Working with Vulnerable Teenagers and Adults: R4R

Working with Vulnerable Teenagers and Adults using the Interactive Drama Practices of Augusto Boal’s ‘Rehearsal for Reality’

The Project

To offer ten 2-3 hour sessions to 10 different organisations / groups in Cornwall and design a bespoke issue-based project for the group or groups targeted by each organisation to explore issues relevant to that group. The sessions will use the practices of Boal’s Forum Theatre and Rainbow of Desire to enable a ‘Rehearsal for Reality’ over the 10 session period. Participants will be empowered to take charge of their own situation by considering, in the relative safety of the drama sessions, how to increase their own self-esteem and confidence and explore their understanding of their circumstances.

This project intends to go beyond the clearly valuable benefits to vulnerable teenagers and adults of empowerment. By setting out to do this through drama, the artistic ideal implicit in this project goes beyond empowerment and seeks to engage its participants in performance related work that might continue in many ways after the sessions are over. These sessions are not about considering issues in a discussion group but using drama to explore situations through active rather than passive engagement, and working and interacting with others. In most groups it is considered that a performance piece of Forum Theatre might result which may be presented to another group or may be ‘played out’ within the group itself as deemed appropriate to each individual group situation and circumstance. A member of staff from each group / organisation will participate in the sessions, providing CPD for that member of staff so that s/he might continue to use the interactive drama practices with future groups after the project has finished. Some participants might also seek to participate further in drama-related activities if their experience has been successful and there is a desire to continue: they would be encouraged to join a local drama group; consider a college course; participate in a school or college production; visit their local theatre; assist in running sessions with similar groups themselves; consider how they individually use role play in their day-to-day lives.

My company, StoryWorks Education, has developed out of StoryWorks Theatre Company which grew out of the practice of DramaWorks – a curriculum drama-based initiative delivered over the academic year 2004 – 5, and the partnership of the two practitioners who founded Probus Community Youth Theatre 10 years ago. StoryWorks has expanded the remit of DramaWorks over the past 4 years (largely thanks to the support afforded us by 2 ACESW awards over that period), to add and incorporate dance, music, puppet design, and visual art, as well as Literature. Recently, my individual work has taken an increasingly growing focus in using drama and storytelling to deliver topic/curriculum-based projects that also deliver many aspects of a PSHE curriculum and consider specific class-based PSHE issues as pertinent to an individual class. Often, central to this work, has been the building of self-esteem; group-building by developing and recognising group dynamics; confidence building through developing performance and presentation skills; non-verbal communication; – all these skills and more can be explored and considered through drama games, exercises, and innovative and original storytelling. Specific issues such as peer pressure, bullying, transition to Secondary School, relationships and so on, can be debated and examined within the safety of the ‘rehearsal for reality’ that is created by the drama context using the forum theatre and Rainbow of Desire practices of Brazilian Practitioner Augusto Boal.

Alongside this school-based, predominantly Primary-orientated practice, has been my work with adults with learning and confidence/self-esteem issues on Parenting Plus courses at Truro College. This led to me running a Parenting Practitioners’ Training Day for the Local Authority which - along with a meeting I’d had with the County PSHE Advisor (David Hampshire) about the massive issues in Cornwall with underage drinking, drug taking and teenage pregnancy – led me to develop the project I have obtained the ACESW funding for.

As well as the Parenting Practitioners’ Training Day I delivered, I also attended the Facilitators’ training for Core Parenting Course delivery last year, and am now certified to run my own parenting group/s should I so wish. I have recently run a workshop for Women with PND (Post Natal Depression) for The Angela Harrison Charitable Trust, using interactive and forum drama practice to explore issues of self-esteem and self-worth. All of these experiences in the past year have led me to look for an opportunity to develop my practice in a way that uses drama and the arts in a more socially-focused, issue-based way.

It has long been maintained that drama has been considered central to raising esteem and challenging stereotypes, and widening horizons (Neelands (1984), Vine (1993), Winston (1998) Taylor (2002). Forum Theatre, one of the strategies that will be used in this project with all of the groups, is both an art form – it is theatre – and a way of promoting understanding and enabling learning. Jackson (in Boal 1992) describes it as:

a process of learning together rather than one-way teaching . . . . its aim is to stimulate debate (in the form of action not just words), to show alternatives, to enable people ‘to become protagonists in their own lives’. (p. xxii)