Blind Games: What We Played

For three days in January, 2015, theatre artists Mason Rosenthal and Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews led a series of experiential Blind Games at a community arts space in West Philadelphia. 32 people came out on a chilly Friday night, and smaller numbers returned the next two afternoons to stumble and bump into each other with eyes closed, usually with some sort of performative goal in (and out of) sight.

Blind Games often serve as icebreakers and trust-builders by organizations that work with kids and teens. Theatrical, dance and movement artists use them to build group cohesion and get performers to use more of their non-visual senses. In the Theatre of the Oppressed tradition, we use Blind Games to build skills for perceiving unseen elements of power and oppression in society. Our workshop brought all of these things together, with the base understanding that we would all be working with our eyes closed. Mason and Morgan also used these sessions for research toward a new theatrical work about vision loss and partial blindness, while offering everyone else a fully embodied experience, as well as a full list of the games and their rules. And here they are:

On Friday night we warmed up with three quick ones to get us used to working with missing information:

• Pick Up The Cup: Mark an "X" on the floor and place a cup on it. Players line up several meters from the cup and take turns closing eyes, walking forward, and stooping down to pick up the cup once they think they've reached it. Others watch and respond: "Ooh!" for a miss, a roar of applause for a win. Everyone goes twice. No feeling around for the cup—just reach straight down and pick it up (or don't!)
• Alpha Order Names: A name game with three simple rules: 1) Everyone must hold at least one other's hand at all times. 2) Each person is allowed to say their own name and nothing else. 3) Get into alphabetical order. Easier played with eyes open.
• Line Up By Height: With eyes closed, without talking.

The following games we played in pairs:

• Blind Car: One person is the Blind Car, the other its Sighted Driver who controls the Car by tapping its back to go forward, top of head for reverse, and each shoulder to turn right or left. Because this is a cooperative game, we share everything freely, so Cars occasionally get new Drivers, sight unseen.
• Fingertips: Players ouch fingertips together, one person with eyes open, the other closed, and all dance. Pairs can switch roles (sighted/blind, leader/follower), merge into bigger groups, or have the blind lead the blind. What's most essential is some good disco music:
• Stopping and Falling: Here the blind player leads the sighted by walking, stopping, and then and falling backward to be caught and uprighted by their sighted partner. The falls then become less predictable: sideways, diagonally, forward and at varying tempos. 
• Bling Hug: Pairs embrace, close their eyes, and back away from each other, keeping pace to a count upwards. A countdown brings them back and hopefully into the same embrace.
• Blind Chair: Person A ("Chair") drops to one knee, and Person B ("Sitter") sits sideways on Chair's horizontal thigh. Both close their eyes, stand up, and begin walking to a count: Sitter paces forwards, Chair backwards. A countdown brings both back to sit—Chair back down to one knee,  and Sitter back on Chair's leg, possibly even that of their original Chair…
• Blind Tracker: A sighted player makes an Animal sound for their blind Tracker to follow around the space. Animal keeps Tracker from bumping into things purely by sound, and Tracker simply heads in the direction of that specific sound (though these dark woods may be populated by impostors who mimic certain animal sounds to lead trusting trackers astray).

These paired explorations dynamized the senses of touch, hearing, spatial awareness, proprioception and even teleception, giving us the skills to delve into more intricate blind scenarios:

• Blind Scenes: A pair of pairs, one Sighted the other Blind. The Sighted Pair comes up with a scenario for the Blind Pair to perform, and Blind Pair is in the dark both visually and circumstantially in that they have no idea what they are about to do. The Sighted Pair announces their scene's title and manipulates the Blind Pair (using the tools from the games above) to get their Blind Pair to perform. Memorable scenes included "A Trip to the Dentist", "Survivor", and "Blind Date in the School Cafeteria". Sighted Pair announces "the end!" when it's over.
• Magical Journey: In pairs, a sighted actor takes their blind companion on a 5-minute journey through space, telling a story using all other senses. After each takes the other on a Magical Journey, this pair can then conspire to take the larger group on a Grand Magical Journey.
• Find Hands: Everybody forms a circle, holds hands, closes their eyes and notices what is unique about the people to either side, just by touching hands and arms no higher than the elbow. After a minute, all release, walk around with eyes closed, and then find their original partners. A great game for 7-10 people that becomes increasingly more epic in bigger groups.

