Events around the World (As of March 28, 2008)
All events on March 16, 2008
REPORTS ON EVENTS FROM THE JOKERS ARE TO THE RIGHT,
IN THE FINAL COLUMN
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Events around the World (As of March 28, 2008) All events on March 16, 2008REPORTS ON EVENTS FROM THE JOKERS ARE TO THE RIGHT, |
| Country | City | Location | Local Time | Event | Organization | Joker | Email *Please replace [at] with @ and [dot] with . (remove spaces at either side) |
Web site | Short reports from the Jokers |
| Africa | |||||||||
| Mozambique | Maputo | Hospital Psiquiátrico de Infulene - Maputo / Moçambique | TBA | Sarau Cultural | GTO-Maputo and RETEC-Mozambican Community Theatre Network | Alvinzinho Cossa | gtomaputo [at] gmail [dot] com | NO REPORT OR DESCRIPTION SENT | |
| Burkina Faso | Ouagadougou | TBA | TBA | TBA | Atelier Théatre Bourkinabé | Prosper Kampaoré | proskom [at] fasonet [dot] bf | http://desik.free.fr/ATB | NO REPORT OR DESCRIPTION SENT |
| Asia | |||||||||
| Pakistan | Lahore | Sindh Museum Hall, District Hyderabad | all day and also the 17th | 7th Interactive Theatre Festival | Interactive Resource Center | Mohammad Waseem Waseem | irc [at] irc [dot] org [dot] pk | In solidarity with the jokers of the world, we organized a two-day interactive theatre festival in Sindh Museum Hall, Hyderabad on March 16 and 17, 2008. The first day of the festival (March 16) focused on issues related to global warming and environment while the second day discussed the issue of bonded labour. Mohammad Waseem was the joker of the festival. On the first day, M. Waseem briefed some 500 spec-actors about the global action against global warming. The interactive theatre groups namely Sujag Sansar Theatre Group of District Dadu, Sindh; Channan Theatre Group of District Lahore, Punjab and Murk Theatre Group of District Hyderabad, Sindh performed on the first day. Channan Theatre Group performed on the lack of local government planning to properly dispose of solid waste and its consequent problems on the lives of the people. Sujag Sansar discussed cutting of trees in District Dadu and its subsequent affects on agriculture and livestock. Murk Theatre Group's play revolves around a threat to one of the biggest natural lake in Asia, Manchar due to disposing of excessive factory waste in it. |
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| India | Ahmedabad, Gujarat | Hardasnagar - Bapunagar | 11:00 AM | Dharti no Dushman/Dharti no Mitra (Enemy of the Earth/Friend of the Earth) | Vidya Educational & Charitable Trust | Manisha Mehta | manishasmehta [at] hotmail [dot] com | www.vidyaindia.org/ | Through theatre we provided people with the awareness on what is global warming and what are its negative impacts on human life and the environment. 1st workshop: at Hardas Nagar - Bapu Nagar. This workshop was a success. The community members enjoyed the workshop and wanted such a workshop again. 2nd workshop: at Silver Mill. In this community, women and child labour are prominent; the community is known for incense making. Approximately 150 women and 50 children participated. Many of the women covered their faces with their saris. Firstly, a discussion was held: the friend of the earth is a tree while the enemy of the earth is pollution. Through image work and different exercises, members drew scenes. A discussion was conducted on the change in weather, such as increased heat, cold weather, rain and its negative impacts on human life; how it has led to an increase in new diseases and in the number of deaths. Ten to fifteen years ago people were not aware of what global warming was. The participants wish to have a plant in front of their homes although their community is congested, they will plant plants by their homes. Oravar Power Saver Company demonstrated how to save power and become energy efficient. Incense making labourers felt that they should wear masks to cover their faces and gloves over their hands to protect their lungs and hands from the ill effects of their work. |
| Malaysia | Kuala Lumpur | Mega Kidz, Mid Valley City | 11-12:30 Sat 15th, possible 16th also | What is 'Global warming'? | Drama Kidz | Nicole Fuchs | abigail_barragry [at] yahoo [dot] com [dot] uk | 'What is Global Warming?' was a question that most of the children could not answer before the session. Staring blank faces all round was the response as the workshop opened. By the end of the session, this group of 6-11 year olds not only knew what the issue was, who it affected and how, but more importantly they could tell you exactly what they were doing to help. The workshop included themed charades, creating commercials to stop global warming, and acting out their dream job with and without electricity (and both the rock star and the surgeon encountered more than a few problems the second time around!!) Finally, a tale of tragedy was created about what could happen if we don't address this issue. Tragedy in the form of a polar bear, a hunter, a melting glacier and a giant tidal wave. Thank goodness the story was not yet true and could still be changed and re-told! With interventions from the children, like ways to conserve electricity, this tragedy was avoided and the tale ended with much happier consequences. The final conclusions from the group was that this issue could affect each of their lives, in what they do and what they see. With a few simple changes made by each individual, the combined effect could have the power to change their future, and ultimately, that of the planet. |
