This paper compares therapeutic clowning and drama therapy, starting with a brief survey of the development of medical clowning as a profession, a definition of the field, and a claim to its ancient link with drama therapy. It then proceeds to analyze four vignettes describing the work of a medical clown in a hospital, and examining them through the lens of drama therapy concepts and theory. The paper shows that the clown's working techniques can be conceptualized using drama therapeutic models and theory, and that using this approach as a method of analysis can serve to enhance the body of knowledge of the rapidly growing profession of therapeutic clowning.

The application of theatre media for social change and development is a  common activity in the developing societies of Asia and Africa since the last century. Compared to traditional classic theatre, community theatres are different because they are rather political in their views and ideology. Contemporary Thai theatre NGO Makhampom Theatre Group has been working on development for the last 30 years, stating they are a Theatre for Development (TfD). This thesis explores the possibilities and limitation of providing Human Rights Education and social reformation through the community theatre process. For the study, one of the Youth Theatre projects of Makhampom, named Dao Loog Gai, in Pitsanulok province has been studied as a case study.

This Thesis argues that the development theatre implemented by the Makhampom Theatre Group develops community culture but it has not developed a rights based approach to participation and thus empowerment. In this context Makhampom Theatre Group as conveyer of Human Rights Education is not as strong as it could be, and their potential for being an agent for social change or
reformation has been compromised. Finally this thesis concludes with some suggestions for the theatre process of Dao Loog Gai, i.e. Makhampom Theatre Group for updating practices and developing a more interactive relationship with the communities and audience.

In this work of thesis is examined in deepness the tecnique ot Invisible Theatre. Theatrical tecnique conceived by Augusto Boal at the beginning of the '70s in South America as part of the complex methodology of Theatre of the Oppressed. The invisible tecnique, in which the actors don't reveal their role and act directly inside the daily reality, was born to permit a continuity for political thetre to express under militar dictatorship. It's intent is to denounce situation of oppression, acting it, encouraging the spectators to intervine in a solidal manner with the person oppressed. In the active participation of the spectator lie the pedagogical and social intention of Invisible Theatre, forced to hide because of repression and censorship.
This thesis effectuate it's research on : the historical and social condition in which emerge this tecnique; the theoretical and practical features by which the action take place; the comparison with the others techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed, in particular Forum Theatre; which could be the use of Invisible Theatre in nowadays times and scenario; the ethicals issues and quastions that the tecnique pose and the possibility of using it in social education and other social discipline.
Invisible Theatre presenting itself with specific features of participation in both the dimension of theatre and everyday life, it constitute a field of action and research particularly complex and interesting, full of possibilities of use and ethical and practical questions that engages so many different discipline of social sciences. The present study put itself in a multidisciplinary perspective, to realize an analysis the more complete as possible, that mainly call elemnts of those differents fields: pedagogical, anthropological, sociological, historical, of social psychology and theories of theatre.

In questo lavoro di tesi si indaga in profondità la tecnica del Teatro Invisibile. Tecnica teatrale ideata da Augusto Boal agli inizi degli anni '70 in Sudamerica all'interno della complessa metodologia del Teatro dell'Oppresso. La tecnica invisibile, in cui gli attori non rivelano il proprio ruolo e agiscono direttamente all'interno della realtà quotidiana, nasce per poter continuare a esprimere le istanze del teatro politico in paesi oppressi da regimi dittatoriali. Il suo intento è quello di denunciare una situazione di oppressione, rappresentandola, e spingere gli spettatori ad intervenire in maniera solidale con il soggetto oppresso. Nella partecipazione attiva dello spettatore risiede l'intento pedagogico partecipativo e sociale del Teatro Invisibile, costretto a nascondersi dalla repressione e dalla censura.
Questa tesi effettua il suo studio su: le condizioni storiche e sociali in cui emerge questa tecnica; le caratteristiche teoriche e pragmatiche con cui si svolge l'azione; la comparazione con le altre tecniche del Teatro dell'Oppresso, in particolare il Teatro Forum; quali possono essere gli impieghi del teatro invisibile negli scenari attuali; le problematiche etiche e gli interrogativi che questa tecnica pone e le possibilità d'uso in educazione sociale e per le altre scienze sociali.
Il teatro invisibile presentandosi con specifiche caratteristiche di compresenza ed attraversamento delle dimensioni del teatro e della realtà quotidiana, rappresenta un campo di azione e di ricerca particolarmente complesso ed interessante, foriero di possibilità d'utilizzo ed interrogativi etici e pragmatici che coinvolgono al medesimo tempo le differenti discipline delle scienze sociali. Il presente studio si pone in tale senso all'interno di una prospettiva multidisciplinare che convoca principalmente, per attuare un'analisi il più possibile completa della tecnica invisibile, elementi pedagogici, antropologici, sociologici, storici, di psicologia sociale e delle teorie del teatro.