After two days of working primarily with eyes closed, we opened our eyes and used some source material to explore archetypes of literal and figurative "blindness" in media. We listened to "blind songs" by Thomas Dolby, Morrissey, Manfred Mann, Run DMC, Kenny Starr, and The Who, and then made short scenes inspired by them. When also performed some classical and contemporary drama featuring blind characters with the intent of using the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques of Simultaneous Dramaturgy and Forum Theatre, but only had time for our closing games:

• Blind Clap Together: In a circle, all close eyes and clap simultaneously.
• Venus Flytrap: In a circle, all point left index fingers down into the center of their neighbors' upturned right palm. The object is to catch your neighbor's finger and simultaneously not get caught. After a few turns, switch hands.
• Italian Rain: Sitting in a circle with eyes closed, all begin to tap a finger against their opposite palm, then two, then three, then four, then all five before working back down to zero. Then back up, and back down twice more until all is silent.

For more information about Mason and Morgan's theatrical projects, visit the website of the Medium Theatre Company: www.themediums.org. 

Status Roadmap

Status Map made by a dozen people at the Images of Transition workshop on 25 November, 2013.

This mapping activity explores transitions and how changes in our lives affect status. It can be done around a specific theme or multiple themes, as an exercise for one person or for an entire group. Below are instructions for doing this activity with a group around a chosen theme:

Materials:

• Colored index cards or paper to write on
• Colored markers, pencils or crayons to write with
• Colored tape (such as theatrical spike tape) or yarn to map with
• A wall with 4 signs on it: "Higher Status" at the top, "Lower Status" at the bottom, "Long Ago" on the left, "Today" on the right

Each person does the following:

1. To make your path distinctive, choose one color to write on, one color to write with, and one color to map with.
2. Think of a transition around the given theme—something that you, or someone close to you, have gone through. What were the significant moments, incidents and sitautions along that path of transition?
3. Write down each of these events on separate index cards.  Put them in chronological order.
4. Use the tape to map your transition on the wall:  The X-axis is time, the Y-Axis is status. Decide what the relative status for your first event is and if that goes up or down for the next. Use the tape or yarn to link these events as you map them sequentially on the wall.

Discussion: Once everyone has contributed to the map, step back and look at it. What do you notice? What is the relationship between status and time? Where are the biggest concentrations of cards? Do people's transitions follow similar pats? What sorts of things are marked as higher or lower status? What are some recurring themes?

Variations: One person can do this exercise by picking a handful of transitions that they have gone through, each with a different theme. Do it on a piece of paper using a different color marker for each theme. Begin with the theme of aging—What are some significant events that have marked your age and how did they affect your status? What else can you map? Some other themes could be ability/disability, class/finances, education/work, faith/culture, language/geography, relationship/marital status, and so on.

Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Going finger-to-finger and sharing stories
about wanting more support. 

Here's an example of one of the many games developed by Augusto Boal that has been added onto and changed by many of us practicing Theatre of the Oppressed.  Shoulder-to-Shoulder is an ice-breaker that deals with our sense of touch as well as the issues of comfort that come up around touch.  In our Rehearsing Our Work session held in August of 2013, JD Stokely (who received our 2012 scholarship) led a version of Shoulder-to-Shoulder that expands this game into personal storytelling.

While Walking:

As people walk around the space, the facilitator calls out, "Shoulder-to-shoulder!" at which point everyone pairs up and continues to walk, leaning their shoulder against their partner's shoulder.  Facilitator can call out, "Switch partners!" and everyone transitions to leaning their opposite shoulder into a new partner's shoulder while continuing to walk around the space.  This can be further mixed up by calling out other body parts—head-to-head, back-to-back, toe-to-toe, and so on, with people switching which body parts make contact as they continue to navigate the space with one or more other people.

Many Parts At Once:

For this version, participants stop walking when the facilitator calls out strings of juxtapositions to all be done at once—shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee and thumb-to-thumb.  Once that's gotten awkward enough, facilitator says "Release!" and people continue to move about the space until a new series is called out.

These pairings don't need to be symmetrical.  Things like elbow-to-hand and ear-to-shoulder are valid calls.  In general, always move from the simpler and more familiar, to the stranger and more complex.

Storytelling:

When the facilitator calls "Shoulder-to-shoulder," people pair up and stop walking.  Then facilitator says, "Now, share a story about your shoulder with your partner."  It's a good idea to choose body parts that are not too intimate as the stories themselves are often intimate.  A great one that Stokely gave us was "scar-to-scar" which resulted in a wide variety of combinations!

