Forum theatre, an Innovative attempt to help communities resolve conflict among themselves

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PAN Intercultural Arts, UK

Centre for Performing Arts, Sri Lanka

British Council Switzerland

Forum Theatre

Forum theatre uses the power of theatre to depict sensitive social issues within a community, where the audience uses the opportunity to resolve the issue they face, by suggesting an alternate outcome to the end of the play.

British Council works with the theatre trainers from PAN Intercultural Arts, London, UK and the Centre for Performing Arts, Sri Lanka to introduce theatre techniques that help local communities to express themselves and resolve issues through Forum Theatre. Through our training programmes conducted over the last 5 years, we have been able to build the capacity of the local trainers on forum theatre performance and bring out more than 150 community-based-forum theatre performers from across the island.

SHAKTHI

In 2008, a group of 25 young people from the Sinhala and Tamil communities in Batticaloa (Eastern province) and Polonnaruwa (North Central province) districts were trained on forum theatre performances and techniques. Since then this group of young performers named Shakthi, has been staging plays based on real life stories gathered by them on sensitive social issues faced within their own communities, to villages across the area. The group encourages members of the audience to debate and come up with their own solutions and to get empowered in dealing with a range of social issues such as child abuse, alcoholism, teen marriages, and mothers leaving their families behind looking for employment in the Middle East disrupting the stability of family units and the problems that women-headed families face.

Forum theatre,

helps people, especially young adults, realize why people from different cultures and ethnic groups think and act the way they do
provides an opportunity for the young performers who work together in an inter-cultural environment, to get an awareness about other cultures, which makes them skilled community leaders
gives a platform for the oppressed and women in the communities to voice their concerns and find solutions
empowers people in overcoming inequalities and prejudices among communities

ACT 2
Act2 is a programme initiated by the British Council Switzerland. It brings over the Shakthi group to Geneva on Monday 20 September as the centerpiece of a conference at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, discussing how projects such as this can be replicated or modified in different situations. Act 2 also consists of a workshop for young people from countries where there are conflict issues within communities, giving them too the skills that the members of Shakthi have put to such good use in Sri Lanka.

Shakthi group will also perform in London on Wednesday 22 September 2010.

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