WHO WE ARE
 |
Parteciparte, Rome |
|
Métaforum, Marseille |
|
Les Gri Gri, Comoro Islands (Indian Ocean) |
|
Médin’Oujda, Marocco |
Parteciparte
Parteciparte promotes art as a mean of participation. It gives a part to everybody in the public decisions. It opens theatrical spaces everywhere for anybody to intervene in the political play, to decide change and to rehearse action.
Parteciparte is a group founded in Rome in 2008 by Olivier Malcor and Cinzia Papucci. Since 2009 and 2010 Claudia Signoretti and Alessandra Tolfa have brought very strong skills and lots of energy to the group.
Sergio Covelli, the man who could create a website in a night, is in charge of the image and communication.
Cinzia evaluates training projects for her work and thus brings an expert eye in the building of our project which consists of diffusing forum theatre, facilitating public participation and stimulating active citizenship. She has been involved in TO also in England, Uruguay, France and Brasil.
For 15 years, Olivier has been using participative theatre and performing arts in very diverse contexts and countries: a project about prostitution and language teaching in Madagascar, paedophilia, corruption, malaria, education in the Comoro islands, masculine violence on women and kids in Kenya and in France (Marseille), sexual and reproductive health in Morocco (for more details see what’s been done).
Since 2009 Claudia Signoretti is building projects in schools to tackle patriarchy and gender stereotypes. She leads TO workshops with youngsters and adults about (de/re)construction of gender identity since 2010. With Pangea Onlus she collaborated in writing the CEDAW report about the situation of women’s rights in Italy. This ‘shadow’ report written by civil society, has been presented at the UN in July 2011 and at the Italian Parliament in January 2012. An image theatre version of this report will be presented at the feminine theatre of the oppressed festival to be held in May in Rome.
Since 2010 Alessandra Tolfa brings to Parteciparte her long experience in handling creative activity with youngsters. Her active efforts for women’s rights and her strong involvement in participatory citizenship processes make her a wonderful forum theatre actor and a great joker.
Parteciparte, through international projects has been working on topics like: water as a public wealth, the relationship between northern and southern countries, the sack of the planet, climate change, women’s rights, fear, security and slavery. We facilitated parts of the Rome IIIrd IXth Municipality’s participatory budget with theatrical tools.
The issues we are now focusing on are: the lost of rights for the workers, oppressions against women and slavery for southern or eastern foreigners.
Métaforum is an association based in Marseille. It aims to promote forum theatre, its development, its deepening, its diffusion and international exchanges, particularly around the Mediterranean sea. Metaforum promotes the diverse tools of the theatre of the oppressed and street performing arts as well. We organize meetings, trainings, consultancies to allow groups from any level of practice to discover new techniques, methods, to improve their interventions and impact, and to meet other groups from other countries. We collaborate in that way with groups that already practice forum theatre in Marseille: “ La Cohue” company, the “ Mouvement Français pour le planning familial” and the “Réseau Santé Jeunes” of la Ciotat.
Forum theatre performances are often very dynamic. There’s not always time to analyse everything that happens. That’s why Metaforum proposes studies and research on tricky issues. Our goal is to report everything that emerges during the forum, to clarify the decisions taken and to collect and record people’s proposals so that institutions and relevant people involved in the territory can use these results thoroughly.
Métaforum was created in Marseille in 2008 by Jean Christophe Sevin and Olivier Malcor. The former is a researcher in Anthropology and always shared his knowledge with Olivier, who for 10 years has used forum theatre in very diverse contexts and countries. For further details see what’s been done(link). Since 2007, Olivier is based in Italy where he created Participarte, in Rome.
The Gri-gri is a group youngsters from Comoro Islands (Indian Ocean) that was created during a forum theatre project wich Olivier Malcor organized for Unicef in 2006. Gri-gri continues to perform the plays created during the project which covered issues like paedophilia, corruption, the “bad boy” attitude, malaria, AIDS etc. These issues were tackled in most of the districts of the capital and villages. A second project in 2008 allowed Gri-Gri to expand forum theatre and to create new scenes. It appears the determination of the youngsters is beginning to provide them with recognition and we hope to collaborate again with the “Gri-gri” in the future or to invite them in Europe.
In Comoro islands, Olivier has also worked with the « Niombada » company thanks to a project with the Red Cross. This group of young teachers and educators from a little village has captured the tools in quite an autodidact way, studying in detail the books and texts available on the internet, tackling challenging issues like “coups d’état” or political division that ruins public life in the Comoros. Just like the Gri-gri, Niombada generated considerable enthusiasm at the forum theatre festival we organized at Itsandra in July 2008.
Médin’Oujda is a group created during a training organized by «Ricerca e Cooperazione» in 2009 with the «Planning Familial Marocain». This group of youngsters, volunteers and nurses, works on sexual and reproductive health issues. Their forum play « Ji Liom » (today’s generation) shows the obstacles and taboos affecting sexual education. It also tackles the traps that endanger today’s youth in Oujda, at the Algerian border.
Last summer, very soon after the project was conducted they started to use the forum theatre on the beaches, with great success. They were able to trigger reflection and action on these tricky issues.