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| Kazakhstan | Almaty | KIMEP University | 1:00 - 5:00 PM | Talking Back | Kazakhstan English Language Theater | Jacyntha England | jengland48 [at] hotmail [dot] com | We had a very successful event in Almaty, Kazakhstan. A group of 20 students from the local university, KIMEP, got together with a group of 10 international residents who are concerned about environmental and political issues in Kazakhstan. We workshopped Rainbow of Desire
with a focus on climate change for about 2 hours, and what came out, interestingly enough, were not only peoples' frustrations with the environmental situation in Almaty (it was recently named one of the world's five most polluted cities, and being right next door to China we also inherit their pollution) but also the lack of power that both citizens and residents in this country feel. Kazakhstan is one of the most notoriously corrupt and dictatorial systems in the world, and bringing about change - even on something as vital as climate change - can seem very discouraging if not impossible. With these issues in mind, the group decided to create plays about confronting the power system in Kazakhstan and practice forum theater on the plays. We spent another 2 hours working on the plays and making interventions. I was particularly moved and impressed by the depth of the students' responses and the reflections this brought out amongst the international residents, who often give up on Kazakhstan. By the end of the day, we felt we had brainstormed and discovered some very powerful and proactive ways to work on grassroots environmental change and awareness at both a community and governmental level. I was particularly thrilled, as this was the first time Boal's work had ever been used in Almaty, and the level of interest showed me that there are numerous opportunities for this work to continue - all you need are a few dedicated, creative and courageous individuals to form a community of hope. |
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| Afghanistan |
Kabul | Undisclosed | Undisclosed | Nothing is the same | In collaboration with ANAD and HBF | Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn | hjalmar [at] hoi-polloi [dot] org | Report not submitted for reasons of security. | |
| Australia/Oceana | |||||||||
| Australia | Perth | Murray Street Mall in downtown | 1:00 to 4:00 PM | We are the World... of Global Warmers | ACT OUT | Erika Jacobson | erikadakini [at] yahoo [dot] com [dot] au | We are the World ... of Global Warmers got off to a great start with a small but friendly crowd of invited audience gathering around the performance space which was right in the centre of a busy open mall in down town Perth. It was an ambitious enterprise and had many challenging moments; however, we were able to elicit two main stories from the audience and act out the voices of their inner struggle. The passing crowd was not unkind and although reluctant to step too close to the performance space they did gather in waves and there was plenty of participation from the invited audience. The first story was about air-conditioning, one we could all relate to while standing in the 30 degree heat, the other about activism and came from a passer by who really got people watching. Because of the changing crowd, I had to keep explaining what was going on and what was special about the day, so quite a lot of people heard that it was Boal's birthday, that this was an international event and that this was a type of theatre that allowed us to look at ourselves and our behaviours. Overall, my goals were met, and that was to use the public space and to use participatory theatre techniques to engage the public on a social issue. It was an excellent beginning, and although there is plenty to adapt and fine tune in order for this to work in a public space, I was stoked to have taken a first step. |
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| Australia | Brisbane | BCC Brisbane Square Library theatrette, cnr of George St, Adelaide St. | 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM | Joker's international day of action on global warming - Brisbane event | D:create | Deanna Borland-Sentinella | d [dot] create [at] hotmail [dot] com | http://www.visible-ink.org | Around 30 people came together. We explored the story of that moment when you step over a piece of rubbish on the street and the internal dialogue we have with ourselves about "should I pick it up?" The voices we recognised being in our heads were things like "but there's always going to be so much more rubbish" "I want to just ignore it" and "I'm exhausted I need to focus on getting home." In our particular story the layer of seeing the person behind you "do the right thing and put it in the bin" added depth to the exploration - the feelings of shame and frustration for not taking responsibility for picking up the rubbish on your path. When we finished exploring this process of 'cops in the head' early we went on to use more image theatre techniques to explore the implications of someone throwing a cigarette out the window (during a time of drought) and what motivates this action. A very successful event, which involved deep listening and sharing between everyone in the room….and continued on over food afterwards (including a cake so we could sing happy birthday to Boal!). |
