UWC Mahindra College monthly newsletter


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Breaking patterns, creating change

On 17 January Marc Weinblatt came to Mahindra College to present a very interesting workshop on Theatre of the Oppressed (TO).

Created by Brazilian visionary, Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of popular community based education. TO is theatre, but theatre as a tool for transformation, of the individual as well as groups and communities.In TO the audience is not made of spectators but spect-tators.... through carefully structured theatrical exercises, everyone is invited to participate in the analysis of the issues at hand. TO invites critical thinking. It is about analyzing rather than accepting, questioning rather than giving answers. It is also about "acting" rather than just talking.

TO was originally developed out of Boal's work with peasant and worker populations in Brazil. It is now used all over the world for social and political activism, conflict resolution, community building, therapy and government legislation. TO uses many techniques, some of the most widely used forms being Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, Cop in the Head and Rainbow Desire.

Marc Weinblatt is the founder Director of Mandala Centre for Change, an international hub for the training oand graasroots practice of Theatre of the Oppressed. For further information click here.

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