What the Game is Good For:

A great game both for people who already work together and for those just getting to know each other, Shoulder-to-Shoulder gets people moving and connected with each other.  Gauge your group's comfort level: trained dancers or actors might be more accustomed to less conventional exchanges of touch, while others may have their comfort zones stretched to a place that feels unsafe.  If a group if full of people who have difficulty being touched, the "safe zone" above the bicep has a lot of options—elbow, forearm, palm, back of hand and individual fingers are all areas where most people are accustomed to sharing touch (though wrists can be triggering for some).  Parts of the foot are good too, provided that folks are wearing shoes.  If people are comfortable with this and are having fun, things like shoulders, backs, ears and heads can be added.  Adding storytelling can put the game into context and further break the ice, loosening people up to talk to each other, knowing that we all have experiences and histories with our bodies.

The Vehicle Game

We are starting to post rules for games and techniques! If you've used this game, have variations to add, or have questions about how this and other games are played, leave us a comment.

Can you guess what this vehicle is? Let us know.
Guess correctly and we'll send you a poster!

This theatre game works well for building teamwork, working under pressure and developing the language of images. You need a group big enough to split into two or more teams of 5 to 10 people each. You'll also need space for these teams to work simultaneously and separately.

The Basic Game:
Each team uses their bodies to construct the image of a vehicle—that is, a mode of transport that will be recognizable by the members of the other teams. The vehicle must also be able to travel across the space as a moving human sculpture that includes sound effects. Once all the teams have completed this task, one team shows their stationary vehicle. The others make observations and guesses as to what the vehicle is. Then the vehicle moves and makes noise, either confirming the guesses or not. The round ends with the team revealing what their vehicle was, and the next team has a go.

The Next Level:
The first stage of this game gets people to create "Theatre."  This next stage adds "...of the Oppressed." First have a list of different forms of oppression that you want to illustrate.  In a general T.O. workshop, these can be very broad:  sexism, racism, classism, ableism, ageism, heterocentrism—the group may even decide on several topics themselves.  If the group is working on a particular issue, the topics will be more specific and nuanced:  active racism, passive racism, individual racism, institutional racism, etc.  The facilitator quietly assigns each group an oppression to be made into a machine—or "vehicle"—to be shown and performed for the other groups to guess.  Allow more time for each phase of this exercise, especially for when others are looking as the image, prompting discussion about the various forms of oppression and why people see what they see.  Once all of these Vehicles of Oppression have be viewed and guesses have been made, all groups reveal which was which, sit down and discuss what was discovered.

Variations:
The basic game can be played with any sort of mechanism, be it a household appliance with moving parts (such as a clock or a dishwasher), a ritual performed by a person or people (brushing one's teeth or going to vote), or larger social systems made miniature by the metaphor of theatre (education, commerce, government, patriarchy, childhood, etc.) As with all Theatre of the Oppressed games, the permutations are endless!

Photo above of one team's vehicle image in a workshop at the Muktadhara III Theatre of the Oppressed Festival in West Bengal. Leave us a comment below with your guess as to what they are. Guess correctly and we'll send you a poster!

RE: COMMUNICATIONS

In November of 2012 Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed hosted German activist-organizer Magdalena Scharf for two evenings of workshops at Studio 34's new art space.  Each 2-hour session was aimed at re-imagining and re-shaping how we communicate, both verbally and non-verbally, and how that affects power relations in our daily lives.  Magda will be sending us her rules for all of these games to be posted here, starting with these:

• Bang! Participants stand in a circle, facilitator calls a name. That person has to duck as quickly as possible as people on their left and right “shoot”—loudly! The slower one “is shot,” leaves the circle and calls out the next name. 
• Picasso: Each person gets 5 index cards and then walks around the space. Stopping to face one other person, they have 1-2 minutes to sketch each other (and write the name) without looking at the card. All resume walking and find new partners. After 5 rounds, all hand the pictures to their respective partners. People choose the picture they like best and explain to the others (in a small or large group) why they chose that picture.
• Noah’s Ark Break-out Groups: Distribute images of animals that participants “act” out in order to find each other. Nice way to have random groups without cliquing. Same can be done by cutting up similar looking postcards that participants piece together the cards like a puzzle.
• Concentric Interview Circles: An even number of participants face each other in an inner and outer circle. Facilitator asks a question that each partner answers for the other for one minute before switching. Questions move from broader to more specific, or from less personal to more intimate. Some questions might be:
• What is the story/meaning of your name?
• What experience do you have facilitating groups?
• What audience do you work with?
• What was the last dream you can remember?

Here's a description of the workshops:

Workshop #1: UNPACKING LANGUAGE
Tuesday November 27 from 7pm to 9pm
at Studio 34 • 4522 Baltimore Ave.
Do you, or others you spend time with, speak a language other than English?  This interactive workshop will break down barriers built by language differences while playing with language in non-traditional ways.  We’ll explore the nature of language and power relations and have fun with games that don't use spoken language at all. 

