Exploring Theater of the Oppressed for Participatory Design Teresa Macchia
Vincenzo D’Andrea
University of Trento via Sommarive, 9 Trento, Italy
University of Trento via Sommarive, 9 Trento, Italy
Roberto Mazzini Giolli Cooperative Via Chiesa 12, 43022 Montechiarugolo, Italy
[email protected] [email protected] Angela Di Fiore University of Trento via Sommarive, 9 Trento, Italy
[email protected] Michela Cozza Mälardalen University Högskoleplan 1, 721 23 Västerås, Sweden
[email protected]
[email protected]
roles, and resources. Hence, the participants’ know-how will be shared and explored through the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
ABSTRACT Design challenges refer to a difficulty of corresponding human and contextual complexity (i.e. needs, roles, and resources) in design practices. Such an issue calls for combining deep investigations with relevant design experiences. We propose a workshop for disentangling and discussing design practices by adopting the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. These techniques allow enacting personal performances as well as the construction of a shared narrative about the participants’ roles, needs, and resources. By this workshop, we aim to improve the participants’ competence in understanding people’s needs and developing a design solution accordingly. Finally, possible outcomes are: a special issue of an international peer reviewed journal, and/or a live performance that the conference attendees can enjoy as an experiential design occasion.
2. TOPIC This proposal is based on our organization of a design challenge experience in the 13th Participatory Design Conference in Windhoek, Namibia. After that, we have discussed how to support a PD process further [7]. More precisely, we have focused on methods for engaging in the design process participants’ and designers’ bodies along with their resources (e.g. knowledge, skills). As a matter of fact, the detachment between designers and participants during a design process can seriously damage the experience overall. In the context of Participatory Design, empathy offers designers the opportunity to develop greater understanding of people’s needs and idiosyncrasies while enabling mutual understanding. In this workshop, Theatre of the Oppressed will access the participants’ capacity for empathy, or the ability to feel the same as another [1] in the (Public) Design field.
CCS Concepts ● Human-Centered computing → Interaction design ● Participatory design
Keywords
2.1 The theater of the Oppressed
Design Experience; Design Techniques; Theatre of the Oppressed.
The Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of theatre, developed by Brazilian director, artist, and activist Augusto Boal in the 1960s. Through Theatre of the Oppressed, people can better understand themselves, their communities, and their world by deconstructing and analyzing societal structures of power and oppression. It involves a transformative and critical consciousness in order to promote inclusion and social change. There are several series of techniques, tools, and expressions of the Theatre of the Oppressed. We mention Image Theatre and Forum Theatre that we will present and practice on the occasion of the workshop [2].
1. GOALS OF THE WORKSHOP Workshop participants will experience the use of the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. By applying such a theoretical and experiential framework we aim to unveil mechanisms that characterize Public Design meant as “an orientation in design applicable across genres” [5]. In fact, a current Participatory Design (PD) matter of concern refers to the participation and alignment of multiple perspectives “in public controversial things” [6]. This workshop will contribute to developing participants’ ability to face controversies in PD as well as in Public Design. The activities will engage people in a reciprocal discovery, critical reflection and a dialogue about their needs,
Image Theatre contributes to shedding light on power dynamics by miming and using the body as a metaphor of societal dynamics.
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[email protected]. PDC ’16, August 15-19, 2016, Aarhus, Denmark © 2016 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-4136-3/16/08…$15.00 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2948076.2948105
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Forum Theatre is a performance that functions to transform from spectator (one who watches) to a spect-actor (one who watches and takes action). It enables participants to display a problem “to which the audience, again spect-actors, is invited to suggest and enact solutions” drawing on personal background [2]. The Forum Theatre is a way to “confront diverse questions, ideas, actions” [3]. Theatre of the Oppressed shapes the experience of spect-actors, transforming them “into sculptor, musician, poet; by going on stage, by showing his will, in action, by being the protagonist, the spectator transforms himself into the citizen!”[3].
http://www.experientialdesigning.wordpress.com.
3. RELEVANCE FOR THE PD COMMUNITY
People interested in participating are invited to write a short text (max 150 words), which explains their interest and motivation.
By applying the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques we aim to provide original insights into how to translate people’s roles, needs, and resources into effective design practices.
Anyone is welcome to join. However, the workshop will have a maximum number of 20 participants in order to be engaging and impacting.
Physical and reflexive activities will lead to develop and improve the participants’ understanding of the social and human complexity in PD. Precisely, this workshop will enable the participants to discuss and share promising knowledge for facing issues in Public Design.
The selection of the participants will be “first come first served” based.
7. FINAL MARKERS The workshop will be an occasion for discussing a number of Public Design challenges by experiencing theatrical techniques as design probes.
4. WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION We propose a full-day session as an occasion for practicing and experiencing several Theatre of the Oppressed techniques as original probes for stepping into Public Design.
As design researchers, we are interested in developing new competences for conducting PD processes. This workshop will be a professional occasion for improving and sharing knowledge by drawing on the Theatre of the Oppressed framework.
“The world as seen by actors is necessarily unlike the world seen by observers” [4] so that we plan to engage the participants in physical and dialectic activities. Roberto Mazzini, a professional actor, expert on Theatre of the Oppressed for Public Design, will conduct this workshop.
8. REFERENCES [1] A. Boal. Theater of the oppressed. Pluto Press London, 2000 (1979).
4.1 The format The workshop will start with several group building activities in order to trigger an engaging mood while introducing the participants to the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Therefore, the group building session will aim to promote interactions to explore participants’ perception in respect to PD experiences.
[2] A. Boal. Games for actors and non-actors. Routledge, London and New York, 2002. [3] A. Boal. The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. Routledge, London and New York, 2006. [4] B. Czarniawska. After practice: A personal reflection. Nordic journal of working life studies, 5(3a):105–114, 2015.
The first half of the day will be focused on an interactive presentation of the techniques, while the second will be devoted to practicing them as possible Public Design probes. With the professional actor’s support, we will prepare a live performance about Public Design processes. Drawing on the Theatre of the Oppressed framework, the workshop will engage participants while addressing their future use of creative and “less oppressive” design techniques.
[5] C. DiSalvo, J. Lukens, T. Lodato, T. Jenkins, and
T. Kim. Making public things: How HCI design can express matters of concern. In U. ACM New York, NY, editor, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2014. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557359
5. OUTOCOMES
[6] P. Ehn. Participation in design things. In U. ACM New York, NY, editor, Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design, 2008. ISBN: 978-09818561-0-0
About the outcomes of the workshop, our proposal is twofold. On the one hand our proposal refers to a special issue for an international peer reviewed journal. The call for papers will be based on themes arisen during the workshop. On the other hand, the live performance prepared with the workshop participants could be offered to the conference community at large. However, such a proposal will be planned with the conference organizers’ agreement, who should plan a “give-back event” at the end of the conference.
[7] T. Macchia, C. Parra, P. Mate, V. D’Andrea,
A. Siesser, Z. J. Gaseb, D. Hakken, and A. De Angeli. Creativity and participatory artwork for civic awareness. In Participatory Innovation Conference 2015, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2015.
6. HOW TO PARTICIPATE Anyone wishing to experience the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques is invited to express her/his interest by contributing to the workshop blog with a public statement:
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