| Australia | Melbourne | High St, Northcote | 11:00 AM | 40 days, degrees, droughts, rising costs of food and fuel: The face of climate change. | Third-Way Theatre in partnership with Rehearsals for Life and Takin'UP Space Project. Proceeds to The Friends of the Merri Creek and CERES |
Xris Reardon | theatre [at] vic [dot] chariot [dot] net [dot] au or xris [at] alphalink [dot] com [dot] au |
www.thirdwaytheatre.org | A series of small group explorations related to climate change took place in Australia using mainly TO Techniques. In these dynamic conversations, individuals 'openly explored' how their existing ways of living are heavily reliant on non-renewable resources. People talked with their bodies (replaced cops and/or fears and desires) exploring the practical ways they live: Single parents getting their children to school by car, 'choosing' not to take (four) kids on bikes. A woman, who has long baths / showers as a means of coping with her deep anxiety who is concerned about what she is role modelling to her children; in relation to concerns about the drought. Through these explorations people touched on a range of 'feelings' that produced feelings including; a sense of grief, hopelessness, rage, despair and impotency. Questions then arose about climate change solutions which were felt to be pre-formulated. i.e. stop driving the car, stop having baths, organise car pooling. Some people saw that ready-made solutions are part of the problem, part of the Cops in our Heads. The wonder of the space was in creating, for a moment, the opportunity for people to hold climate change and reflect on the fact that right now we don't have solutions. These realisations called on a desire to go deeper somewhere that moved away from pre-formulated ideas into a greater unknown, which people understood as involving time, resources and relationships. Out of this exploration people were welcomed to keep working together towards a FORUM production on Climate Change to take place at the end of the year. For more info contact Xris at email to the left. |
| Australia | Bega | St Johns Church Hall | 6:00 PM | Parts Per Million - a forum theatre performance | In conjunction with: Clean Energy For Eternity | Robin Davidson | robin [at] co-operista [dot] com | www.robindavidson.co-operista.com | Parts Per Million was a short forum theatre performance held in a church hall in the small town of Bega in south-eastern NSW, and home of the very successful NGO Clean Energy For Eternity. Seven actors workshopped using image theatre and other techniques and developed two short forums in a very short time. Both pieces were about impediments to the development of alternative energy. Unfortunately, the audience turnout was very low- Bega is unused to performance happening on a Sunday. Ironically, the other reason people stayed away was becasue the day was so unseasonally hot... Nevertheless the process was successful, I learnt a great deal as a joker and Clean Energy For Eternity are interested in further projects using Forum theatre. Photos at: http://www.robindavidson.co-operista.com/ |
| Central/South America | |||||||||
| Brasil | Rio de Janeiro | Parque do Flamengo | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Dia Mundial do Teatro do Oprimido com Augusto Boal - 77 Anos de Cidadania | Centre do Teatro do Oprimado do Rio de Janeiro | all Jokers of CTO Rio | flaviosanctum [at] ctorio [dot] org [dot] br | www.ctorio.org.br | We had prepared a programme for the Aterro do Famengo, a beautiful public Garden, but the bad weather made us move into our own house, a Casa do Teatro do Oprimido, in Lapa. |
| Brasil | Guarulhos | Bosque Maia | 10:00 AM | Oficina de Técnica do Teatro do Oprimido | TOGRU - Núcleo de Teatro do Oprimido em Guarulhos | todos os curingas do TOGRU | meireromano@terra.com.br | NO REPORT OR DESCRIPTION SENT | |
| CTO - Rio: Quadro sinóptico da mobilização para o 16 de março | |||||||||
| Local | Horário | Atividades | Responsável | ||||||
| Largo da Ribeira - Olinda / PE | 16h - 21h |
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Pressão no Juízo | ||||||
| Praça da Várzea - Recife / PE | 10h - 13h |
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Isabel Fernanda | ||||||
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16h - 21h |
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FTO Londrina | ||||||
| Parque municipal - Praça Sete Belo Horizonte / MG | TBA | Apresentação itinerante | Meire Regina | ||||||
| TBA | TBA |
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Multiplicadores do TO em Fortaleza / CE | ||||||
| Aterro do Flamengo | 10h |
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CTO-Rio | ||||||
| Europe | |||||||||
