Forum Theatre
Forum theatre is a popular tool from a framework of practice called “Theatre of the Oppressed”, developed by Brazilian theatre activist and popular educator Augusto Boal. Forum theatre creates dynamic spaces that present participants with scenarios of everyday power, oppression, or violence. It breaks down the traditional wall between actor and audience by asking spectators to become “spect-actors” and participate in the action in a problem-solving capacity.
I love facilitating forum theatre for a couple of reasons:
- It lets you put yourself in the shoes of other people, and ask yourselves… how would you react if you were in their situation? What might you do differently? How do you think you could get to a better or more transformative outcome?
- Augusto Boal used to call forum theatre “rehearsal for the revolution”, because it gives people the opportunity to practice (not just think or talk about!) practical tools, approaches, and strategies for creating better communities. Having the opportunity to practice interpersonal skills in a lower-stakes environment is a rare and valuable thing.
In this participatory technique, a scene is performed for the audience twice. During the second run-through, any member of the audience can shout ‘Stop!’ when they think that a different course of action would produce a better outcome than what they are seeing in the scene. The action stops, and the “spect-actor” is then invited to step into the scene, often by replacing one of the actors, and try out their idea so that they can see how it might go.
I learned to facilitate forum theatre — which, in Theatre of the Oppressed, is called being a ‘Joker’ — when I led a scrappy peer theatre education troupe called “Great Sexpectations” for Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region from 2008-2011. We travelled around to schools and community centres, using forum theatre as a way of facilitating conversations about sexual health, reproductive choices, gender, and relationships with young people. Since then, I’ve used forum theatre to help groups of people practice their skills in transformative bystander intervention, mental health support, frontline service provision, and conflict de-escalation.
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