Workshop #2: ICE-BREAKERS AND ENERGIZERS FOR ORGANIZERS
Thursday November 29 from 7pm to 9pm
at Studio 34 • 4522 Baltimore Ave.

Whether you’re an educator, an activist, an organizer or anyone who works in group settings, this workshop will be packed with tools for getting folks up out of their chairs and communicating in different ways.

About the Facilitator:

Magdalena Scharf was born to German and Spanish parents, grew up in Iran and Brazil, and currently divides her time between Philadelphia and Berlin.  She has been involved in bringing LGBT youth from Germany and Brazil together for cross-cultural exchange, and runs the NGO Action Service Reconciliation for Peace, which fights racism, discrimination and social exclusion internationally.  She has been involved with Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed since 2011.

Questions? Leave us a comment below!

Status by Number

This exercise comes to us from Jana Sanskriti, the movement for Theatre of the Oppressed in West Bengal, India. Jana Sanskriti uses it to facilitate the creation of their plays, as well as creating societal dialogues in the communities where they practice. It works best with large groups.

Part 1—Interactions of Status: Each member of the group is assigned a secret number from 1 to 7. Each begins to walk around the space, thinking about this number in terms of status with 1 being the lowest and 7 being the highest. On this scale, how does someone with this status walk? How do they carry themselves? What actions do they perform in daily life? In silence, each person develops a character based on their assigned status and begins to interact with others, solidifying these status roles though wordless dialogues of gesture. At the end of this part, the group discuss experiences playing their roles and interacting with others.

Part 2—Images of Status: The group sorts itself out into smaller groups with an even distribution of status levels. Each smaller group then creates an image—a still, human sculpture—that portrays these expressions of status. Members of the other groups then share observations about each image, comparing both the status of individuals, as well as the expressions of status as created by each group.

Variation—Vampires of Disparity: In the first part of the exercise, everyone freezes except for those with highest status. These elites can touch those of lesser status and "absorb" status points, lowering the status of those touched with their own status become even greater. All resume motion, performing according to their new status. This can also be used in the still image in the second part of the exercise, with those who have top status remain as they are, while all others assume images of lower status than they originally had.

Got more variations? Tell us about them by leaving a comment below!

2 × 3 × Bradford Variations

This Theatre of the Oppressed game (named for a town in England where it was developed) is one of Boal's "classics" and can be found in the book Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Here's a version with a guessing game twist:

1. In pairs, each person picks and issue or -ism, and then chooses which one they will work on first.
2. Pairs count 1–2–3–1–2–3... alternating who says which number,
3. When signaled, one person replaces saying #1 with a movement and sound based on the chosen theme. #2 and #3 are subsequently replaced as well.
4. One this rhythm of sounds and movements is established, each pair shows their work to the rest of the group who then tries to guess what issue or -ism was being communicated. 
5. Each pair then goes back to create another sequence, based on their other theme.

Group Movement Variation: To everyone moving together, other members of the group can add themselves in to a paired rhythm, choosing sides or forming groups that copy the sound/gesture. This can highlight different sorts of societal relationships: What's it like to have one vs. many? Women vs. men? Some standing onstage while others lie down on the floor? There are many possibilities.

Facilitator's Note: In the spring of 2012 we discovered an incidental variation on this technique when one pair chose "white guilt" as their theme. They had created their 3 sound/gestures, but each performed sound/gesture #3 quite differently—one from the perspective of someone dealing with their own guilt, the other in response to that person's expression of guilt. So the "1–2–3–1–2–3" pattern became a "1–2–3–1–2–4" pattern!

Cut-Ups

This technique was developed in England by Julia Barclay and her group Apocryphal Theatre. It deals with stereotypes and can be used with small or large groups. The form here uses just text, but other layers can be added in using sounds, gestures and movements.

1. Each person writes down 5 clichés, based on the issues of class, gender, race, religion, and then something else of their choosing. A group of 4 or 5 people volunteers to go first. They are the Actors, and the other participants form the Audience.
2. The Actors stand in a line and state their clichés in turn, first to themselves, then to each other, then to the Audience, and finally to "The Grid"—the system and space in which these clichés exist (if that's too obtuse, think of performing to The Grid as "not performing to yourself, your fellow Actors or the Audience). 
3. Once all clichés have been performed in all of these ways, the Actors then move about the space, stating any of these clichés—their own or those of their fellow actors—in any order, repeating ones that they heard others say or stringing two or more together. For this part, each clichés is said in its entirety, without any change to its wording.
4. From here, the actors fall "Off The Grid" by cutting and pasting words from these clichés to make new (often hilarious) phrases.
5. Debrief, with the Audience sharing their experiences, followed by the Actors sharing theirs before the next group talks the stage.