| Italy | Rome | Centro Italiano di Solidarietà di Roma | all day | Was hat das mit mir zu tun? (What has it got to do with me?) | spectACT - Association for socio-political Theatre | Armin Staffler | ars_staffler [at] yahoo [dot] com | www.spectACT.at | For two years a small group of Theatre people, teachers and therapists from Germany, Austria and Italy have come together to discuss and experience the benefits of theatre. This time we used the Jokers' Day of Action on Global Warming to try out a Rainbow of Desire to discover insights in our attitudes towards issues of Climate Change, Global Warming, Environment and our behaviour regarding these issues. The exercises led to understandings of the interconnection between personal comfort, limitations of our capacity to act, the need for feeling safe, the wish for group activities, the question of being observed when e.g. separating garbage or not, the tendency to run away and ignore the issue, the question of rapidity of change (personal and climatic). The Rainbow of Desire then showed a woman on her way home at night: She wants to be safe therefore she needs light. But she also is aware that there's too much light in our nights. ("light pollution", "the illuminated planet") She wants to get home as quickly as possible. She wants to fight darkness. She wants to go home cheerfully. She wants to save light (and energy). The different versions of that lead to greater discussions about: the benefits of electricity and other accompaniments of our affluent society and how we got used to them, are addicted to them and don't want to miss them anymore. One idea out of the workshop was to install streetlamps that react on movement to serve the desire for getting home in a save way and darkness during the time when there's no need for light... |
| Wales | Fishguard | Theatr Gwaun, West Street | 3:00 PM | Think Globally - Act Locally | Theatr Fforwm Cymru | Gill Dowsett | info [at] theatrfforwmcymru [dot] org [dot] uk | We worked with Transition Bro Gwaun, a local environmental pressure group, to create forum theatre which looked at the barriers to getting involved in "green" issues. The resultant piece of theatre focussed on a young person's perspective - probably a result of involving our successful young people's forum theatre group Base 64 - but crossed generational barriers, looking as it did at our reactions to activism, at smugness and guilt, misinformation and ennui, passion and defensiveness amongst many other emotional responses. The small but perfectly formed audience (a reassuring 3 times the average audience for live theatre at Theatr Gwaun) was involved, animated and engaged - and stayed on to view a small exhibition celebrating 15 years of Theatr Fforwm Cymru. | |
| Wales | Dinas Cross | TBA | TBA | TBA | Sensory Labyrinth Community Theatre | Iwan Brioc | iwan [at] cynefin [dot] org [dot] uk | www.cynefin.org.uk | NO REPORT OR DESCRIPTION SENT |
| Denmark | Nykøbing Falster | Building D, University College Sjælland, Bispegade 54800 Nyk. F. | noon - 4:00 PM | How is the weather today? (From values clarification to legislative theatre) |
Marygold InterActive Theatre | Marie Ebbesen | [dot] Ebbesen Marie [dot] Ebbesen [at] cvusyd [dot] dk | "How is the Weather Today" ended up consisting of a small group (joker + students) working intently for 4 hours creating sheets with relevant questions for values clarification on the theme "Global Warming", which were hung up all over campus for the social-worker, nurse and social-education students to read and think about when they returned from holiday. Yesterday was the first day after the Easter-holiday, and people are beginning to notice, think and comment. | |
| Denmark | Copenhagen | Magdas, Louis Pios Gade 8, 2450 Copenhagen SV | 3:00 - 5:00 PM | Action on Global Warming | RiffRaff Theater | Nonny Sand | riffraff [at] riffraff [dot] dk | www.riffraff.dk | Denmark had a very nice teatime discussion in Magdas, about things people do, that destroy the world. |
| Germany | München | http://www.einewelthaus.de/ | 2:00 - 6:00 PM (open stage 8:00 - 10:00 PM) | 2º voll Angst und Verlangen | Paulo-Freire-Gesellschaft | Fritz Letsch | fritz [dot] letsch [at] gmail [dot] com | www.paulofreireberlin.org/ | Thank you for the fine inspiration to do this workshop. We started in a little group and ended with a deep feeling to go on, so the day was very impressive and started a new group. |
| UK | Wirral | New Brighton Dips | 2:00 PM | THE RAINBOW OF DE-SKY | No Nonsense Theatre | Liz Fitzgerald-Taylor & Lisa O'Hanlon | Lztylrs [at] aol [dot] com | NO REPORT SENT Eco-friendly fun to release your inner-child! Bring your kite (or anything else that blows in the wind) | |
| Austria | Vienna | Stephen's Cathedral/ Kärtner Street - Vienna City Centre | 2:00 - 3:00 PM | Vienna goes wild | Theatre of the Oppressed, Vienna |
Alina Serban | office [at] tdu-wien [dot] at | www.tdu-wien.at | vienna did go wild! participation was around 30 people. althought it was a rainy sunday, the spect-actors stopped to watch us and were interested in the topic and we had good feed-back! the initiative was very good for us, because we got courage to come out in the open and we thank headlines for the challenge! and thank you for getting us all together! |
| France | Mougins | In a forest | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM | Global warming conscientization | Les Echomédiens | Michaël Davignon | echomediens [at] gmail [dot] com | http://echomediens.free.fr/ | We had 15 participants and three stages to the event: |
