Due to the COVID-19 outbreak this event has been postponed till further notice. For more information please refer to our news page.*
How can we as playwrights challenge the centres of power? What will most successfully provoke an audience to action? During this intensive five-day residential course, you will investigate the delicate particularities of writing for Forum Theatre, the most political of theatrical forms.
Through a range of writing exercises, workshops and games, you will learn how to structure an engaging and provocative Forum Theatre piece that is authentic and invites maximum participation from its target audience. The course will cover many alternative ways of creating Forum Theatre – whether co-creating with the community through devising, or writing from research. The course will also touch on Boal’s ‘action-into-law’ process which he called Legislative Theatre.
Tutored by playwright and activist Sarah Woods and leading expert in Forum Theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed Adrian Jackson, this course offers a chance to develop your playwriting as a socially-engaged practice that can move audiences to fight for change.
Suitable for playwrights, devisers, social activists, theatre practitioners, community workers, teachers and youth workers.
Run in partnership with Arvon Foundation:
How To Apply
To apply, please send a 500-word statement describing how participation would benefit your own writing and/or the community or professional context in which you work or would like to work.
Please email your statement to learning@arvon.org by 5pm on Tuesday 21st January; we will confirm places in the week of 27th January.
What Is Forum Theatre?
Forum Theatre is a form of participatory theatre invented by the Brazilian theatre practitioner and theorist Augusto Boal, with the aim of creating debate about important issues. It is an increasingly popular form which is used across the world in a variety of social settings, from activism to young people’s drama, harnessing theatre to engage audiences, mind, body and soul, in debate around real current issues. This course examines the ways in which writing for Forum Theatre differs from other forms of playwriting and what makes effective Forum Theatre writing.
Tutors
Adrian Jackson – Artistic Director of Cardboard Citizens
Sarah Woods – Playwright and dramaturg, Creative Associate at Cardboard Citizens
