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Creating Community
Based Dialogue
The contract is, in my opinion, anti-ethical to the very principles of "community development" that is at the core of the article and my work. Making it available this way is an attempt to stimulate discussion and awareness around these issues. Responses, feedback are encouraged. David Diamond
"Oppression is a relationship in which there is only monologue. Not dialogue." Augusto Boal As the process of globalization unfolds across the planet, and with it, a move to commodify everything we can touch, feel, see and think (beauty, freedom, health, education, water, genes), the role of human beings is being redefined. No longer valued merely as participants in life, people are being educated from an earlier and earlier age that their value lies in how much they can consume. In this context true dialogue is becoming more and more difficult. In April 2001 here in Canada, we witnessed the monologue of the Quebec City "Summit of the Americas" talks - where only those of like mind were invited to the table to discuss trade agreements that affect the future of the population of an entire hemisphere, while dissenters from around the world stood outside the fence demonstrating and breathing tear gas. The June 22, 2001, shooting of a protestor in Genoa, Italy, at the G8 Summit served as an opportunity for Italian paramilitary forces to invade many buildings, including the quarters of peaceful protesters, who were beaten in their sleep. The sensationalism of the shooting is part of a monologue covered by the global media; the true depth of oppression, the reasons to demonstrate, remain relative secrets. As of this final re-write on October 27, 2001, post the events of September 11, we are also being subjected to a new monologue titled "The War on Terrorism". Inside this monologue it appears to have become unacceptable to question the activities (past, present or future) of the United States and its Allies. If we are to truly invest, however, in community development, in dialogue creation, in a struggle against the negative impacts of globalization and, indeed, in an honest struggle against terrorism, then we must be prepared to scrutinize our own history, our own actions, our own institutions and our own world view. If you would like to read alternate globalization information from credible reporters from all over the world, check out http://www.indymedia.org . Artists have a central role to play globally today, because cultural work that originates in community expression is the very heart of dialogue-creation on local, regional and international levels. Any process that stimulates true dialogue helps to combat the negative impacts of globalization. I have a belief that affects all of my work: that cultural work is central to health, both of individuals and of communities. Just as cells make up the living organism of our bodies, people make up the living organism of the community. The way communities used to express themselves - and be in dialogue with each other - was through song, dance, drama, painting, sculpting and other art forms. This was how a community expressed its hopes, fears, dreams, victories and defeats. It is only relatively recently in the evolution of humankind that these activities have been commodified, becoming things that we buy instead of things that we do. So now we buy movies and television and books and music and theatre and dance and in doing so - in relying on and paying others to tell us stories about others - we lose our ability to tell our own communal stories about ourselves. We lose our ability as communities to be in dialogue with the world around us. More and more, my work through Headlines Theatre, a Vancouver, Canada-based company, has become to enter a community, having been invited to do so, and to work with people in that community to help them tell the community's story using a symbolic language - the theatre. I have come to see this work in every instance as creating space for dialogue. Whether it is working with street youth in Vancouver on criminalization issues (Squeegee -- 1999), the local activist community on global trade agreements (Corporate U - 2000), the local Muslim community on post Sept. 11 fears and desires (Reaching Across - Oct. 2001) or collaborating with artists and activists on privatization-of-water issues (THIR$TY , scheduled for March 2002), or members of the Passamaquoddy Nation in Maine on issues of language reclamation (We Have to Find Our Voices - ongoing through 2003), the core impulse is the same: to create space where true dialogue can take place. The process is also transformative for participants. If a person in a workshop creates a moment, once, I do not believe it has anything to do with "acting". When that person takes on a role, though, and must do the same thing over and over again - hit a mark, get a cue, reach a rehearsed emotional place - this is a performance. In this moment, the citizen becomes an actor, and becoming an actor on the community stage leads to acting in a different way in the community. It leads to a different kind of self- and world-analysis, a more informed internal and external set of actions. For me, this is the essence of community development, and community development is the core of a healthy response to the negative impacts of globalization. Much of Headlines' work is based on our practice of "Theatre for Living" (TFL), which has grown out of Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed." It is the name I use now as Headlines' work transforms more and more into a North American context. The basic concepts of this work are explained in Boal's book "Theatre of the Oppressed", published by Theatre Communications Group. To understand this essay, it is necessary to know that in a Forum Theatre play audience members are invited to make interventions, attempting to constructively alter outcomes (for example, taking over the role of a character who is oppressed and changing the lines and action by finding ways to work to break the oppression). The Joker, a role I frequently play - acts as facilitator, inviting audience members to intervene or enter into the action. It is not the purpose of a Forum Theatre play to answer questions or offer solutions. The more it does this, the more it robs the audience of its interactive role. The play's function is to ask the hardest questions possible, to prod and provoke the audience into praxis: planning, action and analysis. More and more I am staying away from the language of "oppressor" and "oppressed" common to Forum Theatre. I find it oversimplifies and polarizes the issues. In Brazil, where the work originates, to call oneself oppressed is to self-identify with a form of resistance. In North America when people hear the word, they tend to think "victim." Forum Theatre stresses looking for the ways to overcome the oppression depicted in a particular moment; but more often now, I find myself looking for the deeper truth of what is occurring in the scene. Discovering the truth can be surprising, frightening, certainly empowering. Maybe what is happening is different from what we think. Maybe the person we feel is an oppressor is really oppressed and there is another way to overcome the oppression. What if the assumptions on which we base our actions are not sound? Instead of looking to "break" the oppression (which does not necessarily entail dealing with its source), what about finding a healthier way to navigate through the moment, perhaps finding insights to help break oppressive cycles along the way? In this essay, I use three very
different projects to discuss various approaches to using cultural
work as a community-development tool responding to issues of
globalization.
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