| Turkey | Istanbul | Rengahenk Sanatevi - Olivo Han Gecidi, Olivo Han No:5 Kat: 2 Beyoglu | 5:00 PM | Waiting for Two Degrees- Iki Dereceyi Beklerken | Tiyatro Boyali Kus | Jale Karabekir | jalekara [at] tnn [dot] net | We were very excited... The room was full of young people! First of all, we showed the campaign film of global warming, Gaia… It was very powerful to see the 'facts' on the screen. Then the event continued in the other room, the spectators moved to the other room where the performers and the musician acted out a scene of 'the future world', where there would be silence, fear, desperation, migration, dryness, death… The forum theatre piece was about the systematic disinformation on global warming in Turkey. The scene was on the oppression created by the environmental engineering professor, who thought that there is no global warming. In the exam questions, the students who wrote that greenhouse gases are the causes of global warming had failed. There were approximately ten interventions took place in the forum. Many issues like systematic disinformation on global warming, how & why the scientists in Turkey are opposing this fact, the economic and political aspects, why we should sign the Kyoto Protocol (Turkey and US are the only ones who has not signed yet!) were discussed through the spect-actor' interventions. It was lovely that other TO practitioners were with us: Luciano Iogna from Canada, Nihal Kuyumcu from Istanbul, Ozge Tomruk from Germany. Their energies really fed us! |
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| Turkey | Ankara | Öteki Tiyatro, GMK Bulvari. No: 114/C Maltepe | TBA | MASQUERADE/21 "Don't Heat the World Anymore" - dedicated to Kazim "Dina" Koyuncu murdered by state |
Theater Underground | Hakan Altun | hakan [at] yeralti [dot] gen [dot] tr | NO REPORT OR DESCRIPTION SENT | |
| Austria | Wien (Vienna) | Graben & Kärntner Straße, downtown Vienna | 2:00 - 3:00 PM | Umweltsäue | kollektivtheater wien | Christian Mokricky | kollektivtheater [at] verweigert [dot] at | http://www.arge-forumtheater.at/ | On March 12 in the afternoon, stormy cold weather in downtown vienna, we showed images and short tracks about global warming, footprint, piggishness, consumtion, animal husbandry, dump fying. in some scenes we use swine masks to imagine the clime agressiv behavior of greedy societies. Mostly young people and tourists were interested and we gave them flyers with the websiteadreesses of jokers international day against global warming. |
| Croatia | Zagreb | TBA | 7:00 PM | Forum Theatre with Zagreb Youth Theatre | Zagreb's Youth Theatre | Ivana Marijancic | marijancic [at] yahoo [dot] com | We did two Forum scenes made and played by 14 year old pupils who are new participants in Zagreb Youth theatre. In the audience of 30 were mostly their parents and not one of them had ever seen this kind of theatre. I succeeded to challenge the audience to actively participate and to bring closer to them Boal's way of working, and also to raise awareness of how much we take care of the environment. The audience jumped into roles of parents in the scene. There were several interesting interpretations of a man who is in a powerful position and has a "bad" daughter, and how much he cares for the environment. The event on 16th March was a very good trigger to move things farther because we got three new invitation to play scenes in other locations. |
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| Germany |
Marburg | Alte Mensa | 1:30 PM | Ich und der Klimawandel, ein Theaterworkshop mit dem Regenbogen der Wünsche | TheaterGegenstand in Kooperation mit der Heinrich Böll Stiftung Hessen e.V. | Helmut Wiegand | mr [dot] domnik [at] gmail [dot] com | www.theater-gegenstand.de | We had 13 Participants from various backgrounds coming together to focus on how climatechange affect on our daily life. After some games for warming up, imagination and trust we started with different technics of imagetheatre. The issues came out of the group and it was all about big, global problems related to climate change. In a second step we created images on how the main issue climatechange is related to our daily life. And then finally the group created two rainbow of desires. Both improvised scenes where related to "what and how much can we do?" The participants all where very happy about the workshop at the end, one women said, that when she saw the invitation, she was happy about a theatre workshop but annoyed by the issue. By participating she was not only very energized at the end but also found a personal access top that issue. Being stressed by it through media and greenactivist to often she didnt wanted to think about it any more. But through the images and her participation in the rainbows she has a own relation to climatechange again. Two other participants who are organizing a education camp with the issue climatechange in june 2008 discovered new aspects of that issue and went out the workshop space with new motivation and conviction on there activities. All together it was a goof workshop, we could have had more participants but for those who came, it was a good time. |
