DAY THREE

Brainstorming for Saturday's performance:

- Our own interpretations of freedom.

- What is freedom?

- Why is identity important?

- Black or Myself.

- We are all stardust.

- Humans must acknowledge their power and utilize it.

- How does identity give you power?

- Identity both gives and takes power.

- Identity connects us to one another.

- We are all little tiny puzzle pieces, together we are whole.

- Understanding the differences between labels, stereotypes and identity.

- Identity either can help us to understand the "Other"or prevent you from understanding it.

- Understand that you can't understand the other completely.

- Inner identity & outer identity.

- Gender - first labels cast upon us.

- Can't have an Identity without other people

- We rely on others to help us understand who we are.

- They help us validate who we think we are.

- Seeing the other in yourself and seeing yourself in the other.

- Understanding & questioning stereotypes.

- Recognizing and respecting stereotypes as symbols.

- What are the questions important enough to ask?

- Understanding that the other will always stay unfamiliar.


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AGUSTO BOAL

"Theatre is a form of knowledge: it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it."

The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970's by Brazillian director and Workers' Party activist Agusto Boal, is a form of populartheater, of, by and for people engaged in the struggle for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in their daily lives. In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression is defined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than dialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits the oppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppresses is a participatory theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants.

Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language designed to:

1. Analyze and discuss problems of oppression and power

2. Explore group solutions to these problems - This language is accessible to all.

Bridging the separation between actor (the one who acts) and specator (the one who observes but is not permitted to intervene in the theatrical situation), the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced by "spect-actors" who have the opportunity to both act and observe, and who engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that helps foster critical thinking. The theatrical act is thus experienced as conscious intervention, as a rehearsal for social action rooted in a collective analysis of shared problems of oppression.

This particular type of interactive theater is rooted in the pedagogical and political principles specific to the popular education method developed by Brazillian educator Paulo Freire :

1. To see the situation lived by the participants

2. To analyze the root causes of the situation

3. To act to change the situation following the precepts of social justice