Babbage Ch. 3

I found this chapter EXTREMELY intriguing. It's interesting to read about how seamless Forum Theatre can be if the Joker is willing to go with the flow and if the actors are good at playing along with the ideas of others. It's hard to imagine situations in which Forum Theatre would go poorly, but I'm sure there are some. It seems that it can be a very empowering experience at a grass-roots kind of level. I'm amazed that Boal did these activities with whole towns full of people--it seems as though it would become crowded or too hectic. I think the Joker or facilitator has to be a very specific kind of person--a person with both organizational skills and interpersonal skills.

I'm very excited to begin my own journey through Forum Theatre. I'm so eager to get started with ITT, particularly after the performance I saw over the summer. It was extremely invigorating and made me feel passionate in a way I didn't expect to. Reading the stories in this chapter about homeless or de-homed activism and learning disability activism was inspiring and refreshing in the same way. It makes me want to explore Forum Theatre with middle or high school students in New Orleans--to go back to the confusion from Katrina. They would have all been eight years younger then, and I think it's important to re-visit and unpack highly emotional events like that.

For example, every few years, I take a few nights to retreat into myself very quietly and remember everything I can about the events surrounding my parents' divorce and my kidnapping. I relax myself, meditate, and allow myself to remember and to feel vulnerable the way I did when I was seven or eight years old. Every year, I remember some brief image or some dialogue I'd forgotten. I incorporate them and try to make sense of them. I let myself cry, and I let myself acknowledge that I probably should have had more careful supervision at that age and during those proceedings. I find it very helpful to re-visit and to try to piece everything back together.

That's what makes me wonder if it might be helpful for young teens and high school students to sort of time travel and to re-discover Katrina not through the eyes of the media or of their parents, but rather through their own eyes at the time. Forum theatre, I think, could be a very useful and integral piece of that process--being able to step into a role with given, common circumstances and being able to acknowledge and realize your own power or your own helplessness. Do you know of any similar work currently being done in such a way? Is there an additional component to "group trauma" type situations?