| Moldova | Chisinau | Charity Centre for Refugees, Chisinau | 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM | Warming-up minds for a Cooler Globe | Initiative group of Participatory Drama practitioners | Lilia Raileanu | liliarai2002 [at] yahoo [dot] com | 21 representatives of organizations and schools from 8 towns and villages of Moldova: Participatory Drama/Social Theatre practitioners, animators for children and youth groups, human rights activists and representatives of ecological organizations participated in the workshop. It was the first time for practitioners to address the issue of Global Warming and also the first time to be in a common debate with Ecologists. The group developed very fast its level of expression and despite the fact that it was planned to use just Image Theatre, after creating 3 different "slide-show scenes", the group was ready to develop one of them deeper and elements of Forum Theatre were applied. The problematic topics which showed up were related to pollution, ignorance, corruption; and the solutions debated involved raising awareness on the issue, being informed about legislation, perseverance in solving the ecological issues, use of creative methods to advocate and lobby in this field, and to address the court when the law is obeyed. The participants expressed their wish to continue the debate, involving also the personal daily-life level and to initiate an in-depth collaboration with ecologists. The participants expressed their solidarity with Jokers from other countries and their "Happy birthday!" wishes to Augusto Boal. Two birthday cakes were there! |
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| Sweden | Stockholm | meeting at Skånegatan 90 | 10:30 AM | Stop the global warming! | T.O of Sweden / FTS in Sweden | as many as possible | katrin [dot] byreus [at] bonetmail [dot] com | We were a group from T.O of Sweden who made a more or less spontaneous street theatre with images on Global Warming at Slussen in Stockholm together with talking to people around us about how to reduce global warming and save the world. We collected advices like: Use train instead of plane; Stick to your old models of television sets and mobile phones; don't consume so much; buy locally produced food; use buses instead of cars; etc! At the same time we talked about Forum Theatre all over the world this day and about Augusto Boal's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008. Nice to hear about Headlines' café program. We have got inspiration from you and are planning to do something similar in Stockholm soon. | |
| Croatia | Pula | Istrian National Theatre | 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM | Forum theatre morning | Croatian Centre for Drama Education - Branch Istra | Marijana Persic and Aleksandar Bancic | sbancic [at] mac [dot] com | We were very unlucky on the Day of Action. The same day was Palm Sunday (the catholic holiday) and a lot of people went to church because it is a traditional holiday. So, just 6 people joined us. We discussed the problem of a local dump planned to be expanded and contested by local people. And we made some images on the impact of this problem on everiday life. News about this event was published in the major local newspaper (Glas Istre) and a local news web site (www.gradpula.com). Plus we were guests on the radio station Radio Pula | |
| Estonia | Tallinn | around the whole town | 3:00 - 5:00 PM | Your Little Action Counts | VAT Theatre Forum Group | Mari-Liis Velberg and 7 other group members | mariliis [at] vatteater [dot] ee | http://www.vatteater.ee | The aim was to make a little gesture to people, that walk around in the Old Town of Tallinn - which is the capital city of Estonia - and to share the idea of global warming and EVERY person's little action, that has connection to the condition of our planet. Our aim was to touch the issue - OVERCONSUMING. We had 8 people who practice Forum Theatre spread into pairs and walking freely around in Old Town and make contact with people. Pairs asked people if they have anything with them (in bag, pocket or elsewhere), that they ACTUALLY DON'T NEED. We offered to people to free them from things they don't actually need and spread the idea that overconsuming as such, really exists. We then gathered the things, people found unnecessary into big black trash bags and put these as an exhibition on the Town Square. We made Images on the Square on the topic of these items, and sang songs and played games on the theme of the day. The things that were actually possible to keep using, we took to the recycling centre. |
| North America | |||||||||
| Canada | Vancouver, BC | Café Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive | 7:00 PM | 2º of Fear and Desire | Headlines Theatre | David Diamond | info [at] headlinestheatre [dot] com | www.headlinestheatre.com | This was the final of thirteen "2º of Fear and Desire" events in and around Vancouver. About 130 people packed into the 100 seat cafe. We used Cops in the Head, not to convince other people to make change, but to investigate our own internal blockages to making core behavioural change around the global warming issue. The story, offered by an audience member, involved a young woman who had recently received her Degree in Geology and is being scouted for work by Shell Oil. It is a great career opportunity and she has debt, must pay her rent, etc., but she doesn't want to work for an oil company and contribute to global warming through her work. The "Cops" in her head include her father, telling her if she doesn't accept the job, she will live in poverty; her Geology Professor, telling her she has worked so hard for this, jobs in the oil industry are just starting to open up for women and so she has a responsibility to grab onto it; and the recruiting officer, telling her if she accepts the job, maybe she can affect change from within. We had a very lively two-and a half hour evening, exploring many different aspects of the issue, and ways to deal with these internal voices in both the individual and the collective psyches. "2º of Fear and Desire was the most profound activism I have ever witnessed." (Molly Caron, audience member) |