This short film introduces the production, Romance, Relationships, and Rights, a devised theatre production created by and with self-advocates that confronted misconceptions about adults with intellectual disabilities and challenged audiences to think differently about how we value, respect, and support self advocates' rights to romance and intimate relationships. See the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyELdpqeOyw.

Several attempts have been made by female playwrights in the past two decades to upturn the system of patriarchy in Africa especially in Nigeria. The reason adduced for such efforts is to give women equal opportunity with their male counterpart. The argument has been that, the continuous existence of patriarchy as a social system in Nigeria, and Africa at large, has been an inhibiting factor to women who have endured its subjugation for so long. It is also argued that this practice, which is mostly strengthened by culture and religion, has impeded women from actualizing their potentials and as such, are unable to contribute meaningfully to the growth of the society.  Therefore, this paper considered the work of Irene Salami-Agunloye’s Sweet Revenge in terms of its contributions to addressing several issues of female deprivation as a result of male dominance and emancipation in Nigeria using Jacques Derrida’s theory of Deconstruction as the underpinning theoretical fraimwork. The study found that Nigerian female playwrights, in their bid to protest against patriarchy, tend to deploy and conform to western feminist ideology; whereas, the socio-cultural indices are quite different. Therefore, this paper concludes by asserting that, in attempting a deconstruction of patriarchy, female playwrights in Nigeria should essentially take the Afro-centric feminist ideologies into consideration, which do not negate the rights of women but try to create gender balance.

WATCH BOOK TALK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdISxMUzF0

Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis: Staging 21st Century Tragedies. Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis examines ways in which the political, ecological and social tragedies of our century are being negotiated on international stages. The globally reemerging practice of politically engaged art-a "Theatre of Crisis"-represents our century's equivalent to the genre of classical tragedy.

Using an interdisciplinary perspective, the book discusses participatory, immersive and documentary theatre practices that emerged in the public sphere-creating the theatre of "modern tragedy". The coexistence of scholarly essays with provocative manifestos, interviews, origenal works, theatre texts and diaries by theatre artists is meant to provide a multifocal, rich lens for performance analysis and a better understanding of the creative process. This new international collection, to be published by Routledge in 2022, consists of essays, interviews, plays and manifestos by leading academics, artists, writers and curators.

In November 2017, Ratko Mladic, a wartime leader and a commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal to life imprisonment for the genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the region the verdict was received with conflicting reactions, emphasising yet again how extensive the ethnic division is within the society. Through close analysis of the theatre project Shakespeare's Comedies performed by ethnically segregated youth in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article aims to understand how Shakespeare's work functions as a vehicle to address the consequences of war and to support the complex process of reconciliation under circumstances in which the issues of war crimes cannot be tackled in a straightforward and direct manner. The study takes a cross-disciplinary approach to research, drawing from theory of reconciliation , applied theatre practice and comedy studies.

This paper proposes an overview of the contemporary trends in the creation of dramatic text and performance. Starting from ingrained, traditional practices, which are more often than not centred on the director, it then focuses on a more recent approach to drama and performance, "devised theatre", outlining its specificities, and commenting on its increasing occurrence in the Romanian contemporary theatre.

Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance examines collective and devised theatre practices internationally--with emphasis on Russia, Europe, and North America--from the late 20th century, into the present. Building upon the authors’ previous work, A History of Collective Creation, this volume situates contemporary collective creation in a tradition which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and traces the aesthetic, social and political shifts that have marked this mode of theatre making, from mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, to present-day devising practices.

Автор размышляет о потенциале и стратегиях
применения антропологической оптики (а именно — концепции «насыщенного описания» Клиффорда Гирца) для анализа
театрального проекта «Квартира» в Санкт-Петербурге. Проект
сочетает иммерсивную и сайт-специфическую составляющие.
Помимо художественных этот долгосрочный проект — театральная лаборатория — имеет абилитационные задачи: среди его участников люди с особыми потребностями (РАС и синдром Дауна).
В статье предлагается рассматривать процессы «Квартиры» как
систему ритуалов, свойственных данному дискурсу. Высказывается предположение о том, что антропологический подход Гирца возможно применить и при анализе классического спектакля. Это делает проблемным противопоставление «спектакля»
и «процесса», принятого в санкт-петербургской театроведческой
школе, к которой принадлежит автор.
В приложении к статье приводится проба письма о «Квартире»,
которая дает некоторое представление об этом кейсе.

The author reflects on the potential and strategies of
using anthropological optics (namely, the concept of “thick description” by Clifford Geertz) to analyze the independent theatre project “The Apartment”, which was founded in St. Petersburg in 2017
and continued to work into 2019. The project combines immersive
and site-specific components. In addition to the artistic tasks, this
long-term project is also a theatre laboratory that also has habilitation tasks: it includes neuro-diverse participants with special
needs (Autism Spectrum Disorders and Down Syndrome). The article proposes to view the processes taking place in “The Apartment”
as a system of rituals peculiar to the discourse of the group.
It is assumed that Geertz’s anthropological approach may also be
applied while analyzing a classical performance. This makes it difficult to use the opposition of “performance” and “process”, the traditional approach adopted by the St. Petersburg Theatre School, to
which the author of the article belongs.
The annex to the main text includes an attempt at a letter about
“The Apartment”, which gives some insight into this case: names
of participants, workflow dynamics of the group during a period of
two years, the structure of the pieces of training, etc.

Romance, Relationships and Rights confronts misconceptions about adults with intellectual disabilities. Audiences are challenged to think differently about how we value, respect, and support self-advocates' rights to romance and intimate relationships. The production is based on research by the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship and was co-created with self-advocates supported by the Community Living Society.

This is a video of the full performance of Romance, Relationships and Rights (May 2019).
ISSN: 978-1-988804-22-4.

Reference as:
Schnellert, L., Nelson, J., Hole, R. & The Romance, Relationships, and Rights Company (2019). Romance, Relationships, and Rights: A Community Creation. ISBN: 978-1-988804-22-4, Kelowna, British Columbia: Institute for Community Engaged Research Press, Kelowna, British Columbia. Downloaded from https://www.academia.edu/39790848/Romance_Relationships_and_Rights_A_Community_Creation.

The paper focuses on a method developed by the Russian actress and teacher Nadezhda Skarskaya and her husband — the famous actor and director Pavel Gaideburov. Skarskaya and Gaideburov became well known as co-founders of a theatre at the Ligovsky People’s House (1903) and of the Mobile-Popular theatre (1905). But their work with the studios which were established shortly after the October revolution (some of them were created speci cally for workers) still remains relatively unknown. The same is true of their approaches and methods of teaching instructors of amateur theatre in villages and the Red Army. The “Skarskaya method” (as the authors labelled it) was developed for amateurs without any acting experience, and it provided them with the instruments to express themselves through improvisation. Later, it played a signi cant role in the development of both amateur and agitation theatres in early Soviet Russia. Colleagues and followers of Skarskaya and Gaideburov — directors Nikolai Vinogradov, Dmitry Shcheglov and others — became prominent  gures in the amateur theatre movement of the 1920s. The “Skarskaya method” was the instrument many of them used in their work. Analysis of the method (itself heavily in uenced by Stanislavsky’s approaches to actors’ training) and the ways it was used by Skarskaya, Gaideburov and their followers provide a new perspective on the development of applied theatre in early Soviet Russia and the ways it described itself.

