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!

Unpacking Race 2013 • Part 1: An Introduction to Race and Racism

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5

On February 4th, 2013 we kicked off our 5-week series on Unpacking Race.  Goals of the first workshop session were to build trust, establish a positive learning environment, and explore definitions of race and ethnicity.  Using written words and spoken stories—along with images and movement created by the body—our group got began its shared understanding of systemic racism and how it affects each of us.

Definitions and Activity:

To begin talking about race and ethnicity, we started with some definitions borrowed from the Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice curriculum.  While people in our group took issue with the exact wording of these definitions, we used them as a base for talking about race:  

• Race: A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly color), ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, which serve social, economic,and political needs of a society at a given time.
• Ethnicity: A social construct which divides people into smaller social groups based on characteristics such as shared sense group membership, values, behavioral patterns, language, political and economic interests, history and ancestral geographical base and can be self-selected and imposed or both at the same time.

After sharing the above definitions of race and ethnicity, each person in the group stated what their race and ethnicity was.  We then divided into smaller groups to discuss our experiences.  As a baseline for these discussions, we worked with the following four agreements from Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools:

1. Stay Engaged
2. Experience Discomfort
3. Speak Your Own Truth
4. Expect and Accept Non-closure

For more on these agreements and other definitions for discussing race and racism, see the readings below.

Readings and Videos:

Throughout this series we are assigning things to be read and watched before coming to each workshop.  These materials deepen our understanding of the racial construct by giving us a chance to see its historical development, an essential part of understanding how it persists today.  Whether you're enrolled in the workshop or not, you can click on the titles to link to the following essays:

• All workshop attendees, please read “Drawing the Color Line,” from A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.  
• For tools in talking about race and racism, we recommend reading “Four Agreements of Courageous Conversation,” from Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glenn Singleton, Cyndie Hays and Curtin Linton.
• For a shared set of terms to use in talking about race and racism, look at “Definitions on General Concepts: Racism,” from Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Adams, Bell and Griffin.
• Below is a 6-minute excerpt from Race the Power of an Illusion: The Difference Between Us.  You can see the full hour-long episode at by clicking here.