| Canada | Owen Sound, ON | Owen Sound Farmers' Market | 12:30 PM | 2º of Fear and Desire | Sheatre | Joan Chandler | sheatre [at] sheatre [dot] com | www.sheatre.com | NO REPORT SENT Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" meets Augusto Boal's "Rainbow of Desire". See the presentation of Gore's powerful expose on global warming and then engage in a community workshop that investigates the blockages we face in making core behavioural change in our lives in relation to climate issues. |
| Canada | Vancouver, BC | Grind and Gallery Coffee Bar 4152 Main St. at King Edward Avenue |
6:00 - 8:00 PM | Cool it! | Accomplices in Social Change Collective | Nora Reynoso | cerecero [at] telus [dot] net | NO REPORT SENT Mainly through image theatre, the objective of the event is going to be to bring awareness to the exploration of the barriers that prevent us from consistently taking action towards resolving the eminent problem of climate change in our planet. | |
| Canada | Kitchener, ON | Waterloo Regional Children's Museum at 10 King St. W. | 2:00 PM | WARMER Interactive Human Exhibit | The Earthling Collective | Tanya Williams | scrappywilliams [at] yahoo [dot] ca | www.contactimprov.ca/on/kw/warmer.htm | A woman with a "button" appears and comes to life to facilitate playback theatre where the audience is asked to share a moment when they were aware of climate change. One very small girl in a very small voice tells us how she is angry that the chimpanzees are losing their homes in Africa because all the trees are being cut down. The actors and musicians reflect her story back to her. This is a very powerful moment. Then the group flocks over to another area where they participate in a forum theatre play where a 10 year old boy (played by one) asks his father to drive him to his friend's house to work on a project for school. The father is watching a television show about climate change and does not want to drive him. The boy's mother enters the scene and wants the father to drive him, as well. This scene is interrupted by four cops in the father's head who essentially say 1) What's the point? You can't save the world in one car trip! 2) Everyone else is driving. The city is designed for the car. Do you want your son to be a loser? 3) Don't be so doom and gloom and cause an argument. Look how tired your wife is. 4) You drive plenty. You are a hypocrite. Practice what you preach! At the end of the scene the cops all talk at once in his head until he takes the car keys that his wife is holding up in front of him and tells his son to come get in the car. His son thanks him and asks if they can stop at McDonald's along the way, as he's starving. There are many great interventions from people of all ages. Some of the interventions are acted out by members of the Earthling Collective for children who are too shy to come up, but have an idea. One memorable intervention was a man, a father himself, coming up to invite his son to come outside and dig a garden with him. Although it confused the character of the son somewhat, it surprised him and all of us with the idea that the father could "cultivate" a different kind of relationship and way of being with his son, ie. being together outside, rather than watching TV. The performance-exhibit ends with another round of playback theatre that plays back the audience's impressions of the performance-exhibit. Overall the performance-exhibit was successful, though we found the venue was a challenging one with a lot of ambient noise and distraction. We plan to revise and perform it again for Living Earth Week on April 19th in an environment that will support the quality of focused intention and attention that we think would also support the audience to take more risks. |
| Canada | Toronto, ON | Concord Café, 937 Bloor Street West | 8:00 PM | TBA | In Forma Theatre | Adam Perry and Sara Escott | if [dot] theatre [at] gmail [dot] com | Our show "Squashamole! The True Cost of Things", was a major success. We had a full house - at capacity! We did a mix of newspaper theatre and forum theatre. We had over an hour of forum interventions. We had someone filming it and a short discussion afterwards. For a lot of audience members this was the first time that they had seen a show like this. Many people were incredibly inspired. In the near future we will have photos and a video clip of our show on our web site.
Thanks to Headlines Theatre and Adam Ward for initiating this amazing event. Happy birthday Augusto. |
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| Canada | Hamilton, ON | Global Citizen Conference at McMaster University in the MDCL building - Room: 1108 | 10:30 -11:20 AM | ECO-Theater: A Participatory Theatre Production on Global Warming | Theatre of Liberation Community Project | Simon Solomon | citizensimon [at] yahoo [dot] ca | The event was a passionate and highly dedicated group of seven. Yes, we expected to have a few more people; nevertheless, there was an energetic, creative exchange of ideas. We used many games found in the books, Theatre for Living (David Diamond) and Games for Actors and Non-actors (Augusto Boal). These games inspired an informative exploration of what we as citizens can do to continue to bring about greater awareness of global warming within our community. Much was shared, plenty was learned and lots of fun was had by all.
