The 26th of June is the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Bourgas municipality organized an event in the cultural center “The Flora”.There has been used the Forum theater approach to present the problem.
Generally acknowledged to have been invented by Augusto Boal in the 70’s, Forum is a technique to engage the audience into the action, and teach and open discussion.Typically in 3 parts – the first part is the scene where the performance will highlight an issue for the community. It could be sexism, race, vandalism for example .. and these days Forum is frequently used in business training, where the first scene might show a poor coaching discussion, or a terrible Performance meeting.
In the second part the audience (known by Boal as Spect-Actors) are able to ask the characters questions about the choices they made and actions they took. This is frequently provocative to engage the audience and to raise discussion (the Forum)
Finally the characters replay the scene, encouraging the audience to shout “Stop”when they want the characters to do something different or to say something in another way. In some versions, the audience is allowed to join in and take over the action.
Our club on the project attended the event and took active participation in the discussions for tackling the problem. There have been suggested various situations to change the plot. We have already experienced this approach due to the project. We have presented some sketches at the meeting in Bourgas. On this day we have received another point of view and intend to enhance our work.