Ensemble. Through BDAC, Ebony leads and supports progressive culture and arts-based processes that enliven and incite justice and transformation in local communities. Ebony's work spans creative, academic and community organizing spheres, is rooted in radical expressiveness, womanist lifestyle practices and a transformative praxis she developed called Cultural Arts Direct Action. Ebony's current bodies of creative writing and conceptual performance work include: "RingShout for Reproductive Justice with Body Ecology, Collective Sun with SpiritHouse, Project Zanzibar and a poetry collection, "again, the watercarriers." Ebony earned degrees from New York University (M.A.-Performance Studies), American University (M.F.A.-Poetry), and Texas A & M University (B.A.-English/Poetry). |
Ebony Noelle Golden
3-day Post-Conference Workshop
Framing Questions for Forum Theatre
Workshop
Facilitator: Julian Boal
- Sunday, June 3, 2012 from 2 pm to 7 pm
- Monday, June 4, 2012 from 1 pm to 6 pm
- Tuesday, June 5, 2012 from 1 pm to 6 pm
- $300
This workshop will ask: How do you frame a question in Forum Theatre? It is important to remember that Forum Theatre pieces are questions addressed to the audience. The fact that we, the practitioners, don't have the right to answer those questions doesn't lessen our responsibilities in helping frame them. Quite the contrary. All questions are not equally useful, ethical, or responsible in Forum Theatre.
For example, to ask what a specific woman can do at the very moment that she is under the threat of being beaten up by her husband only reinforces the dangerous idea that those who experience relationship violence are somehow personally responsible for doing something to stop their abusers. Using Forum to investigate that moment of aggression potentially invites strategies that reinforce the oppression: leave her husband, find strategy to "cool him down," fight back, etc. To stress the possibility of choosing without questioning the concrete options we do (or don't) have is to fall under the Nike ideology: "Just do it!"
Participants will gain experience with a variety of Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in the process of developing Forum Theatre plays. In those plays the questions are framed in a way that never stresses the individual responsibility but demands answers about how we can organize to change the society that allows and encourages oppression. Part of the third day will be spent practicing some beginning skills for jokering Forum Theatre. The workshop will culminate in a Forum Theatre performance.
All pre-conference and post-conference workshops will occur near the conference location in Berkeley, California. Details about location and local transportation will follow. If you have questions, feel free to email them to ptoconference@gmail.com.