Historical Note: Barclay adapted this Cut-Up technique from Beat artist/poets Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs who would type up pages of text, and then cut and paste them to create new words and phrases that went beyond the confines of conventional language (a.k.a. "The Grid"). Decades before the Beats, Dada poets and Surrealist artists were doing similar things with words and images via collaging and "exquisite corpse" experiments. Contemporary to the Beats, cut-ups have been used in experimental music and film, and more recently in the "versioning" of dub reggae and sampling in hip hop, creating awesome breakthroughs in the sorts of sounds we listen to and images we see. As Burroughs put it, "When you cut into the present, the future leaks out." With regards to theatre and dismantling oppression, Augusto Boal adds, "Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it."

Concentric Circles

This game highlights stereotypes and is good for large groups. It uses sounds, gestures, and has people of working with eyes closed and open. It's great for a group or workshop focusing on a particular issue, such as gender, sexism, whiteness, etc. Here are the basic steps:

1. Group divides in half and stands in two circles, one inside the other, with everyone facing center. People in the inner circle (Circle A) close their eyes, while those in the outer (Circle B) watch with eyes open. 
2. Facilitator names a theme and someone from Circle B steps into the center of Circle A to make a stereotypical gesture and sound based on the theme. Those in Circle A repeat the sound and—with eyes still closed—each makes a gesture presumed to accompany that sound. 
3. Everyone in Circle A then opens their eyes and repeats their gestures with eyes open, and finally the maker of the original gesture repeats it for all to see. 
4. After a few rounds, Circles A and B switch places and roles. When both halves of the group have spent equal time in each role, have a seat and debrief the exercise.

Facilitator's Note: I first learned this game as an exercise on gender. The facilitator divided the group into "female" and "male" and had the men make feminine stereotypes for the women to imitate, and then the group switched roles with the women making masculine stereotypes for the men to imitate. I've seen this be revelatory for people who have lived either comfortably or uncomfortably in this gender binary. I've also seen this be disastrous, as many people do not ascribe to this binary and thus stand aside when told to choose "female" or "male". To better understand this, imagine if the given topic were race and the facilitator said, "Black people in one circle, white people in the other." Where would people of mixed or other identities go? Our identities are not always as visible or as static as others perceive. The above variation on the Concentric Circles game is a way of letting people be free to show the pervasiveness of stereotypes without forcing people to squeeze themselves into an identity group that might not fit.

Multi-Issue Variation: When we first played Concentric Circles in Philly in the Spring of 2012, the group began this game making sounds and gestures around issues of gender—expressions that are stereotypes of femininity, masculinity and/or this gender binary. We then moved on to age stereotypes—another binary, this time young/old with some gradations (for example, expressions of "youth" could be infantile or adolescent). The group switched roles, and made stereotypical expressions of The United States of America, and eventually religion, which many found to be a difficult or sensitive issue to express this way. Let us know what variations you have of this or other games by leaving a comment below!

Games for Actors and Non-Actors: What We Played, January 10th, 2012

In 2012, T.O. Philly takes up residence at the Rotunda for a number of classes and workshops on Tuesday evenings. Our first was on January 10th, with two dozen people who came to play games. These games come from a variety of sources: theatre games used by actors to warm up before rehearsal, trust-building and non-competative games from the "New Games" movement, and techniques that examine social relationships from the Theatre of the Oppressed—all have a folkloric quality that can be brought to almost any group.  Here's what we played:

Circle Games:
• Flying Dutchman: Ghost ships that race to safe harbors without colliding (hopefully).

• Group Juggling: Throwing and catching each others names, as well as juggling balls.

• Ooh-Ahh: The "ooh" goes one way, the "ahh" the other, and then the names start flying as games get combined.

Walking Games:

• Number Speeds: Speed up and slow down at the shout of a number, then do it without breaking eye contact with one other person.

• Handshakes/Hi-Fives/Hugs/Hellos: Each action (shaking hands, high-fiving, hugs, and waving hello) must be performed with a specific partner on cue. Combined with the previous game it's a beautiful mess.

• Lines and Trinagles: Secretly pick two people and form a shape with them—either a straight line or an equilateral triangle—without letting them know who they are. Oh, and everyone else is trying to do the same thing as well.

