—Using Forum Theatre in the Language Classroom—

I have known Dermot for about eight years now and his work has always been a source of great inspiration. We first met during the early stages of what would become the rather brilliant ACT ESOL project at an event in Serpentine Galleries. Dermot is best known for creating the organisation ‘English for Action’ whose holistic approach to supporting migrants in London incorporates language learning, childcare, community-building, advocacy, and activism. Since then, Dermot has moved further into community organising through the organisation Citizens UK. Today, however, we’re mainly talking about Forum Theatre and how this has impacted his work.

Dermot originally stumbled across this practice by accident. He and his colleagues attended an event about Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but the speaker was taken ill so they ended up attending a different workshop. An Italian group called Giolli Co-operative were offering an introduction to Theatre of the oppressed. This is a practice whereby participants create a short theatre piece which they then present to an audience of individuals with similar life experience. It is known as Forum Theatre because the audience are then invited to discuss the issues involved, before watching the show again. During the second viewing, the audience can pause pause the story at any point and try to change the ultimate outcome of the story.

Theatre of the Oppressed seemed like a fun and effective tool for working with ESOL students, and Dermot’s team decided to start using it. The many games are ideal for building trust and community. In fact, the whole process seemed particularly suited to community organising. Dermot already had a lot of experience of community organising and also brought this practice into his work. 

The Giolli Co-operative use one particularly useful set of questions for putting together a piece of Forum Theatre. Dermot referred to this as the ‘hexagon’, which I’ve illustrated in the figure below for convenience.

Another useful process which Dermot suggests using is Elsa Auerbach’s five-stage approach to decoding a scene. This can be useful for both encouraging participants working with Image Theatre or provoking an audience repsonse during a piece of Forum. They are based on Freire’s notion of ‘problem posing’. 

1. Describe what you see;

2. Define the problem;

3. Personalise (have you experienced this?);

4. Analyse the problem: discuss the causes and consequences of the problem;

5. Imagine solutions.

Julian Boal has also been a big influence on EFA. He has been a critic of the kind of “magic solutions” which may arise from forum theatre. Instead, he sees it as a way to rehearse organising strategies and consider the reasons why we don’t take action. More recently his work has focused largely on the anti-Bolsonaro movement.

I wish Dermot the very best in his ongoing work with Citizens UK and EFA. We agree to stay in touch about future projects.