Pictures and video were taken to document parts of the ECO-Theatre event - we ended up calling the event a workshop/open rehearsal. We originally thought we would have a play to perform, but since we did not have a participatory play, the Theatre of Liberation Collective decided we would still explore issues related to both global warming and the participatory theatre process. This was done with games and exercises that garnered theatrical material with the Theatre of Liberation Collective's future goal in mind - to organize several participatory forum theatre events related to global warming Our next theatre piece will take place on Earth Day in APRIL in Hamilton, Ontario. |
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| Canada | Winnipeg, MB | University of Winnipeg (room TBA) | 7:30 PM | 2 Degrees of Adaptation: A Rainbow/Cops Event | Act Now! Theatre Co with Ecomafia | Daniel Thau-Eleff / Loc Lu | actnowtheatre [at] gmail [dot] com | We led a Cops in the Head exercise called "Two Degrees of Adaptation: Tackling Climate Change Through Theatre." We had about 20 people in attendance. In the story the audience chose, a man was doing research about his carbon emissions and discovered that the most polluting thing he does is visiting his sister, who lives in France. His moment of realization became the show. The cops included a "finger pointer" calling him a "climate piggy," a pleading character and a "bing! I've got an idea" character. Ideas that came up included: going to visit every four years instead of every two but staying twice as long, combining this trip with his business trips, and many more. There were audience interventions for the main character as well as for one of the cops. Loc and I opened the show with an interpretive dance to Michael Jackson's Heal the World, we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Augusto Boal - it was a good time! |
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| Canada | Calgary, AB | Premiere screening on web site (see address at right) | On demand from 7:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time. | Oilsands Watch: An Interactive Web Cinema Game | Sundial Media | Lori Shyba | lori [dot] shyba [at] shaw [dot] ca | www.sundialmedia.com | Augusto Boal issued a challenge in Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics, the challenge being: "Comparing your own city or country with Rio De Janeiro or Brazil, do you believe it would b possible to carry out an analogous experiment?" Boal fought for agrarian reform and acquired rights for land in Brazil, and Oilsands Watch, my analogous experiment, fights for energy industry reform where, as Al Gore so eloquently phrased in his Live Earth manifesto, we "Fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependency on oil." Episode One of Oilsands Watch was launched online on March 16, 2008 as an interactive Quicktime movie on my web site www.sundialmedia.com Oilsands Watch is based on a forum theatre play I produced in 2007 called Spies in the Oilsands which pits the big money/big oil scenario of turbo-capitalist progress against the environmentally conscious practices of sustainability in the Alberta Oilsands. Further episodes will be posted on a regular basis over the next months so stay tuned. It has been an honour to be involved with this endeavour and it's magnificent that we have the power to create awareness and make change in this vibrant community we can call Mother Earth. |
| Canada | Cawston, BC | Cawston Community Hall Main Street |
1:00 to 4:00 PM | Joker's International Day of Action on Global Warming | Similkameen Theatre Crafts | Dave Cursons | d_dale [at] nethop [dot] net | We had a small turnout on Sunday afternoon at the Cawston Hall in the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia, Canada. Just seven people. We did a few exercises in "Rainbow of Desire" and "Cops in the Head" to give folks a sense of the work, and then went forth and enjoyed the rest of a the sunny Sunday afternoon in the country. | |
| Canada | Victoria, BC | University of Victoria, Fraser Building, Student Lounge |
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Cool Strategies for a Warming World |
Puente Theatre | Lina de Guevara | lina-pts [at] telus [dot] net | www.puentetheatre.ca | In Victoria, PUENTE Theatre founder, Lina de Guevara facilitated a "theatre of the oppressed" workshop at the University of Victoria. De Guevara guided an intimate and energetic group through the workshop, utilizing "image" and "forum theatre" techniques designed to illicit both intuitive and analytical interpretations the complex issues regarding climate change. Various dialogues, written by members of UVic's Environmental Law Club—who co-hosted the event—led the workshop's actors and "spectactors" through a series of contemporary and common environmental conflicts, ranging from paper waste , to energy consumption, to BC's recently announced carbon tax policy. This unique event was, without question, a hit amongst attendees. As one participant mused: "The event was challenging, yet rewarding. I felt a real solidarity with this community of actors, and a renewed enthusiasm to effect environmental change." |
| USA | Port Townsend, WA | Masonic Hall (corner of Jefferson and Van Buren) | 7:00 PM | Save the Earth - Save Ourselves | Mandala Center for Change in association with Local 20/20 and Climate Action Outreach | Marc Weinblatt | info [at] mandalaforchange [dot] com | www.mandalaforchange.com | 40 people, (out of a population of 8,500) from youth to elders and mostly people at least somewhat if not highly educated on the issues, attended this interactive performance by the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble - the Mandala Center's multi-generational (currently ages 15-80) troupe who use a combination of T.O. and Playback Theatre to generate dialogue on burning social issues in the community. We used Image Theatre and several Playback structures to draw material from the audience, then Cops-in-the-Head and Forum to brainstorm ways to work through and explore ways towards more effective action. The main themes voted on by the audience for "Cops" were: To ride or not to ride (a bike), To take or not to take (the bus), To fly or not to fly (a plane), To be or not to be (an activist.) The audience chose the latter with the initial scene presenting a person who deletes an e-mail requesting she call her senators to support a bill around global warming. The audience wanted her (themselves) to make the call. Cops voices included: "You don't have the time." "It won't make any difference." "You'll end up on their (the FBI's) list!" And most overwhelming, "It's too late; we're already over the cliff." The Forum, which followed, provided many ideas to help disarm these obstacles to action. The audience left with renewed energy and a deeper sense that they are not alone in the struggle (isolation - another disabling voice.) Afterwards, several audience members said, separately, that they got more out of this 2-hour performance than the entire previous day's "Awakening the Dreamer - Changing the Dream" symposium on similar issues. But perhaps the most poignant moment of the evening was at the beginning when it was mentioned that nearly 50 similar theatre-based events were happening across the globe that day and that only TWO were in the United States - the world's greatest contributor to global warming. The deep silence in the room spoke a thousand words. |
| A link to a worldwide calendar of events about global warming: http://www.inthemorningofaday.com/ | |||||||||
