CREATING OUR OWN FORUM THEATRE
We were each asked to bring in an article from a newspaper depicting something that we believe to be an act of oppression and social injustice and something that we feel passionate about. For me, this didn't seem hard considering that I feel surrounded by acts of social injustice in today's modern society. But the thing that first popped into my head was what happened at Grenfell Tower last year in June 2017. I remember the morning after it happened my mum walked into my room and told me about it, and this was the day I was sitting my GCSE Chemistry exam. I remember I was absolutely horrified and confused and it's something that has never left my mind since. When I got on the tube that morning, I remember seeing an array of commuters with the Metro clasped in their head, and saw an emblazened Grenfell tower across all of them with the massive headline 'HELL ON EARTH'. Everything about the event honestly shook me horrendously, especially because it took place in one of the richest areas in the city. It's crazy to me that in today's world seeing a council flat on fire across newspaper articles and headlines is something normal that you see on the tube, and this particular newspaper has stuck in my head to this day.
In the last year since Grenfell, there has been voices from the Grenfell Community that have stood up to declare how the government and council failed them in giving them suitable and safe conditions to live, and I have been following the case with conviction and passion almost think it happened. It's the demonisation of the working class and an absolute ignorance of the government to admit the failings and push the blame onto other menial issues. This case echoes class issues as well as the growing housing crisis, and the failure of the government to cater for certain communities within society, and accept when things go wrong. I also feel particularly enraged by this issue since as this tragedy occured in Chelsea, an area of one of the greatest wealth disparities in the entire country, it feels as though the government has clearly failed to acknowledge the lower classes and instead has only accelerated gentrification and austerity. It's an issue that I feel is so pivotal in London and therefore demands to be addressed in theatre. As well as this, the Grenfell Community has been an extremely strong community in the last year since Grenfell, and hence it feels as though making a piece of community theatre that draws on the oppression at the heart of this issue is right.
In order to create a 5 minute piece of forum theatre, I had to formulate in a group with Sofianne, Ruby, Zachary, Catherine and Tallulah. Our forum theatre idea evolved very much from us sharing our experiences with eachother about council housing. Since I don't have direct experience of council housing, I learnt a lot and was so shocked. I felt myself getting so riled up and more passionate about it the further we talked about it. The experiences and anecdotes of a couple of members in our group went directly into the creation of a script by Sofianne, where we decided that we wanted it to be revolved around a single parent who is trying to get the council to understand her.
A challenge we faced was trying to make the piece depict an experience which could easily be improvised by an audience member. While we were quite early on set on the idea of having a number of phone calls take place, which eventually formed the basis of our actual piece, we needed to have a physical encounter between the oppressor and the protagonist in order to make it palpable.
As well as this, we also had to have an understanding of the different roles in the piece in order to make an effective piece of forum theatre, for example:
- A PROTAGONIST - played by Sofianne. This is the person being oppressed.
- The OPPRESSORS - played by myself, Tallulah, Catherine and Zach. These are most of the characters in the piece who make the protagonist's life harder by oppressing them. It's the audience's job to take the form of the protagonist to counter act the oppressors and find a solution.
- THE JOKER - Ruby.
- THE SPECTACTOR - the second time the piece is performed, the audience members are actively involved in the piece and can say 'Stop!' at any time to improvise as the Protagonist and find a solution to the problem.
Having an understanding of the different roles meant that we were obeying Boal's formulation for effective forum theatre and meant we were thinking of the end product we wanted to create throughout. Here is the script we wrote for the piece:
I found that having a script made the coordination of this piece easier, since it gave us a foundation to work off of. I feel like if we tried to stage the piece purely based off improvisation it would have resulted in flimsy one dimensional characters with no clear purpose, and it may have also slowed down the efficiency of the rehearsal process (in which we had under a week). Having a script was also a strength of the rehearsal process because we were able to have a clear understanding of our characters all on one page, and it gave us a basis to create a character profile for the Protagonist in particular and build three dimensional characters.
"One moment while we redirect your call" Rehearsing lines during rehearsal.
