[TOPLAB-ANNOUNCE] Fall 2011 TOPLAB Events‏

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

Fall 2011 Events

all workshops take place at

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (West Side Highway, at Bank Street,
one block north of West Eleventh Street)
New York City

Saturday, September 24, 2011 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

An Introduction to the Theater of the Oppressed: A Mini-Workshop

facilitated by Marie-Claire Picher

This mini-workshop, designed for people who have been curious about
the Theater of the Oppressed (TO) but have not been able to commit to
a full weekend workshop, will present an overview of the basic
exercises, methods and techniques of TO work. The workshop is open to
all, and no theater or drama experience is required. If you've been
wondering what this work is all about now is the time to find out!

Marie-Claire Picher is a co-founder (1989) of the Theater of the
Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) and has worked and collaborated closely
with Augusto Boal until his death in 2009. One of the most experienced
TO practitioners in North America, she has presented thousands of
hours of TO facilitation training in New York and throughout the
United States, as well as in Chiapas, Tabasco, Mexico City, Guatemala
and Cuba.

Tuition–sliding scale: $30/$40/$50

***

Sunday, September 25 at 5:00 pm

Dead Birds or Avian Blues

a book party, reading and performance

featuring Howard Pflanzer, El Tahra Ibrahim and Robert Roth

Howard Pflanzer, introduced by Robert Roth, will read/perform with El
Tahra Ibrahim from his new book, Dead Birds or Avian Blues,
celebrating the birds and animals commenting on the human condition in
edgy short plays and poems with surreal illustrations by Juliane
Pieper.

Howard Pflanzer is a playwright and poet. His plays and musicals have
been performed at LaMaMa ETC, Playwrights Horizons, Symphony Space,
Medicine Show Theatre (Living with History: Camus, Sartre, De
Beauvoir), Kraine Theater (Cocaine Dreams) and The Living Theatre and
broadcast over WNYC and WBAI FM. He has received fellowships and
commissioning grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, ASCAP,
the Puffin Foundation, the NEA (Media Arts co-winner), the National
Foundation for Jewish Culture, as well as a Fulbright Scholar award to
conduct theatre workshops and direct in India. His poems, plays and
commentaries have appeared in many hard copy publications and online.

El Tahra Ibrahim recently returned to NYC from New Orleans, where she
worked as a performing artist and teacher. She has appeared locally
and internationally on numerous stages as a dancer/singer/actor, most
notably in Cats, Crazy for You, Narcisuss Rising (Eleo Pomare), Tilt
(George Faison) among many other projects. Most recently she released
a Tribute to 9/11 music video with her producer Billy Grey and is
teacher/ manager for 'Uptown Kidz Dance Company'.

Robert Roth, author of Health Proxy, co-creator of And Then, loves
watching dead birds fly.

Admission–sliding scale: $6/$10/$15

Reserve online at
http://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=11960&reset=1

***

Saturday, October 15 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

The Politics of the Theater of the Oppressed

facilitated by Marie-Claire Picher

This workshop is an outgrowth of a collaboration and some recent
conversations that took place between Julian Boal, TOPLAB facilitator
Marie-Claire Picher and other members of TOPLAB. When it first
originated in Brazil in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Theater of the
Oppressed (TO) was a political and theatrical project that sought to
work with oppressed people and communities toward their own self
emancipation and to change society and abolish the class structure
that is the underpinning of capitalism. Today, a good amount of the
radical political thrust and focus that motivated and informed TO as
it was originally conceived and formulated is lost in much of its
current practice. This workshop will attempt to return to the
political, pedagogical and theatrical roots that are central to the
theory and praxis of Theater of the Oppressed. With the surging
popularity of "reality TV" and "interactive art" produced by corporate
edict, the accelerated commodification of culture and its ongoing
recuperation by capital, once-genuine participation in daily social
life has too often become nothing more than a fashionable,
radically-chic presentation (and consumption) of culture; in the case
of TO, such presentation compromises the radical sensibility that is
at its core and turns it into a poorly-disguised form of interactive
manipulation.

Tuition–sliding scale: $50/$60/$75

***

Friday, October 28, Saturday, October 29 and Sunday, October 30 (times TBA)

Forum Theater presentations

Presentations of Forum Theater pieces created and presented some
NYC-based organizations that have partnered with TOPLAB. More
information to come later.

***

Sunday, November 6 from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Heal the Healer: A Holistic workshop

facilitated by Kira Laura Ferrand

Our inability to adapt to stress causes hypertension, ulcers, gastric
disorders, sleep and sexual dysfunction, anxiety, and both endocrine
and general central nervous system overload.

