Theatre Games

THEATRE GAMES 

Facilitated game rounds and forum theatre workshops

In collaboration with Margarita del Carmen

The game rounds are facilitated workshops where we lead a group through a set of games put together beforehand. The games can both be the usual games, used for warming up for Theatre of the Oppressed disciplines (such as forum theatre), games found elsewhere (for example Butoh exercises) and modified versions of known games. An example of the last is the Ritual Machinery this game combines The Machine of Rhythms with the participants’ memories of their everyday life chores and rituals, thus forming a machine assembled by the repetition of movement and sound all showing, and sharing, each participant’s memory of everyday life.

The forum theatre workshops are workshops using the forum theatre form. This means, the participants set up a play to illustrate an oppression or a problem within their group. This play is then performed to an audience of “spectactors”, who can be either outside or part of the same group. An example is a one-day workshop at the School of Walls and Space (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) where we improvised and discussed several scenes relating to the common dish washing situation of the department.

This part of our practice is a part of our pedagogical work in relation to bringing in other, more dynamic, methods to a group, thus working closely with practices of group-enunciation as well as techniques of “changing the room” and shifting from normative structures and rituals – thus making a combined focus on group dynamics and the spaces of everyday life.