• Hagoo: Two teams form a corridor, one on each side, and each send a member to walk toward each other down the middle. The walkers cannot smile or laugh, though opposing team members try to make them do so, thereby getting them to join they're team.

Rhythm Games:

• Bronx/Paper/Scissors: Pairs play each other and the loser joins the winner's gang, backing 'em up as they play other RPS gang leaders. Everyone ends up in two big gangs, and then just one gang with no one left to fight.

• Carnaval em Rio: Same situation as above, one instead of throwing fingers, players throw rhythms—sounds made the mouth and movements made by the whole body. Pairs "morph" there rhythms into a unified compromise of individual movements and sounds, then morph with others into to fewer, bigger groups, until everyone is doing the same thing in unison.

• Rhythm Challenge: With one unified rhythm, the group faces the same way. A challenger steps out, faces the group and proposes a new rhythm, which members can defect to or refuse. Larger group wins with new rhythm being adopted by everyone or no one, and then a new challenger steps out, and so on.

Image Theatre Games:

• Animal Ritual: Everyone is secretly assigned an animal. They all enter the space in the manner of each animal—moving, making noises, foraging for food, and eventually interacting. Before exiting, each animal must find their mate (hopefully) of the same species.
• 10 Seconds of Noticing: In pairs, one stands with eyes closed while the other sculpts themselves into a motionless Image. The other open the eyes for 10 seconds, then replicates the image to the best of their ability. Adjustments are made by the original sculptor before switching roles. Individual images can then evolve into group images, movements, or anything else that adds layers of nuance, language and fun to the exercise.

Check out other rules for games on this site. Add your own by posting a comment below!

Love and Anger and Animals

We are starting to post rules for games and techniques! If you've used this game, have variations to add, or have questions about how this and other games are played, leave us a comment.

This is a rhythm game that can be played in pairs or in teams with many variations. It's a great warm-up for the body and voice, for being creative and receptive, and makes a good transition between ice-breakers and more involved theatrical work.

In his book Games for Actors and Non-Actors (London: Routledge, 1992), T.O. founder Augusto Boal briefly describes a game called "Crossing the Room" (p. 100) where "two actors cross the room from opposite sides, with a particular movement, rhythm and sound." In more recent workshops with Boal and his students, the game has taken on many different and more specific forms, two of which I'll give here:

Crossing the Room as Animals (two actors at a time with the rest of the group watching):

1. Divide the group in two and have them line up facing each other on opposite sides of the space. The front of each line is diagonally across from the front of the other.
2. The person at the front of each line thinks of an animal and then begins to act, move, and emit a noise like that animal. These two animals enter the space, moving slowly toward each other.
3. When the two animals meet in the middle, these actions, movements and noises become an interaction—an interspecies conversation. Each animal notices the actions/movements/sounds of the other.
4. The two animals each begin to "evolve" into the other, gradually giving up their own animal's characteristics and replacing them with those of the other animal. As they do this, the two animals physically switch places in the space as well.
5. These animals then finish crossing the room, arriving at the end of the line opposite from where they started, and the next pair of animals emerge from the fronts of the two lines.

Exchange of Love and Anger (in teams, with everyone going at once):

1. Actors form two lines with each person directly facing someone on the other side. (In case of an odd number of people, a facilitator can step in or out to make it even.)
2. All turn to face away from each other. One team forms images of "Love" and the other of "Anger."
3. All turn around once again to face each other. At the signal, actors dynamize their images, adding a movement and a sound, forming a rhythm. With these rhythms, the two teams gradually move toward each other.
4. Once they meet, each pair creates a dialogue of Love and Anger, and then exchanges rhythms gradually by giving up aspects of their original image and rhythm to take on those of their component, eventually transitioning completely. As this transition happens, Love and Anger switch places, as well as roles, and back away from each other to arrive in lines opposite from where they started.
5. Repeat this game a second time with each team taking on the opposite role. Partners then debrief, then the whole group discusses their experience.

Variations: The rules for these games are interchangeable and flexible: Love and Anger could be done in isolated pairs with the rest of the group watching, and Animals could be done as teams moving all at once. Other emotions can be swapped in, or try human professions instead of animals. As an alternative to exchanging roles, the rhythms could be morphed into a unified rhythm, ending up with a pair of identical hybrid creatures and/or emotions as the result—What is the synthesis of Love and Anger? Of a snake and a bumblebee? A goose and a lion? A bloodsucking leech and a hungry Wall Street broker? If you have any other variations or ideas, let us know!

