Posted by Mandala Center on May 27, 2018 in Blog |
轉載 被壓迫者劇場引導者的内驅力
by Phui Yi Kong
I was born, raised, and currently live in
Malaysia.
When I was facilitating Theatre of the
Oppressed (TO) workshops in college in southern Maine, USA, TO offerings were
easier to set up and support. Groups would instinctively grasp the critical
nature of the process, diving deeper into it to milk the form’s potential.
These participants were a combination of academics and seasoned activists. They
already carried a belief in individual social change. When given a chance to
work collectively on an issue, these primed groups would self-mobilize. Almost
all the time, they would teach me about the issue at hand. My role, as a
facilitator/Joker, was to keep the dialogue and problem solving hats rotating
through the group members. I became a container for everyone to talk to each
other using their true voice. Things changed when I returned home.
Fast-forward to the time my TO Mentorship
began, I had just resettled in my childhood home of Malaysia and began a career
as a secondary school teacher. The conversations I was having and hearing
around me changed from questions about how to set up guerilla activist action
outside the statehouse to how lessons are getting through to learners. Both
questions are important and factors in pushing social change, but the latter
had dulled my senses. If “slumping” was a participle, it would aptly
describe the circumstances through which I operated in the past year to
facilitate Theatre of the Oppressed:
‘Slumping through the year in her own
stomping ground, she barely roused political will.’
