By IANS
Dharamsala : An independent group sympathetic to refugees from Tibet is organising a five-day theatre workshop and performance here this week in a theatre movement called the ‘theatre of the oppressed’, to help refugees express their emotions through acting.
The group, Friends of Tibet, has asked two experienced Indian theatre activists — Jaya Aiyer and Ishtiaq — to train young Tibetan refugees and their Indian sympathisers in this kind of theatre.
“We don’t have to shout our lungs out all the time, we can act and demonstrate our pain and give voice to our frustration through drama”, said organiser Tenzin Tsundue, who is a theatre buff.
“Theatre is also a process of self-introspection for the self and the society and it becomes a collective expression at the time of public performances”, he said.
“Some times we can just come out to the streets and laugh at giant China’s paranoia and fear of one Buddhist monk,” he added.
Twenty Tibetan and Indian youngsters living in Dharamsala will form the cast of the workshop, which starts from Nov 19.
Brazilian theatre activist Augusto Boal created the Theatre of the Oppressed, a new interactive theatrical mechanism.
Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed is studied and used in many places in India for both social and political causes like environment protection, AIDS awareness and fighting communalism.
Boal’s explorations were based on the assumption that when a dialogue becomes a monologue, oppression ensues. Theatre then becomes an extraordinary tool for transforming monologue into dialogue, said noted theatre teacher Dough Paterson.
In the workshop, the participants will learn voice modulation, body language, sense of space and whole gamut of theatre languages and mechanics.