Workshop photo taken in West Bengal by Luc Opdebeeck from Formaat, a Theatre of the Oppressed organization in Rottendam, Netherlands.

Colombian Hypnosis, Indian Hypnosis

We are starting to post rules for games and techniques! If you've used this game, have variations to add, or have questions about how this and other games are played, leave us a comment.

Games are at the foundation of Theatre of the Oppressed, and no game characterizes TO better than Colombian Hypnosis. The game's name comes from its point of origin: While in exile from his native Brazil, TO founder Augusto Boal developed many wordless techniques with indigenous Latin Americans. It was with a group of non-Spanish-speaking Colombians that Colombian Hypnosis was first realized.

Here I give the basic technique, as taught by Boal and many people in the U.S. and Europe. In a workshop, the game is often used as a transition point out of ice-breakers and into deeper conversations about power and oppression. Jana Sanskriti—the Indian Theatre of the Oppressed movement founded in West Bengal—uses Colombian hypnosis as a segue into working with still images, as well as a surrealistic theatre technique in their Forum plays. Their techniques are given below.

Colombian Hypnosis in pairs:

1. Participants pair off and choose who's Ⓐ and who's Ⓑ. Ⓐ puts a hand—fingers pointed up, palm facing out—about 8" (20cm) from Ⓑ's face. Ⓐ is the hyponotist. Ⓑ is hypnotized.
2. Moving very slowly and in total silence, Ⓐ leads Ⓑ around the space, playing with height, angle, position and rhythm, yet always keeping the movements very slow. Ⓑ must follow Ⓐ's hand, keeping the same distance and perspective at all times, as if hypnotized by it. Ⓐ's job is to challenge Ⓑ while remaining within the range of possibility as far as what Ⓑ can do.
3. After several minutes (as few as 5, as many as 30) Ⓐ and Ⓑ switch roles. Now Ⓑ hypnotizes Ⓐ for the same length of time that Ⓐ hypnotized Ⓑ.
4. After each has had a turn playing both hypnotist and hypnotized, both Ⓐ and Ⓑ put a hand in front of each other's faces, both hypnotizing and being hypnotized simulataneously.
5. Debrief, first in Ⓐ/Ⓑ pairs, then as an entire group—this part is very important. For most groups the facilitator need do very little to get an insightful dialogue going!

Variation in threes:

Same as Colombian Hypnosis in pairs, but now with Ⓐ, Ⓑ and Ⓒ. Each takes a turn using two hands to hypnotize the other two.

Variation in fives:

A single hypnotist hypnotizes four others, one on each hand, one on each foot.

Variation in groups:

A chosen hypnotist stands in the middle with all others choosing to be hypnotized by different body parts at different distances. The hypnotist must move very slowly in this variation, as the smallest movement can send certain people flying across the space at great speeds!

Chain Reaction:

Endless Hypnosis combinations are possible: a single hypnotsist can manipulate long chains or large mobs of hypnotized masses with each hand, or group members can randomly select to be hypnotized by body parts of unknowing participants—be creative!

Colombian Hypnosis in India: a gateway to Image Theatre

I learned this method in workshops with Sanjoy Ganguly, one the founders of Jana Sanskriti Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in Badu, West Bengal. It begins with any game of Colombian Hypnosis given above—usually the 2-person or 3-person versions—with the following steps added:

1. All participants freeze or resume moving at a signal from the facilitator. These freezes can be rapid intervals, or long (sometimes uncomfortable) holds.
2. During a freeze, the facilitator can select one pair or group to remain frozen while all others come and look at the image and voice their observations. These first observations are objective, meaning that they are factual, physical characteristics of the image, not speculations as to what's going on.
3. After several objective observations, people can offer subjective observations: Who are these people? What are they doing, thinking, and feeling? What is their relationship? What happened before this? What will happen next?
4. After a number of observations, people resume the game until another freeze and another image is chosen for analysis.

This technique can go in many directions, and it tends to move the surreal narrative of Colombian Hypnosis into something more concrete. The facilitator may ask for participants to modify the image, or to dynamize it with movements, sounds or words. Jana Sanskriti also uses Colombian Hypnosis in their plays (pictured here) to illustrate power dynamics in a symbolic fashion. If you're rehearsing a play, try using Colombian Hypnosis as a rehearsal technique by having one character hypnotize one or two others while they say their lines. Or use Colombian Hypnosis as a "Mini Forum" by instructing the hypnotized to creatively break out from under the control of their hypnotist—again, the possibilities are endless!