As shown in the script, most of the piece is comprised of a number of phone calls where we see the Protagonist trying to get through to someone, and is usually faced with a number of indifferent and middling Operators. We wanted to use symbolism largely throughout the piece to represent the oppression, for example through the contrast of the optimistic heightened phone hold music with the monotony of phone calls with the operators. The number of encounters are built up throughout the piece to ensure that by the end the Protagonist is clearly extremely indignant towards the problems.
The script encouraged a discussion among us that all of the 'oppressors' in the piece are not the DIRECT oppressors: they are merely just under a large and complex structure run by the system, and are products of all the cuts and measures the government take to organise the council system. It became apparent that no character in the story is inherently mean or inconsiderate, but instead everyone is trying to do their jobs and get by for another day. I tried to use this to build into my character development and it was helpful during the actual piece when I had to improvise in accordance with the audience member's changes. This led to our piece being called 'COG IN A MACHINE'.
We tried to represent the status-like structure of the council symbolically through staging all of the council workers and operators in a corner on chairs. Throughout the piece, as oppressors we might change position on our chairs, or switch chairs, but ultimately we are confined to one space where we can't physically directly help the Protagonist even if we do care. Consequently, in the final scene, when this structure breaks and all the council workers/operators/oppressors step into the periphery of the home of the Protagonist, it enhances the idea of futility around the council being able to directly prevent oppresion on a case-to-case basis due to their lack of power under the system. They might be showing more sympathy and connection with the Protagonist, but ultimately they're still powerless and the Protagonist is left still oppressed by the end.
STAGING: The Council Workers in a confined square
A lot of this symbolism takes place experimentally, through symbolic movements/slight physical theatre, and while we were aware that this wasn't exactly feasible under the premise of 'improvisational forum theatre', we wanted to make the piece interesting through movement so that the topic of social injustice was clear. I thought this was successful, and set us apart from other groups who mostly took on naturalism, but in the same way posed a disadvantage because there were less opportunities for audience members to get up and create a solution except in the naturalist aspects. This meant that less audience members actually participated by improvising, however this could also be down to other factors, such as the fact that the audience had just been involved in another forum theatre piece, or alternatively maybe the Joker could have done more initially to make the audience comfortably. Understandably, our piece was quite complex in the sense that ultimately only short term solutions could be found to fight the oppression, so as an audience member I would have probably found it harder to combat the oppression and participate.
Nevertheless, that's not to say that during the piece, the audience members didn't have a good discussion and find some good solutions. For example, Amy contributed the fact her dad worked in the council and the fact that legally a signal has to be sent out the day of complaint for someone to fix the problem. This is an example of the success of our piece in provoking discussion and bringing solutions such as that, which when improvised worked out and sorted out the Protagonist's issue. I thought that Ruby did an excellent job of sustaining this atmosphere, especially through encouraging audience members to participate if they contributed in the discussion and creating a safe space. Equally, Ruby also did really well at ensuring that everyone in the audience understood the piece, explaining where she could but still maintaining an objective stance.
Rehearsals
I also believe the piece was successful since I felt I did a good job of sustaining my character during my scene in which Luke improvised as the Protagonist and I had to improvise on the spot based on the solutions and suggestions he was posing. I don't think this would have been achieved if I didn't understand my character, and I felt I had to be really strict based on my knowledge of the council system when he was offering solutions - e.g asking if he could get a note to show work his absence, which I denied. Although I wasn't particularly lenient in allowing him to reach a solution, I feel as though I played it truthfully in the moment, especially because Luke's approach wasn't to necessarily tackle the problem directly but moreso work with his options. I took iniative in allowing Luke to speak to my manager, playing off the 'cog in a machine' vibe, but I felt I could have been more confident during the improvisation in order to give the audience more options to find solutions.
Similarly, the other scene that was improvised by the audience was Zachary's scene and I think he did a really good job. My observations of this scene, as I wasn't actively involved, was that many audience members that got involved got angry at Zachary's character and this was ineffective. The conclusion was that being patient and civilised was what created the solution, so when Amy brought up the 'Tenants Agreements', Zach allowed the solution to be found. I feel that this shows that he was playing the scene truthfully, as he didn't respond to aggression and anger.
