Theatre for Living Report The Gagged Voice #2, Coquitlam Organizers: Angelo Lam, Catherine Ho Sponsor: S.U.C.C.E.S.S. on their 25th Anniversary Focus: Diversity and Youth violence Facilitator: David Diamond Dates: April 24 - 26 Participants: 6 Others present: Todd Thompson Forum(s): at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, Coquitlam Didn't get a chance to do any writing during the workshop so all of it is going to happen now. Arrived the first day to four workshop participants. Not enough to work with. SUCCESS is having recruitment problems and we have to find a way to sort these out. Angelo and Catherine agree that the problem is the 'top down' manner in which the organization functions. They do not have a 'youth wing', but they do a lot of work with youth. This happens through contacting parents and principals. This route creates a bottleneck. We discussed how they could have asked the participants in the first workshop to help them recruit for the second workshop. In this way they would have been able to build on the first workshop and develop some youth leaders inside the SUCCESS structure. So, on the first day we did about an hour of games, introducing the concepts of the work, and asked the four participants to try to find others. One of then could not come back the next day. Some did talk with friends and on day two we had six. I decided to proceed. They were a wonderful group and worked very, very hard. We did two days work in one day, and had very strong images by the end of the day. The third day was also 'performance' day. We met at the beautiful Evergreen Theatre at 1PM and set the work we would do on the Images, and then I explained about Cops in the Head and asked for stories, and got two. We did Cops on one of the stories so that the participants could understand the structure of the evening event. About 45 people came. Not bad but not great, either. Angelo and Catherine had handed the organization work over to the Burnaby Office of SUCCESS, but there was really no one whose project it was -- no one 'in charge' there. There had been an article in the Coquitlam paper, some postcards had gone out...... Engagement, though, was very high. We activated two images -- both very violent and then did Cops. Here is the story we focused into: A girl (15) is having rumours spread about her by another girl in the school. The rumours grow and grow until she starts losing her friends. The school-kids, aware of what is going on, are expecting a physical fight between the two girls. Our story-teller has gone to her counselor to ask advice. The counselor, without permission, goes to the Principal. The principal brings the girl (our story-teller) into his office and wants her to apologize, buying into the rumours that are being spread. The girl is afraid that if she does apologize, it is going to get even worse. If she doesn't, she is in trouble with the Principal, who isn't interested in what is really going on, but just wants the whole thing to go away. There was some discussion about how violent situations (like the Rina Verk murder in Victoria) don't come from 'nowhere'........they start with scenarios like this one where kids in a school get 'targeted' and then things grow and grow. The Cops that were developed on the stage included the girls' mother, who said "don't get in trouble", her friend, who said "don't apologize", and the rumour spreading girl, who as a tactic, begged for forgiveness. There were many layers uncovered. Of strongest interest in the room, it seemed to me was the relationship between the girl and her parent -- who continued to interpret the fact that she was in the principal's office as a sign that she was causing trouble. Many of the parents agreed that they do this and that if they paid closer attention, the kind of situation that was building for the girl might be averted -- or at least they could provide real support to their child.   Next: The gagged Voice #3, Prince George Back to Headlines Past Work