Teatro Forum na FLUP

First play (police interfering with a late gathering and laying at the beach):



Second play (night club security choosing who gets to enter or not):


Third play (complaints about charging bus tickets wrong and not being able to solve it):


Third situation elected by the audience, and played by spectactors:


Audience very interested in the solutions:


Joker confronts the spectactors for new different solutions and possibilities, generating discussion:


Joker confronts the whole audience, generating the debate:

European Youth Meeting, Berlin, 24th – 29th June, 2007

We organized ourselves and applied with the Forum Theatre Project to the European Youth Meeting, in Berlin, in response to the invitation by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel's, for young people from the 27 European Union countries to contribute to the artistic presentation and workshop discussion of the meeting’s theme: On the road in Europe: opportunities for young people to study, work and live in Europe.


We believe that through Forum Theater we could explore the encompassing theme of “ On the road in Europe: opportunities for young people to study, work and live in Europe” in productive ways. We hope to tackle generic issues but addressing their specificities as they are experienced and relevant for the participants of this meeting. As observers of the current dynamics for youngsters in Europe we find that there are some relevant current issues we would like to engage in by preparing them theoretically and artistically among ourselves and proposing them for discussion in June. Tolerance and resistence in the encounter of different cultures due to migration are among such problematics. These could be further explored, depending on the audience, through topics such as: national policies of migration and the actual social dynamics they regulate (i.e. integration vs assimilation); the role of languages (in particular English) in daily and work life; social and economic realities as new countries are included; religious freedom of European and non-European residents, or others.

Forum Theatre in Argoncilhe Feedbacks

Debriefing after the day in Argoncilhe was over

Testimonies about the experience:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

1. "We got to know ourselves a little better. We identified with what we saw in the plays as they were very objective... It was a nice day!"

2. "A communication platform was created here, non burocratic, non boring, amusing, that changed things".

3. " Working on problems that concern the whole community, controversial and conflitual, works well as the Oppressed Theatre is really that. It's about awarness of our everyday oppressions, because they're presented to us from the outside and we identify, which leads us to fight back. that's what I like about the Oppressed Theatre. I've never met medium so effective. There's no burocracy, no individual interests, it's only about changing and overcoming barriers. That's why it works."

4. " In the soap operas the script is done, right? In the Forum Theatre, we do something but we have the chance of going back and doing it again, considering the inputs of spectators. And they also get to participate playing it as they would like it to be".

5. " It gets everyone to open their eyes, when things are put in front of you just like that."

6. " That issue arises from the lack of power that reality imposes to people. Here, we face a situation that you can play any other way you feel like, so, by conforming your reality you can make things really right, because you can pick the elements and connect them in different ways until you're satisfied with the result... You're not limited to the moves imposed by pre-existing situations."

Doing Forum Theatre in Argoncilhe

Argoncilhe is a small village in the north of Portugal, nearby Porto. The youth organization Argoncilhe Jovem learned about Theatre of the Oppressed and the work some of us were doing already through some of Argoncilhe Jovem's own members. They took the initiative of organizing a Forum Theatre workshop among other activities they were promoting. Through word of mouth, Argoncilhe Jovem could invite a group of people to facilitate the workshop in which Argoncilhe's community members participated. To be sure, even though there is no organization doing Forum Theatre in Porto, there have been many people involved frequently in various Forum theatre workshops and activities entities such as municipalities, NGOs and universities have organized. Among the group of people guiding and participating in the workshop were some of the spect-actors.

1. The Group dynamics

Playing fun games

2. Coming up with themes for discussion

Small groups discussing their own personal stories:

Sharing our stories with the larger group:

A generic situation: teachers abusing their power in the classroom…

And a situation specific to Argoncilhe: the problem caused by a large cow-shed (or herd-house) with a particular strong stench felt by a large part of the community of Argoncilhe. And with a particular owner: the current mayor...

Among the 5 stories shared we chose the one with most relevance to the local context: the cow-shed. The whole group prepared the play further by developing the characters: through a discussion mediated by the curinga (on the right) we discussed the motivations and personalities of the characters.

3. The performance

In the case of Argoncilhe, the performance was meant to be included in a local event. After a cake competition to raise funds for the village’s center, we presented our short play to approximately 50 members of the community of Argoncilhe.

And the audience reacted really well! They expressed how they felt about the situation and what should happen with the characters.

Replaced some of the characters in order to present a different (and transformative) approach.

Forum Theatre in Argoncilhe

Video of the workshop of Forum Thatre that was held in Argoncilhe (promoted by Associação Argoncilhe Jovem), edited to enlighten about its processes.

Next Theatre Forum Workshop

Organized by the Post-Graduations Department of Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto