By Antonieta Gimeno Cardona
It is a Sunday in March and the weather is oppressively hot. But this factor doesn’t stop the women from Mujeres de Luz, the rehabilitation center in Jiutepec, Morelos, Mexico, from performing a Forum Theatre play. We have been working for several weeks to bring, to their relatives and friends, their stories and engage in dialogue.
I have come to appreciate and love this group of women: girls as young as fourteen and as old as sixty, who have come to this point in their lives to deal with the effects of abuse of alcohol and other drugs, as well as physical and emotional violence. Most of them have family ties, a strong motor which compells them to stay sober. While this connection is essential and powerful, I found that many relatives have limited knowledge or tools to assist their daughter, wife, sister or mother to remain sober and to be aware of what has been their role in aiding or abetting the use of drugs as a remedy to their conflicts and emotional pain. Theatre has become one of the ways the women now have to present to them not only how to achieve sobriety, but enter into dialogue about the root causes of this illness.
During rehearsals, the group was engaged, making changes, selecting the props they wanted, and very excited. Some were very nervous about acting in front of their families. I saw the women taking charge collectively, while I was just there for support.
Developing the three scenes enacted by these loving, angry, sometimes disoriented, lonely, or desperate women was not easy at the beginning. None of them had any experience with theatre or the arts. Some of them were distrustful and cynical, at times even refusing to participate. During sessions of Image Theatre, I could tell the effort each of them was making to speak with their bodies, to express what they were really feeling or thinking. I realized their discomfort was normal. I took my time, not pushing or judging. Eventually all of them turned the corner, as they saw themselves doing things they had never done before. Some pushed others without wanting as they explore the new and extraordinary tools of Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.)
Women in Mexico are taught, from a very young age, to use their hands as artisans – from making tortillas to creating gorgeous jewelry to modeling clay to making ceramic utensils or embroidery. I thought these amazing and readily available tools would come in handy, for them to create collages. During one session, responding to different types of music, most of them identify sadness as the primary feeling. Each woman created a personal collage in response to the question “what has been taken away?” which revealed the themes for the play. While at first I was lost as to how to guide them to begin the process, looking at their collages enabled me to find four theme categories: relationship break-ups, parents committing adultery, death of a relative, and alcoholism with family violence. I presented these themes to the women and each chose the one they wanted to perform in.
Since my move back to Mexico, from Boston, about three years ago, I have made T.O. the center of my creative work. About fifteen or twenty years ago when I first encountered theatre and Augusto Boal in Toronto, Canada, I knew I had to learn this extraordinary art to engage audiences. But it has been the last six years where T.O. is at the center of my life, devoting my heart and soul to this form.
While exploring T.O. this past year, under the guidance of my Distance Mentorship for TO Practitioners, I discovered that I have the natural tendency to use music, painting, collage, poetry, music and dance as part of my work. As Marc has said to me a couple of times, Boal encourages these other aesthetic forms as part of theatre because they help to open and guide the body, the mind and the spirit to move in wonderful ways. All of this is good. But one big lesson I learned through the Mentorship is my excessive use of these activities, which takes me to places I have no idea what to do with them. At times I was confused, lost, frustrated. In retrospect, I saw that I was filling every moment of the session, as a cover up to mask moments of inadequacy on my part: My fear of making ghastly mistakes, fear of silences, or fear of failure. I came to understand that I had to slow down, stay and enjoy the moment, whether a joyful or sad one, to allow for the women and me to see, feel, smell and even perhaps experience something extraordinary. I finally learned that doing less is absolutely more.
During the performance, one woman, whose husband had been unfaithful, said she recognized herself in the play. I asked if she had another option or solution to the problem and if she was willing to share it on stage. She said no. A few days after, while I was talking to her daughter, one of the women in recovery said she told her mother not to come up on stage. I asked her why she did that and she very curtly said she didn’t want her mother to participate, that the scene was about her father. I realized two things. T.O., as a tool, does not work miracles, meaning you can learn to “act” but you may not understand the oppressed. Secondly, family dynamics are complex and as a facilitator you may not have access to them and somehow facilitate a process for the person to bring them into the play. Time and patience is of the essence for us to really see the fruits of our work.
When the performance concluded, all the actors came together onto the stage and they bowed. The audience clapped and whistled as signs of approval. I was almost in tears. The performances were compelling, funny and revealing. And most important, this was my first time joking (facilitating) a Forum Theatre performance from beginning to end.
After we ate I went to each table and introduce myself to chat with each family. They mostly expressed gratitude and it was clear, the play had moved them. Each of them shared openly how they see their daughter’s or sister’s struggle with addiction and how some of their personality traits are reflected in them. As a father said: “I have lived with anger all my life because of my father”. As I saw their daughter crying, I thought, yes, rage is what she showed me first. Feeling and demonstrating anger is an important tool. But more important is to understand the root cause of it. T.O. has enabled the women in the group to get to the feelings, drugs have numbed, and to process them in a healthier way.
Through this whole process, I identified an area of growth for me. I believe that language as well as the images have to be clear to the audience in order to get to the stuff you hope for them to address. While the spectators came to the stage, I had missed several of the steps a Joker has to take in order to guide the exchange: repeat the scene, make sure that the character being replaced is the “oppressed”, does the audience spect-actor have struggles that connect him/her with the character’s oppression? And is the spect-actor’s solution a “magic wand”? (which ultimately defeats the whole purpose of the work.)
Recently, we met to evaluate the performance and project cycle. I understood healing and understanding has to be part of the work. But also evaluating the impact of the theatre in their lives was important to me: how can it be a practical tool to support and guide them as they move back into the world. The answer will come with time and practice.
Antonieta Gimeno Cardona is a Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner in Tepoztlan, Mexico. She was also one of six international participants in the Mandala Center’s inaugural Distance Mentorship for TO Practitioners. agimeno@earthlink.net