Documentary Screening: Image to Lifeworld

EVENT POSTPONED
Technical difficulties have set back the finishing of the film Image to Lifeworld. Sign up for our email list to find out when we'll be showing the film.

Image to Lifeword is an ethnographic film exploring how Theatre of the Oppressed is fostering community in West Philadelphia. Focusing on workshops held in the spring of 2012, the film follows how participants use Image Theatre—one of the many modalities developed under the umbrella of Theatre of the Oppressed—to parse issues of injustice that the group works on together. Interspersing interviews with workshop footage, Image to Lifeworld shows how these dynamic and sometimes challenging exchanges connect to lived and embodied experiences, producing personal growth, new relationships, and a stronger sense of collective belonging.

Due to a hard drive crash (and we do mean crash—a collision with the floor resulted in a loss of footage and other data) this screening of Image to Lifeworld has been postponed for some time later in 2012. For more info, contact tophilly@gmail.com or call 215-730-0982.

T.O. Philly Scholarship Fund

Jana Sanskriti performing in Kolkata

Part of T.O. Philly's mission is to make Theatre of the Oppressed accessible and affordable to anyone and everyone. We do this in a two ways:

1. All of our workshops are either by donation or sliding scale. People who are able to contribute more enable others with fewer resources to attend for cheap or free.
2. Each year we set aside some money in a scholarship fund that helps people travel to deepen their training in the techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed.

2011's scholarship recipient was Prachi Murarka, an Indian-American woman who was born in Ahmedabad and grew up in the Midwest. Even growing up in Indiana, dance and culture were integral to her life, and she went on to study at Northwestern University. Prachi currently lives in California and applied for a T.O. Philly scholarship to attend a Forum Theatre workshop in Chicago, led by Sanjoy and Sima Ganguly from Jana Sanskriti, India's largest Theatre of the Oppressed movement. Prachi writes:

I started off college studying Social Policy, because I believed that top-down model was the best way I could effect social change.  Taking economic classes, sociology classes, and feminist classes quickly made me realize that real societal transformation could not be done from the top down—too much was at stake in preserving the status quo.  Instead, in my ethnic studies and gender studies classes, I began to learn how hip-hop, popular culture, and media could influence our mindsets and lead to gradual transformation.  With my yoga and meditation practice, I knew that individual consciousness had to be changed for greater societal change.  This is where arts and theatre came into play. 

Sanjoy Ganguly and Prachi Murarka in Chicago

During my visit to South Africa in 2008, I began to realize the enormous potential for arts to be effect social transformation and be integrated in community-building.  I was exposed to the various methods of VOICE and RESISTANCE and EMBODIMENT of liberation.  I began to see art as a courageous process that actually mirrored what we wanted in society.  I saw it as the heart of transformation, and I intuitively felt called to theatre as a form. 

For my Senior Project at Northwestern University, I began to use Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, writing, and meditation to address diasporic violence.  How could communities that fed into and bought dominant narratives reclaim their stories and transform their lives-reclaiming agency?  Using Audre Lorde's notion of the erotic, I worked at creating safe spaces that would allow healing to occur through the arts in a 3-step process: individual reclamation, group sharing and transformation, and finally, public release. 

Sima Ganguly of Jana Sanskriti

In my current work, I plan to use Theatre of the Oppressed techniques with Siren Theatre's Janaki Project.  Using pre-existing (self-created) scripts to examine reproductive rights, domestic violence, sexual violence, and ecological terrorism, these workshops will highlight current issues facing Indian and Indian-American communities.  We will ask Participants will be asked to become active agents, problem-solving narratives and create their own solutions to systematically disengage from and transform histories of violence, victimization, misinformation, and violence.  I'm also integrating Theatre of the Oppressed with Yoga Therapy as a form of integrated somatic liberation. 

I am extremely grateful to Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed for their sponsorship during the Jana Sanskriti workshop in July 2011.  The workshop allowed me to connect with a great PTO community, learn Forum Theatre, and grow in my own political understanding.

—Prachi Murarka, December 2011

To inquire about scholarship opportunities, or anything else, contact us at "tophilly@gmail.com" or 215-730-0982.

Spring 2012 Workshops

"Turning Issues & Isms Inside-Out"

A 5-part T.O. Workshop Series
Tuesdays 4/17, 4/24, 5/1, 5/8 & 5/15
7:00-9:00pm at the Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street, West Philly

(Series closed to new participants)

Theatre of the Oppressed uses words, sounds, images, movement and the art of playfulness as ways to examine society from different perspectives. In this workshop series, the group will pick a handful of target issues and "isms" (e.g.: racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc.) and develop some tools for collectively deconstructing and rearranging this stuff in new ways. From there we'll strategize on how to replicate these transformations in the wider world.

Week-By-Week—What We Did: Click on the links below for rules and variations on a few games and techniques we explored each week, along with some notes on facilitation:

Week 1: Concentric Circles
Week 2: Cut-Ups

Week 3: 2 × 3 × Bradford

Week 4: Status by Number

...and if you have your own games or things you've discovered through Theatre of the Oppressed, let us know by leaving us a comment!