The Heal the Healer PLaYlab offers a grab bag of time-efficient
techniques that emphasize self-care, particularly around stress
management and burnout. The PLaYlab means just that–an opportunity to
spend a few hours experimenting in a safe environment to transform
tension into serenity. We can't always remove the stressors in our
lives, but we can titrate our reactions to them. We are all
caregivers, but often we lose sight of the need for self-care. This
PLaYlab offers motivational encouragement, practical and quick
interventions, gleaned from Reiki, Cranio-Sacral, Chinese and
Ayurvedic medicine, Theater of the Oppressed, Applied Kinesiology,
Yoga and Meditative techniques, to mention just a few. We offer
5-second meditations for the avowed non-meditator; pranayama or yogic
breathing cleansings; and other quick transformational techniques for
those of us on the fast track. Go to Health! designs these interactive
sessions around the needs of the participants.

Kira-Laura Ferrand, has been in private practice as an Applied
Kinesiologist for over thirty years. She practices in New York,
California, Istanbul and Rome. She works with cancer patients and

others of all ages on issues that range from pre- and post-partum to
fascia and misalignment. She is the founder of Go to Health!, a
soon-to-be traveling holistic clinic and on-the-road medicine show.

(Note: For this workshop participants should wear comfortable clothes,
since physical movement is involved. Also, each workshop member is
asked to bring a large towel or yoga mat, and also a vegetarian snack
big enough to share with one other person.)

Tuition–sliding scale: $30/$40/$50

***

Saturday, November 19 and Sunday, November 20 from 10:00 am to 6:00
pm both days

Forum Theater: A Two-day Workshop

facilitated by Marie-Claire Picher

This weekend workshop focuses on exercises, games, and improvised
scene work from the Theater of the Oppressed repertory developed by
Brazilian director, popular educator and Workers Party activist
Augusto Boal. Boal's interactive approach to theatrical expression
emphasizes physical dialogues, non-verbal imagery, consensus-building
and problem-solving processes, and techniques for developing awareness
of both external and internalized forms of oppression.

An innovative approach to public forums, Forum Theater is rooted in
the Brazilian popular education and culture movements of the 1950s and
1960s. It is designed for use in schools, community centers, trade
unions, and political, solidarity and grassroots organizations. It is
especially useful as an organizing tool in protest movements. Workshop
participants (the actors) are asked to tell a story, taken from daily
life, containing a political or social problem of difficult solution.
A skit presenting that problem is improvised and presented. The
original solution proposed by the protagonist must contain at least
one social or political error.

When the skit is over, the audience discusses the proposed solution,
and then the scene is performed once more. But now, audience members
are urged to intervene by stopping the action, coming on stage to
replace actors, and enacting their own ideas. Thus, instead of
remaining passive, the audience becomes active "spect-actors" who now
create alternative solutions and control the dramatic action. The aim
of the forum is not to find an ideal solution, but to invent new ways
of confronting oppression. In Brazil and other parts of Latin America,
as well as in India and Africa, Forum Theater has been used with
peasant and worker "audiences" as training in labor and community
organizing and participatory democracy.

This workshop is open to all and no prior theater experience is
necessary to participate. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.

Note: Participants must commit to attending both sessions in their
entirety. During Theater of the Oppressed workshops a process develops
among the members and when people arrive late, leave early or fail to
return to the next session that process is compromised. If you think
you will not be able to attend the whole workshop please consider
enrolling in a future workshop when your schedule will allow you to
attend for its complete duration.

Tuition–sliding scale: $95/$125/$150

***

Saturday, December 10 and Sunday, December 11 from 10:00 am to 6:00
pm both days

Image Theater: A Two-day Workshop

facilitated by Marie-Claire Picher

Image Theater, part of the repertory of Theater of the Oppressed, was
created by the late Brazilian director and cultural activist Augusto
Boal (1931-2009).

Drawing on the theories of popular education developed by his friend
and colleague Paulo Freire, Boal appropriated theater games and
exercises for use as organizing tools by communities in struggle.
These tools are designed to develop individual skills of observation
and self-reflection, and cooperative group interactions. Image Theater
is the ideal starting point for training in Theater of the Oppressed
techniques. In Image Theater, leadership- and consensus-building games
and techniques are used to explore relations of power and group
solutions to concrete problems of oppression through "living body
imagery". Discussions begin to take place through the language of
images, offering a fresh approach to power analysis and new
opportunities for the exchange of ideas.