It's been a spectacular spring! Several amazing facilitators officially joined the T.O. Philly team and led a variety of workshops in April and May at the Rotunda. Having so many Jokers* on deck, we were for the first time able to be practicing Theatre of the Oppressed in multiple places at once. Here's a synopsis of where we've been and who we've been with in the past couple months:We were invited facilitators at the Zami conference for LGBTQ+ people of color, for the Ethical Humanist Society's Building an Ethical Future conference (which is where the photos on the right were taken), and at the Young Adult Friends Conference at Pendle Hill.
At local institutions, we did Image Theatre with Temple University's Institute on Disabilities, made quick Forum Theatre pieces with student art teachers through Tyler College's Arts Education Program, and brought Theatre of the Oppressed to UPenn to highlight the importance of improvisation as a tool for social change.
We also led games and anti-oppression group work with people from all over the world at the Girls Rock Camp Alliance's conference in New Jersey and for Action Service Reconciliation for Peace's seminar in D.C.
This summer we resume work with transgender and gender-variant youth at Camp Aranu'tiq on the East and West Coasts, with students and faculty at Goddard College in Vermont, with Mariposa Co-op's Food Justice and Anti-Racism group in West Philly, with South Philly's Burmese and Bhutanese refugee community at Growing Home Gardens, and with LGBT teens at The Attic Youth Center in central Philadelphia.
What else will 2014 bring? You tell us! Leave us a message on our new voicemail at 267-282-1057, or drop us a line at ye olde email: tophilly@gmail.com.
Hope to see you soon!
—The T.O. Philly Team
*Joker is a Theatre of the Oppressed term for "facilitator" and also "difficultator". For more insight in to that, see our glossary of T.O. jargon.