Games Classes: What We Played

In October of 2011 T.O. Philly held a series of short drop-in classes that bought together an assortment of games and exercises to be used with any group. Whether working with kids or young adults in a classroom, actors or dancers on a stage, organizers and activists fighting for a cause, or even friends or family in our communities, these games are useful tools to bring people together while thinking outside the box. We made time and space available after each session to strategize how we use these games in the work that we do.
Below is a list of games that we played each week, along with a little overview. Many games have been passed along by other practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed, some directly from T.O. founder Augusto Boal, or via his book Games for Actors & Non-Actors. Other sources are given below:
Week 1:
• Name Three Times—Circle name-game where the person in the middle tries to get out by saying someone's name three times without interruption.
• Writing Names—A partner name-game in which people tell each other about themselves and then write each other's names in the air using different parts of the body.
• Cat & Mouse—Tag game with duos of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder while a mouse runs away from a cat. The mouse can escape by joining a duo, thereby turning the person on the other side of their neighbor into the new mouse.
• Walking in Pairs—A series of theatrical walks that each person performs for and with a partner. We played with eye contact, speeds, sizes, distances, moods, mirroring, opposites and several made-up environments or situations.
• Unifying Rhythms—Adapted from Boal's "Carnaval Em Rio," individuals make different movements and sounds and then morph them into one unified rhythm.
• Closing Clap—In the circle, all start with hands apart, then try to bring them together at the same time.

Week 2:

• Whoosh Boing Zap Freakout—Variation on classic circle games like "Pass the Clap" or "Zip-Zap-Zop" where a sound and gesture is passed around or across the circle. Picked up from members of Chicago's RedMoon Theatre.

• Enormous Elephant—First layer is a name game where each person picks an alliterative animal identity, second layer is a rhythm game with an ever-changing pecking order. Adapted from "King Elephant" in The New Games Book and a more modern version called "Big Booty" that we picked up from some prison abolitionists in Pittsburgh.

• Go Tag—Another one from The New Games Book, originally from India, a line of people conspire to catch a single runner.

• Empty Chair Tag—One chair per person, all filled but one. The person who's "it" walks toward the empty chair and it's up to everyone else to prevent them from sitting down.

• Switching Places in the Circle—Similar game, only chairs are in a circle with one fewer chairs than people. People switch places while the person stuck in the middle runs for a free seat. Can also be played without chairs.

• The Red Shoes (a.k.a. "Big Wind Blows")—Similar game, only the person in the middle makes a statement that's true about themselves and all who share in that truth get up to find an empty seat. In Theatre of the Oppressed we often "up-level" the game by playing a second round focusing on experiences of oppression.

• Animal Tracker—Partner game where each person who has their eyes open leads their partner with eyes closed around the room by making animal noises.

Week 3:

• Hey You! What's Your Name?—Circle game where one person points at another, asks their name and moves across the circle to take their place while that next person continues the process. We played 3 rounds: 1st with the question, 2nd without the question, 3rd the answer being the name of the pointer.

• Captain's Coming—The Crew must follow orders given by the Captain(s) or else walk the plank: Captain's coming! At ease! Crew to Port/Starboard/Stern/Bow, swab the deck, Captain's ball, chow time, and maybe some other orders we made up along the way.

• Peruvian Ballgame—Classic Theatre of the Oppressed game developed in Peru. Each person makes and plays with an imaginary ball, then swaps it with one person, then a second, before trying to find and reclaim the ball that each originally had. Our version was extra hard because we swapped balls 3 times before trying to find our originals!

• The Cloth Game—Members of two teams try to score points either by tagging a cloth or tagging the person who tagged the cloth before they can get back to their place in line. This game comes from the Jana Sanskriti Theatre of the Oppressed movement in India, and also appears in Augusto Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors book using a hat instead of a cloth.

• Blind Obstacle Course—Another Jana Sanskriti game. Two teams each send a member out with eyes closed to sit in a chair, write their name on a piece of paper, sit in another chair and then click 2 sticks together. Sighted teammates can give verbal guidance to aid (or abet) their teammate.

• Find Your Mama Like A Little Penguin—In a circle, each person makes a non-vocal noise with their mouths and remembers the sounds of those on either side of them. All players close their eyes and wander around the room, then try to get back into place by recognizing the sounds of their original neighbors.

• Handshakes, High-Fives & Hugs—Each person has one other person with whom they shake hands, a different person that they high-five, and third person to hug. Facilitator calls out "Handshake! High-Five! Hug!" and everybody must run and pair up with the right person on cue.

• Circle of Hands/Crossed Hands/Hands to the Floor—Rhythm games using patterns of hands making rhythms on and off the floor.