Improv for Peace

The ongoing war in Ukraine, the pandemic, the economic crisis, the conflicts around the world is rising in past-years. are all aware of the problems the EU is facing: the democratic deficit, the rise of populism and illiberal tendencies, the migration policy, climate change, quite different interpretations of what Europe should stand for and what the European values are or should be. But also cyberspace, dilemmas on how to balance security measures with civil liberties, management of technological progress, the gaps between highly-educated and less-educated people, between urban and rural communities, between generations, the ones who profit from the globalization and the ones less fortunate who struggle with poverty. 

In its broadest sense, theatre has focused on storytelling, commemoration, social learning, and, more recently, commercial entertainment. Within its form, theatre has the potential to capture and recreate cultures and conflict through the imaginations of participants. Regardless of the form or venue, theatre consistently involves actors, those who enact intention as performance, and audience, those who witness the development of these enactments. Therefore, the use of theatre for the peace building process gives young people a space to express their feelings and thoughts directly in a critical way.  

The project focuses on creating an awareness about the social peace issues in Europe through making the young people improvise and use theatre as a tool.With the project we aim to develop skills of young people to increase their skills to express themselves in non-violent ways through out the usage of the theatre as a tool while creating awareness about the social peace issues in Europe. The participants will work on the issues that they will see important in their own communities and enact these situations by using the Forum Theatre methodology. 

During the project, we plan to cover the themes related to peace : radicalisation, racism and discrimination and conflict management through the usage of theatre tools based on Forum Theatre Methodology of Augusto Boal. While covering these themes, the participants will develop their own theatre peace and will present to the local community, we will do that in English and invite people from local community to engage in this activity. The young people from our volunteer will provide translation to the audience through caption translation to Spanish from English. In that way, both our local area and young people will experience the interculturality of our world and the issues in front of peace and it will create an awareness.