Friends of Tibet Theatre Workshop
Friends of Tibet recently hosted a five day long theatre workshop in Dharamsala, India. Indian theatre activists Jaya Aiyer and Ishtiaq engaged young Tibetan and Indian locals in trainings for “voice modulation, body language, sense of space and a whole gamut of theatre languages and mechanics.” The workshop aimed at politicizing a group of young persons, challenging them to consider their relationship to contemporary issues of oppression. To achieve this, educators built the workshop around the radical, popular Theatre of the Oppressed, wherein:
the distinct relationship of the oppressed and the oppressor is etched in the minds of the audience, who are then invited to participate in the theatre and bring the play to one or many conclusions. Its various forms use public spaces like the bus stops, cafes and traffic junctions, where the play maybe taking place without the audience realising it.
Participants created several plays, which were performed in front of three different audiences, and ultimately left with a new technique of political problem solving. Aiyer, who studied under Augusto Boal, poignantly told students “Free the Tibet within you, and you will free Tibet.”
