For over 25 years we have been honored to offer an annual public Theatre of the Oppressed Facilitator Training. This summer 2025, we are choosing not to make this public offering. Read more below.
THERE WILL BE NO SUMMER 2025 TRAINING
T.O. Training Description:
Our intensive 6-day T.O. Facilitator’s Training is designed to train participants to use Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.) with adults and youth. Focus includes community building games, Image Theatre, Forum Theatre, some Rainbow of Desire techniques and has culminated in an interactive “Waging Peace, Designing Justice” – Forum Theatre performance on the last evening. Participants must commit to the full 6 days in their entirety.
These highly adaptable techniques can be immediately applied by activists, community organizers, cultural animators, teachers, social workers, psychotherapists, and theatre artists, among others. Also for anyone interested in exploring themselves and the society in which we live. Absolutely no theatre background necessary.
In order to best understand the real life power of the work, subject matter will come directly from participants’ personal and collective life experiences. Each day will include time to discuss the previous day’s work and the art of facilitation, as well as applications in the field. The week also includes training in basic “Systematic Oppression” theory (power-based analysis of the “isms”) to help illuminate an important layer of group dynamics. A simple manual is provided.
T.O. Facilitator’s Training – UPDATE
Mandala Center for Change is an international hub for the training and grassroots practice of Theatre of the Oppressed. We have had the honor of training thousands of people to apply T.O. and/or Playback Theatre in their own communities for personal and societal healing and transformation.
Like many organizations, Mandala Center has been recalibrating from the pandemic. We continue to asses how to best meet the needs of the times which is leading to positive shifts in both thought and action.
We have decided not to organize open-to-the-general-public workshops in Port Townsend this year, including our annual T.O. Facilitator’s training but instead focus more on regional and community specific trainings.
We are very excited and available to serve as facilitators to support people to organize and host workshops/trainings for their own groups and communities. We love sharing the work and empowering others with these tools for change. If that is of interest and seems feasible for you, please let us know.
Our training continues to evolve. If you are interested in future training or hosting Mandala Center in your community, please contact us.
Applied Theatre Distance Mentorship
We believe deeply in the power of Theatre of the Oppressed, Playback Theatre, and other Applied Theatre as tools for social change. As long-time leaders in the field, we feel a responsibility to nurture emerging leaders and support a global Applied Theatre movement.
While we have found the on-site apprenticeship to be an invaluable way to further the work, we recognize that not everyone can take a year to live and study with us and are not currently taking folks on-site. With our Distance Mentorship for Applied Theatre Practitioners, we are excited and eager to support people in their own communities and provide access to a wider network of emerging leaders. Please note, this is not a training but a support system for people who already have some experience in the field.
Our 2024 – ’25 cohort is full and already in process. We will begin taking applications for our 2025-’26 cohort by end of this year (Dec. 2024.)
If you wish to be considered, please check back at that time.
Theatre of the Oppressed
As created by Brazilian visionary, Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.) is a form of popular community based education which uses theater as a tool for social change. It’s basic aim is to re-humanize humanity. Originally developed out of Boal’s work with peasant and worker populations, it is now used all over the world for social and political activism, conflict resolution, community building, therapy, and government legislation.
Designed for non-actors, it uses the universal language of theatre as a springboard for people and whole communities to investigate their lives, identify their dreams, and reinvent their future. Not a soapbox, T.O. invites critical thinking and dialogue. It is about analyzing rather than giving answers. It is also about “acting” (taking action) rather than just talking. With T.O., people can and often do discover empowering solutions to their own struggles. And they have a good time doing it!
Learn more about T.O.
I did not expect that I would grow so much as a person during the training. I thought that I would come to the training to learn theories and techniques but I am also walking away with a renewed sense of myself, my passion for this work and a group of friends I will have for a long time to come.
– Jennifer C.
This was one of the best workshops I’ve ever attended in my thirty years as an educator. It was challenging, hard work–but it was also fun, varied, well paced, and constantly attuned to the growing edges of the participants.
– James H.