T.O. Philly News: Summer 2013

Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed (nickname: "T.O. Philly") uses theatre games and techniques as tools for rehearsing reality. We do this with people in Philly and elsewhere, either by invitation from a group or organization, or by leading workshops in our communities. This post highlights what we've done recently, and what we've got planned for the rest of 2013.

What We've Been Up To:

Graphic for a workshop we held in 2010.
See more graphics in our archive.

T.O. Philly had a busy spring, with travels to North Carolina to work with Paperhand Puppet Intervention, and to DC with Action Reconciliation Service for Peace.  Locally we had a few short workshops led by various facilitators. For one, Morgan Andrews led people through the Rainbow of Desire technique, and in another, Magda Scharf visited from Berlin for a one day workshop about religion. We also had several T.O.-related events focusing on gender, beginning with Qui Alexander's evening workshop. Qian Li came from California to present Theatre of the Oppressed at the Trans Health Conference, and we raised $1,000 for Camp Aranu'tiq, where a couple of us will be running workshops with trans and gender-variant youth this August.

Summer Retreat?  Not this year...  
Facilitation Workshop?  Yes!!!

A summer retreat was in the works (last year's retreat was a big success), but a variety of factors prevented it from coming together this year. In lieu of that, we're holding a free facilitation workshop on Saturday August 24th from 1pm to 5pm. This will be a session in preparation for the upcoming academic year, with a focus on working with students and youth (though not exclusively) and troubleshooting problem situations that may arise in classroom/group settings.  Click here for full event information.

Fall Series and More!

This fall we've booked Monday nights at the Rotunda and are planning on running two different weekly series—one in October, one in November—likely around the topics of gender and interrupting racism (see the Unpacking Race tab under "Who We Are and What We Do" for a recap of our last series about race).  We'll also continue working with students and faculty at Haverford College and University of the Arts, with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Young Friends, with yoga teachers-in-training at Studio 34 in West Philly, and with the dancers and choreographers at Mascher Space Co-op in Kensington. As always, T.O. Philly facilitators are available to do this work for any organizations that want it—Contact us via "tophilly@gmail.com" for details!