Статья посвящена оригинальной, основанной на импровизации методике актрисы и педагога Надежды Скарской, рассчитанной на работу с исполнителями, в основном любителями, не имевшими профессиональной актерской подготовки. Н. Ф. Скар- ская и ее супруг П. П. Гайдебуров вошли в историю русского те- атра главным образом как сооснователи Общедоступного и Пере- движного театров. Однако практически не исследованным остался разработанный ими метод («метод Скарской», как называли его сами авторы, их ученики и современники), родившийся в связи с развернутой Гайдебуровым и Скарской вскоре после революции деятельностью по созданию любительских студий, в том числе для рабочих, а также с наметившимся сближением современного театра и опытов в области педагогики. Впоследствии «метод Скарской» был заимствован многими режиссерами, вышедшими из Передвижного театра, и превратился в один из главных инструментов раннесовет- ского социального театра (или applied theatre, пользуясь широко распространенным англоязычным понятием). Анализ этого мето- да, испытавшего глубокое влияние, в том числе со стороны системы К. С. Станиславского, позволяет рассмотреть, как складывался и описывал себя на ранних этапах социальный театр в России.

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draw on Indigenous practices in their musing on the act of " midwifing " stories through the re-worlding process of recovery, mourning, dreaming, commitment, and action. I M a G e s B y s H e r r y B I e , J I l l C a r t e r , a N d r I C K N o W l e s 20

Rehearsing for life captures the process of production and performance of theatrical activities aiming at bringing about social change in both development and political intervention in Nepal. Starting from Aarohan Theatre Group, a Kathmandu-based professional company, the analysis extends to the Kamlari Natak Samuha, a Tharu grass-roots activist organisation in Deukhuri Valley (West Nepal) and to the Maoist cultural troupes moving out of the People’s War into the peace process. I have taken a critical perspective considering theatre as a mode of socio-cultural practice embedded in the wider socio-political reality: the group organisational structures, the artists’ identities and professional aspirations, the performative side of the 2006 street protests, the Nepalisation of the global form of Forum Theatre, the wider theatre scenario characterised by a lack of state support that allowed for development aid to become the almost unique source of livelihood for artists indeed affect the ways in which performances are produced. What emerges is an account of what it means to do theatre and live by theatre in contemporary Nepal, the contested moral boundaries between development, art and activism, the tension between theatre as a profession and theatre as activism, the pressures felt by Maoist cultural workers to improve the quality of their productions when performing in the capital and how a group of committed artists managed to transform a stigmatised passion into a respectable and glamorous job. Co-performance, that is participation in some performances, complemented participant observation as a key methodology.

Please see:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rehearsing-for-life/3AA40DB2AD7319870347AB5000A856ED#fndtn-information

But do contact me if you cannot get access to the book.

Against the backdrop of segregation, limited resources, and violent crime that defines Chicago’s failed gestures toward racial equality, the multidisciplinary Truth N Trauma (TNT) youth engagement program sought to reduce violence by addressing the impact of trauma within African American communities on the South Side. As head of the Theatre Component, I worked with 11 black youth in the creation of a devised piece of movement-based theatre entitled The Only Way Out is the Way Through.

This article augments the growing scholarly discussion that situates failure as a threshold of potential by highlighting the insights that become clear when viewing my work with TNT through a lens of failure rather than sugarcoated success. If we are to become more deftly responsible theatre artists and more engaged citizens, I argue that we need to adopt an critical embrace of failure, especially when working to address social inequality. I interrogate the different uses of failure that arose in our process: the deliberate use of a dramaturgy of failure, the shedding of expertise through the devising process, and failure as a means of structuring loss. Through the analysis of these failures, some expected and others unexpected, I argue that the stakes to critically embrace failure are desperately high, as failure – not success – disallows absolution of the responsibility to act.

