Written by Shelley Liebembuk
Prof. Rita Dhungel and I led bimonthly applied theatre workshops in the 2024-2025 academic year for UFV’s international students. The EKTA podcast our students created with Victoria Surtees provides a wonderful glimpse into the extraordinary insight these students have on their experience and their deep dedication to building community.
Each of our sessions began around a meal. Providing food to students not only hoped to draw them in but also morph the classroom into a flexible community space. We cultivated a sense of informal time around the arrival into the space, decentering hierarchical dynamics in the act of eating together and checking in. As we sat and ate, each person was invited to introduce themselves as they wished. I worked to articulate explicitly that there were no strings attached to this meal: all were welcome to eat together with us, and each person was invited to decide as we went how much they want to offer and engage in the exercises ahead. Mealtime could take anywhere between thirty to fifty minutes, but the key for me as co-facilitator was to not rush us into the applied theatre exercises, but instead usher us towards them.
Applied Theatre is most broadly defined as theatre by, with, and for community. I drew on Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre work, and shared my own adaptations of his exercises; encouraging sharing of lived experience through a communal, embodied storytelling. The strongest moments were those where a group shared a ‘crisis image’ they had created and all of us in the room had an immediate, palpable reaction of recognition. Illustrations of pain were met with deep sympathy, and often followed by a wave of relief and warm laughter, as the students shed the ‘crisis image’ and transformed it into an ‘ideal image’. We discussed the work as it was created, allowing students to take the lead in providing suggestions, stepping in to reshape the image and complicating it.
I first came to Canada 25 years ago as an international student, and this work continues to make here feel like home. Rita and I are looking forward to continuing our workshops with the students this fall. We also welcome faculty and staff to join us!
Reference link: For a brief introduction to Augusto Boal and his work, see:
Prendergast, Monica, and Juliana Saxton, editors. “Theatre of the Oppressed (TO).
Applied Theatre Second Edition: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice, 1st ed., Intellect, 2016, pp. 103–18. JSTOR, UFV library link: Chapter Seven: Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) (pp. 103-118)
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv36xvzsb.11
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv36xvzsb.11