Overall, I think that our forum theatre piece was successful. It provoked discussion and debate about the conditions in council housing, and solutions were eventually found after deliberation. This was coordinated really well by our Joker, Ruby. However, in comparison with other groups, I think an overall weakness of our piece was that it could have had more material to offer the audience chances to step in as spectactors: other groups based their pieces off naturalism, and this meant the spectactor had more free reign to step in at any point they wanted - it seemed our piece wasn't as varied. As well as this, in the rehearsal process, I would in hindsight have practiced more with random audience members as the Operator having to improvise. While we did this once, I feel like doing this a few times would have made us much more confident as as group in being able to improvise quickly and confidently, and perhaps this would have made the piece more successful. Moreover, something I really liked about other pieces was that they implemented exercises that introduced the themes of their piece, for example Divon's group introduced us to an exercise where we had to explore what it was like to be the oppressor and feel oppressed. I think we could have easily put together an exercise that did something similar - playing with the idea of not being listened to and how that feeds into oppression. It may have perhaps made the audience more passionate and engaged. Nevertheless, I think our piece was still largely effective and unique in its experimentation of symbolism. This was achieved through consistent efficient rehearsals and everyone in our group being equally on board and passionate about the issue, since it made us all commit to the prospect of putting the oppression to justice in our piece.
Having the experience to make my own forum theatre piece has made me aware of how amazing it is as a device to create change, particularly in disadvantaged communities. While the audience we had were a model audience, if it were a group of people who are involved in the council or live in council housing, it could potentially lead to some really positive innovations in changing the way we deal with systems. It was incredibly empowering for me as someone who feels really passionate about the topic to actually stage it and discuss it with an audience, as it felt really proactive! I will not underestimate the power of Boal's ideas after this experience.
Similarly, the other scene that was improvised by the audience was Zachary's scene and I think he did a really good job. My observations of this scene, as I wasn't actively involved, was that many audience members that got involved got angry at Zachary's character and this was ineffective. The conclusion was that being patient and civilised was what created the solution, so when Amy brought up the 'Tenants Agreements', Zach allowed the solution to be found. I feel that this shows that he was playing the scene truthfully, as he didn't respond to aggression and anger.
Overall, I think that our forum theatre piece was successful. It provoked discussion and debate about the conditions in council housing, and solutions were eventually found after deliberation. This was coordinated really well by our Joker, Ruby. However, in comparison with other groups, I think an overall weakness of our piece was that it could have had more material to offer the audience chances to step in as spectactors: other groups based their pieces off naturalism, and this meant the spectactor had more free reign to step in at any point they wanted - it seemed our piece wasn't as varied. As well as this, in the rehearsal process, I would in hindsight have practiced more with random audience members as the Operator having to improvise. While we did this once, I feel like doing this a few times would have made us much more confident as as group in being able to improvise quickly and confidently, and perhaps this would have made the piece more successful. Moreover, something I really liked about other pieces was that they implemented exercises that introduced the themes of their piece, for example Divon's group introduced us to an exercise where we had to explore what it was like to be the oppressor and feel oppressed. I think we could have easily put together an exercise that did something similar - playing with the idea of not being listened to and how that feeds into oppression. It may have perhaps made the audience more passionate and engaged. Nevertheless, I think our piece was still largely effective and unique in its experimentation of symbolism. This was achieved through consistent efficient rehearsals and everyone in our group being equally on board and passionate about the issue, since it made us all commit to the prospect of putting the oppression to justice in our piece.
Having the experience to make my own forum theatre piece has made me aware of how amazing it is as a device to create change, particularly in disadvantaged communities. While the audience we had were a model audience, if it were a group of people who are involved in the council or live in council housing, it could potentially lead to some really positive innovations in changing the way we deal with systems. It was incredibly empowering for me as someone who feels really passionate about the topic to actually stage it and discuss it with an audience, as it felt really proactive! I will not underestimate the power of Boal's ideas after this experience.
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