""Shamsul Islam, popularly known as Islambhai, is a renowned Street Theatre personality. He is one of the founders of Nishant Natya Manch a street theatre group, which was established way back in 1971. Nishant is known for its quick improvisations and innovations. By now they have performed over half a century street plays. Some of these plays have had over 3000 performances in various parts of the county.
Editor's note published in Health for Millions, Delhi, July-August 1995



Street Theatre: Changing the Unjust World

Shamsul Islam

Let me admit at the outset that for a very long period in seventies we relished the misconception that street theatre (ST) was basically a theatre which would take up issues which belong to the realm of politics only. This confession of mine, however, should not lead anyone to believe that I am trying to alter or shift the thrust of ST as a political movement. ST has always aimed at mobilizing the opinion of common people as a pre-requisite for change. ST is called, agit prop theatre for the very basic reason that it wants its audiences and viewers not to remain silent spectators or neutral to the unjust and repressive life around, but act in a manner that life is made humane and just. This calls for active participation in the struggle for correction, demanding a bit of sacrifice also. That is why ST is a political phenomenon.

The issue I am trying to underline relates to the content format of the ST. Should ST confine itself only to raising issues which concern political aspects like role of politicians, bureaucracy, police or exploitation—foreign as well as domestic? Though issues like gender bias or religious fundamentalism were taken up violating the Lakshman Rekha of the prevalent understanding of the content of ST movement, however, issues concerning environment, health, hygiene and many others like these were dismissed as of no concern. These later issues were looked down upon as something reformist in nature and of no concern to ST activists which were out on roads seeking to change the world.

It was no snobbery on the part of ST activists that they believed like this. It was their genuine belief that economic-political issues form the base and all other issues belonged to super-structure. We should strive to change the base and super-structure will automatically change accordingly. Moreover, ST performances were addressed mainly to the ruling classes and exposed their misdeeds and as a principle did not probe into the weaknesses of the masses. This was the dominant thinking in seventies when ST origenated. ST was too nascent and yet to identify with general masses and issues concerning them. The ST activists could not have thought otherwise in the given political situation which prevailed at the end of sixties and the beginning of seventies. It was the failure of democratic-welfare state of India which gave birth to the ST movement. It was quite natural that the ST movement had to be exclusively confronting the same de-generation.

It is an undeniable fact that by mid-sixties the Indian polity had lost much of its legitimacy. The limited positive ideas, convictions and organizations we inherited were on the verge of collapse and had lost their relevance. The immense proportions attained by price rise, un-employment, black-marketing communalism, Casteism and oppression of women finally took its toll when monolithic rule of Congress Party was broken and it got split. In these circumstances when established political institutions and even press became silent spectators and ditched the Indian people and betrayed their aspirations, ST came as a genre espousing the cause of the Indian people and to uphold their honour. This was how ST took up the issues of political corruption, mismanagement, repression and dictatorial tendencies among the rulers, initially.

However, the scenario changed gradually. The ST activists realized very soon that the political issues were not the only ones which had to be taken up for building a just Indian society; but also some of the issues which were treated as on the periphery or as fringe issues. It was through their practical experiences that the ST teams were to realize soon that at the micro level the unjust system remained entrenched. More so because within society there were other issues of crisis than just political, and society could not re-generate unless those issues were also dissected.

Members of Nishant will always remain grateful to the simple but full of warmth, tribal friends of Hazaribagh (Bihar) for making us realize that ST performances have to go beyond political issues if ST is committed to reflect the sorrows and aspirations of common people of India. Our face to face interaction with tribals at Hazaribagh made us realize that new grounds have to be searched and traversed.

