After an aborted attempt two weeks ago to start our theatre group at Bajo Flores, we were very excited yesterday to meet five shy individuals who wanted to explore what we had to offer. We really had no idea what they had been told at the sorting unit but three women and two men left their posts to come and join us in our theatrical games. When we had heard that the cooperative had a social centre and had in the past been involved in theatre and film making – we thought it might be interesting to see if any of the workers wanted to join in some Boal style ‘theatre of the oppressed’. This is a form of theatre where the participants themselves create and tell the story, developed from improvised scenes and during the show the audience is invited to join in. Classic ‘forum theatre’ might involve the joker (or facilitator) asking the audience to run in and stop the action if they don’t agree with what is being said or done. To start the ball rolling we played many trust- making theatre games and asked the group to create sculptures of words such as ‘government’ and ‘cooperative’. Much hilarity was created, especially due to our poor Spanish and attempts to gesticulate words we didn’t know.
