COMMENTED SCENES

This page gives some examples of participatory theatre scenes. These scenes will be commented in order to open a reflection on the conditions required to involve an audience. We don’t publish our most achieved plays ( we play these)  but problematic scenes that will be criticized. Our goal is to trigger debate about the most common errors that do occur when creating a forum play. This page is thus open to commentaries. But you can also post a scene if you want to have a feed back, suggestions or clear some doubts before playing it.

In gold we trust

“in gold we trust” created in Nairobi, Kenya in june 2007 with youth of Mathare slum where was raging a conflict with the ” religious ” mafia Munghiki. The scene  is about the omnipotence of priests accusing anybody unenthusiastic of being possessed by the devil. People have to give all their money if they want to gain heaven and have “peace” in their quarter. Women have to go to the pastors house so that he can make “deep miracles into their body…” this scene is also present on our VIDEO page. It was presented on national TV and was aimed at allowing people to exercise facing these situations.

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Street is London

this scene has been created during a training with educators working with street kids in Accra, Ghana. It was used only for the workshop’s purpose. The social workers were very happy of it since they could face the problems of the kids, take their part. But it was also decided to create a social worker caracter that could be removed, in order to allow street workers to train facing such a situation. this is a bit acrobatic for the Joker to manage, and somewhat heretic in term of pure theatre of the oppressed. Anyway the jokers trying jokering could also face this issue. It is more simple to have a play where only one caracter can be substituted. Another problem, in my opinion is that there’s not much solutions for the girl (Pat). Workers said for them it was full of opportunities, options, at least if one could intervene be it as social worker, and as well as the girl.

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Bad boy club Accra

this scene has been created during a training with educators working with street kids in Accra, Ghana. It shows one possible reason why a kid can end up in the street. This scene was considered by all participants to be very realistic. It seems religion is a great business opportunity in Africa but requires people to demonstrate great fervor. This happens in a christian context, but almost the same scene was created in Comoro, in 2006, in a muslim context. the problem of this scene is that the oppressed, the kid, at a certain point can not be changed anymore, he’s wasted by drugs, it would be magical to remove him. that’s why the social worker intervenes. in fact the participants of the workshop have for everyday job to intervene in such situations. participants have tried jokering on this scene and it worked quite well anyway.

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