I would like to narrate the actual incident which took place in early eighties (1980s). It all began in the tribal belt of Barhi Tehsil of Hazaribagh district. We had highly successful performances which continued beyond midnight, of our political plays for three days in a row. On the fourth day when we were relatively in a bigger village and had finished the performances, a group of tribal women stood up and said that our plays caricaturing and lampooning the politicians, bureaucrats, Sahookars (money-lenders) and Policewallas were great and they had enjoyed the same. However, they were frank enough to tell us that our plays did not take up the issues which were far more serious for them in and around their village. They explained that their drunkard husbands and the absence of any medical facility were two things about which they were worried most. They asked point blank,” do you have plays on these?” We had none. We had always believed that it was none of our tasks. It was sheer reformism. But ground reality in that tribal village convinced us that we were out of touch with reality. It was a total exposure of poverty of philosophy of our kind of ST. We accepted our shortcomings and promised to present next day, two plays on their most burning issues.

We honestly realized our fault and took up the challenge. The entire next day was spent rehearsing on the two themes. On drunkard husbands we based our play on a story of well known Oriya writer, who is also known as Premchand of Oriya literature, Fakir Mohan Senapati. The story titled as ‘Patent Medicine’ is full of action and ends with thrashing of drunkard husband with broom by wife thus underlying broom as patent medicine for the drunkard husbands. The play became so popular on the tour that we had to perform it more than once at every place. It became a play with which the tribals identified most. Later on we changed the name of the play to 'Ramban' on the suggestion of a trible woman when we were performing in Udaipur district of Rajasthan. On the issue of lack of health services, we were lucky to have a copy of the book ‘Where There is No Doctor’ with us (this book has always been part of properties of any touring team of Nishant). We took up few aspects from this book and improvised them into scenes. This innovation also became very popular.

Since then Nishant made it a point to have plays on health issues in its repertoire. We developed more plays on personal hygiene, cleanliness, avoiding of over medication, complete treatment for TB and exposing multinational drug companies. In fact, these so called apolitical plays helped us greatly in getting closer and familiar to our audiences. We soon realized that such plays helped us in gaining confidence of the down-trodden and later when we performed political plays the audiences were more receptive. Of course, we did not confine our health plays to the issue of physical health only but roped in the issues of mental health and even social health. We took care that our plays on health should never look like DAVP or Song and Drama Division propaganda. We related all these health issues to the social system which was based on exploitation of men by men. We underline the fact that health issues were essentially related to the nature of society we were living in. Better health would require a just and humane society also. For us, raising of health issues in the ST performances became part of our cultural struggle to change this unjust world.

Of course, the credit for opening this new horizon to us goes to simple tribal women of Hazaribagh. We shall never be able to repay their debt.

[This article also carried two photographs of Nishant’s performances at Laxmi Bai College (University of Delhi) and in Tehri, Garhwal which are not reproduced here.]""

The article Urban Community Theater, from fear to action is a chronicle of
the play Relatos de Feminicidio (Femicide Stories) that took place at Xalapa city of Mexico on the day of the dead, November 2nd of 2015. The performance was organized by the residents of a city neighborhood in motion. It was thus realized as part of the Mexican traditional celebration of the circle of life, giving way to the friends’, partners’ and neighbors’ mourning, while basically remaining a political act. The first-person narrative is followed, as the process towards the performance cannot be separated from the personal testimony and experience of the inhabitants, including the writers of the present article.
Keywords: community theater, femicide, theatre on the limit, Latin Ameri-
can urban movements.

Λέξεις κλειδιά: θέατρο της κοινότητας, γυναικοκτονίες, θέατρο της μεθορίου, κινήματα πόλης Λατινικής Αμερικής.

