“Reclaiming the theatre of our lives as a space of agency”: the powerful and healing global peace-work of the Theatre of Transformation Academy
From Theatre of Transformation Academy’s Facebook page
When artists and activists collaborative, with a common commitment to transformation in a response to crisis or upheaval, extraordinary things can happen.
We’re delighted to find a prime example of this in Theatre of Transformation Academy, who in collaboration with Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations have been conducting transformation processes across the globe - including the University of Johannesburg, Dar Al Kalima University College, Bethlehem, and Heliopolis University, Cairo.
Their methodology - which aims to “combine transformative theory, policy and practice with the performing arts” - is laid out below:
The unifying underlying concern is to understand the processes of transformation occurring within individuals, communities, organizations and countries affected by crisis. Theatre of Transformation offers a methodology that both
(a) portrays and embodies this transformational process through real-life testimonies of people in crisis, and,
(b) leads participants through the four stages of the transformative process to experience it for themselves and shape their own individual and collective, organizational and societal, transformative responses to crises.
The four stages are:
1: Witness Reality
We witness with renewed clarity what is really happening in our lives and in the world through the enactment of pertinent real-life testimonies and poems. The act of witnessing evokes our sense of humanity towards others and of agency in our own lives.
2: Awaken Possibilities
The testimonies trigger our realization that transformation is always possible, despite all odds. We awaken our ability to look beyond what is to what can be. We ignite our inherent creative capacities and latent human potential, to discover a cornucopia of possibilities in the place of obstacles.
3: Envision Change
We focus on the one vision of change that calls us most powerfully. We step towards our vision by designing the strategy to realize it. We step into our vision by embodying within ourselves the change we wish to bring in our lives and the world. Our vision becomes a compelling force for change when we fully embody and inhabit it.
4: Enact Transformation
No vision can be enacted in isolation. We magnetize a supportive ecosystem of allies to initiate and sustain transformation. We create transformative spaces within and around us to generate change. We attract new or hitherto unrecognized supporters, resources and opportunities. We multiply impact as we enact our own transformation while stimulating transformation in others.
From Kosmos magazine, here’s how they understand the possibilities of “theatre”, as told by the ToT Academy’s co-founder, Rama Mani:
Dr Rama Mani enacts why and how 'responses to new global security challenges must be systemic, eco-systemic, experiential, creative and transformative!" Rama enacted the real life testimony of Ashraf, a former airforce pilot from Syria who said NO to bombing his fellow citizens and instead became a humanitarian who saves civilians from bombs, to show why we must transform the old paradigm of state sovereignty interpreted as domination, into shared sovereignty understood as freedom for people and planet (Facebook)
The word ‘theatre’ tingles with possibility, yet for many people it rings hollow. It doesn’t evoke the participatory or cathartic experiences of Greek comedy or tragedy, despite the spread of engaging theatrical forms like forum, street, and applied theatre.
Our association with theatre may be as spectators to pre-scripted performances. It may be the theatre of war or the theatrics of Wall Street, where politicians and investors make decisions thwarting our will and emptying our pockets.
It may be the operating theatre, where we undergo surgery under anesthesia. For many, theatre is a place of diversion, subjection, or unconsciousness.
Theatre of Transformation invites us to reclaim the theatre of our lives as a space of agency. It presents the world as it is today: terrible, tragic, and tremendously ripe for transformation. It rekindles the immensity of our human compassion and awakens the farthest expanses of our imagination.
Then it takes us into a pristine realm where nothing is yet scripted; everything is open for redefinition and evolution. Here, there are no rehearsed roles, no stage directors to manage our movements, and no prescribed decor. Now, we are called to express and enact what the present moment demands and what the future calls forth from each one of us.
Jean Houston says we are living in Kairotic time, when the portals of probability open and anything can happen or can be brought into happening by us. Kronos, chronological time, yields to Kairos, loaded time, the moment of fundamental possibility.
Theatre of Transformation conjures Kairos, a space unfettered by chronological time, where, as in dreamtime, the clock is suspended and possibilities abound. Here, it summons our inherent creativity to shape the emerging moment.
As we reclaim the theatre of life, we endow each moment with artistry. We resuscitate beauty in everything we experience. We breathe imagination back into being.
More here. The Theatre of Transformation Academy has an impressive range of partners, and is currently running a course at Oxford titled “Enacting Global Transformation”.