HowlRound Theatre Commons: Meggan Gomez: You founded Theatre of the Oppressed NYC (TONYC) in 2011, based on the methodology that Augusto Boal created in Brazil in the 1960s; he was your teacher! At its core, the work aims to confront power and celebrate the wisdom and leadership of the community. In a Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) forum play, the actors and audience “rehearse for reality.” The audience members step onstage, becoming “spect-actors,” to challenge the worldview of the characters and improvise new solutions within institutions like healthcare, housing, and criminal justice. The concept really took off here.
2 comments:
This article was not what I was expecting to read,but was really interesting in how it brought up the leadership transition that occurred at Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. It is a smart, but sometimes hard move to recognize that you don’t fit with the company you are at anymore, and that you can be assisting in a “mission drift”, as mentioned in the article. Making this decision to allow for a transition for the better, even if it means you are having to step down is a difficult one, but it also allows for new voices to be heard. It was really interesting hearing about how Meggan and Katy viewed the transition as a positive shift and how it was going to be beneficial for all parties involved and had a conversation with the full organization on how to make a clean transition. I think it is important to create transparency when having transitions, and this is a prime example of why it is important.
Like Mary Emily, I was not expecting this article to be what it is about but I am so glad that I read it. Theatre of the Oppressed seems like an amazing form of social justice. It was great to hear in this article that a person understands when they need to leave or when their voice shouldn’t be the one that is in the spotlight. I wish more people had the mentality of Katy Rubin. I also love hearing about how Rubin thinks about power and switching up the status quo. It is amazing to think about the School of Drama and how stuck in our ways we get and the institutional memory when students leave every four years and there are always faculty and staff changes. I love the concept of not wanting to control the attention when being in a leadership role and making your work the highlight. I think the lack of ego that Katy Rubin talks about is magnificent and something that everyone in a leadership position no matter how large or small should think about.
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