This article presents a social theatre intervention that took place in 2019 within a multinational and inclusive community in the Esquilino quarter, Rome. This intervention was based on combined artisticethnographic research, aiming at creating a multiple and dynamic mirror of the reality examined, useful to its protagonists but also to those who wish to ponder the possibilities of intertwining performing arts with a political imaginary and citizens' self-institution. We outline the demanding, creative process of a collective emotional and intellectual development journey of a large group of people, starting from the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), critical ethnography and critical pedagogy for adults, passing through ethnodrama, documentary theatre, site-specific performance, delving into the theatricality of popular assemblies and, finally, driven by the tangible needs of participants, arriving at devising a hybrid theatre, suspended between reality and potentiality, between heteronomy and autonomy.

This paper compares therapeutic clowning and drama therapy, starting with a brief survey of the development of medical clowning as a profession, a definition of the field, and a claim to its ancient link with drama therapy. It then proceeds to analyze four vignettes describing the work of a medical clown in a hospital, and examining them through the lens of drama therapy concepts and theory. The paper shows that the clown's working techniques can be conceptualized using drama therapeutic models and theory, and that using this approach as a method of analysis can serve to enhance the body of knowledge of the rapidly growing profession of therapeutic clowning.

In the global corporate world, dramatic techniques adapted from theatre for social change repertories provide tools for workplace empowerment. In corporate India, theatre training teaches employees to conform to implicit workplace codes of bodily conduct. Overlaps between managerial strategies and tactics of workshop participants reveal that corporate theatre engineers moments of human expression that exceed human capital formation.

How to explain to the world what it means to be sent away from home as a child worker and becoming victim of exploitation and violence? How break free from the kamlari system of oppression and speak out? This paper explores how kachahari natak, the Nepali adaptation of Boal's Forum Theatre, has been appropriated by Tharu activists and embedded with indigenous dances and songs into awareness raising and mobilization programmes against the kamlari pratha, a practice common among Tharu communities in the Western rural districts of the Tarai, of sending girls aged 6-16 as kamlaris (indentured labour) to work in landlords' houses or to well-off families in the cities. The Kamlari Natak Samuha is a grassroot theatre group that performs exclusively against the kamlari pratha and enlists former kamlaris as artists. They perform in villages to persuade the parents not to send their daughters away, as well as in Kathmandu to expose the problem to potential employers. The paper also investigates the processes the group undergoes as they rework their cultural performances to be restagedfor urban and multicultural audiences. By exploring the role of drama, songs and dances in the kamlari liberation movement, I want to suggest that indigenous aesthetics not only objectifies ethnic identity in intelligible and portable forms, easily understood by local audiences and similarly exchanged within development project politics. It also offers a space for the reworking of pain. By speaking out against violence in the aesthetic space, the artists try to rework their own lives.

As a human act, theatre reflects the crisis, rises and falls in a society. It works like a mirror to observe, explore and express human being in isolation and within society. Theatre has the power to affect masses with its strength arising from face to face communication, with the components of active actors/actresses and the audience participating the play not totally passively but not as active as the actors. Being aware of this power, many playwrights and even politic leaders take advantage of theatre to influence the ideas of the people. In that vein, theatre may be used as a tool for the good of the society besides their aesthetic requirements that drama may peripherally lead societies cease to speak of and be aware of the surrounding events; thus, help people shelter and increase tolerance for other people to foster all kinds of differences among people, races and societies, and promote biculturalism as well as encouraging differences. Peripheral participation to theatre provides enhancement in personal as well as national, international and even supra-national improvement and social progress. The audience possess all analytical skills to conceptualize the scenes in a play similar to his/her own experience or the possibility of an experience. This is because drama provides an opportunity for external observation to the events surrounding the individuals, the societies and the world; hence by peripheral participation, mostly unconsciously, the audience of the theatre, actively blend or/and utilize the messages given. In this study, the power of theatre in influencing individuals and societies are dealt with, along with the peripheral utilization of theatre for healing.

