Augustus Boal

One of the 3 topics I researched heavily for my Masters research project was using theatre games to teach social skills to youth with autism.

I bumped into this TEDxColumbia video last night and it brought me back to my graduate school days.  I invested a lot in trying to make that research project work. It was ultimately scrapped because there were issues with getting informed consent from youth with autism and having them fully understand that the project would be voluntary.

When I ran across this video last night which uses Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theater, my immediate thought was “I need to ask a high school theater teacher/club to assist me in testing this out and creating a pilot production for issues like bullying, cutting, and suicide prevention.”

Then I thought, how great would this be as a training tool for professionals? Or students in college working to become professionals? To be able to learn that the simplest action can bring about change.

I thought about Cathy Plourde who created a theater group in Maine, AddVerb Productions: Adding the Verb, Adding Action. She used some of my spoken-word poetry in collaboration with other youth in the country to create powerful theatre productions and published anthologies to create change. She invited local service providers to talk about the services they provide to an audience that had taken a step forward from being a spectator to being an agent of change.

I love this idea! It needs to come to fruition!