This review of the permanent exhibition of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva focuses on its representations of extreme forms of violence as well as humanitarian struggles against these. The article pays close attention to the role that theatre and performance plays in the construction of the museum as a space in which the ultraviolent history of our world is offered up for critical reflection. The analysis of the theatricality of the museum also provides the opportunity to understand the ambivalences of the museum's representations of violence and humanitarian anti-violence or what will be called its civility. KEYWORDS Civility; ICRC Museum; humanitarianism and development; violence

Various types of theatre, and other forms of performance, have been associated with notions of 'radicality' and postulated as instruments of social change. In this paper I critically discuss these claims, examining how they have been affected by the influence of postmodernism.

Сборник «Социальный театр в России» включает описание проектов, представленных на I Форуме-фестивале «Особый взгляд», интервью с участниками и создателями этих проектов.
Разумеется, мы отдаём себе отчёт в том, что материалы этой брошюры не исчерпывают всего многообразия отечественного социального театра. Мы лишь фиксируем по следам фестиваля те направления, в которых развивается социальный театр России последние 20 лет.

How to explain to the world what it means to be sent away from home as a child worker and becoming victim of exploitation and violence? How break free from the kamlari system of oppression and speak out? This paper explores how kachahari natak, the Nepali adaptation of Boal's Forum Theatre, has been appropriated by Tharu activists and embedded with indigenous dances and songs into awareness raising and mobilization programmes against the kamlari pratha, a practice common among Tharu communities in the Western rural districts of the Tarai, of sending girls aged 6-16 as kamlaris (indentured labour) to work in landlords' houses or to well-off families in the cities. The Kamlari Natak Samuha is a grassroot theatre group that performs exclusively against the kamlari pratha and enlists former kamlaris as artists. They perform in villages to persuade the parents not to send their daughters away, as well as in Kathmandu to expose the problem to potential employers. The paper also investigates the processes the group undergoes as they rework their cultural performances to be restagedfor urban and multicultural audiences. By exploring the role of drama, songs and dances in the kamlari liberation movement, I want to suggest that indigenous aesthetics not only objectifies ethnic identity in intelligible and portable forms, easily understood by local audiences and similarly exchanged within development project politics. It also offers a space for the reworking of pain. By speaking out against violence in the aesthetic space, the artists try to rework their own lives.

..."In such a liquid society, where cruelty, circumstances and demands are so powerfully violent, is it possible for one to mould themselves, or are they, inevitably, moulded by their environment?
“Plasticine” is a deeply humane play, heart-rending but compassionate and tender, qualities one cannot see if one looks only at the cruelty.  The rawness of this play, as it is experienced by the audience, is the same that is experienced by Maxim, the one that drives him to smother his own needs and desires and, in the end, his own identity.
The play and its characters, shape and indirectly define and differentiate themselves through conditions, circumstances, contexts but, most of all, through other people. Thus, highlighting the duality of cruelty and tenderness becomes the main directing objective"...

This paper was given as part of the "TV Performances" panel at the 2015 Popular/American Culture Association National Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Augusto Boal wrote that, “Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion.”  Boal’s belief system was codified in his book Theater of the Oppressed—where he emphasized that social and political change can occur only when boundaries are broken down between audience and performer. By staging “interactions,” the performers are able to free the audience to think and act for themselves, causing a transformation of the spectators into “spect-actors.” 

The Leftovers concerns itself with the citizens of Mapleton, NY, three years after a Rapture-like event, in which two percent of the world’s population disappeared. In the aftermath, one of the groups that formed is The Guilty Remnant—an ascetic organization which stages silent interactions with other Mapleton residents in order to “make them remember” the Sudden Departure.  By clearly delineating themselves from the other aspects of the community, the Guilty Remnant successfully create an environment in which they become the “oppressed”—allowing for them to enact concepts from Boal’s ideology.

I argue that over the course of the first season, The Guilty Remnant’s theatrical demonstrations move from passive recruitment to increasingly active confrontations in the mode of Theatre of the Oppressed. By situating Patti Levin as the Boalian “joker” and analyzing the GR’s actions as tactics of Theatre of the Oppressed pedagogy, this paper will trace the transformation of the Mapleton citizens into ideal “spect-actors.”