Monday, March 17, 2008

More Theatre Workshop Pictures (see below)



Pictures From the "World Famous" Theatre Workshop (see entry below)





World Famous Theatre Workshop

3-15-2008 WORLD FAMOUS THEATRE WORKSHOP

Well, I don’t know if I’d call it "world famous," but that’s how my translator introduced the workshop, because I had told him I’d worked with groups who had used these techniques in the US and India—now we’ll add Africa to the list!

Knowing that I was a Theatre major, the students at my youth center have been eager for me to do theatre lessons since I got here, but the language barrier has made it nearly impossible. I mean, people keep encouraging me by telling me that one doesn’t need language to do theatre and that we can work through mime techniques, but honestly, who likes mimes? Besides, the kind of theatre I like to work with is a lot more discussion based. It’s not about doing funny skits and reading prepackaged plays like the students are used to. The theatre I’ve learned to work with deals with participants creating their own material and using theatre to discuss social problems (Side note of thanks to Dr. Amy Seham, the cast of “I Am We Are,” The Thambo Project, and of course Augusto Boal for familiarizing me with all of this).

I finally gave in to doing a Saturday workshop, as long as I would have a translator present. Saturday is a massive day at the youth center. Students don’t have school in the afternoon, and we often have upwards of 40 people show up to see what’s going on. I was a bit intimidated by the sheer mass of participants I knew would be present, but I figured if you’re gonna go for it, you might as well go big!

We started out with some warm up games, made discussion groups, and then the participants made “tableaus” representing issues dealt with by Moroccan youth. About a half hour into the workshop, I spotted my translator standing in the corner and realized I hadn’t yet used him once in this workshop. This threw me off for a moment... What language had I been speaking? The workshop was running smoothly and productively and people seemed to understand what was going on. Had I been speaking English? No... about 4 of the 40 people in this room understand higher levels of English. Good lord, had I been... no.... had I been conducting a functional workshop in Arabic?

It was true. The flaming tongues had descended. My cup of linguistic communicability runnith over. I mean, most of the workshops functionality was due to the participants’ good natured patience with sentences that must have sounded like “Now putting hands on his head you are—like a photograph I must be, I mean, you must be, without speaking like statue she are.” But it’s miraculous how unnecessary grammar really can be when you just let go.

Though things got a little crazy, as tends to happen with 40 students in a large room, the participants managed to create some profound tableaus dealing with issues ranging from drug use, to street violence, to trying to illegally immigrate to Spain. Plus everyone had a good time, and was able to use art as a medium to discuss the issues Moroccan youth deal with day to day.

If there’s anything “world famous” about the workshop, it’s that in every situation I’ve seen it used—across countries, languages, and age groups—people immediately connect with the idea of creating theatrical representations of their daily struggles. None of them are artists, or “theatre people,” but they create with a power of honesty that one rarely even finds on a professional stage. And in that workshop, 40 people became artists, actors, and sculptors who used theatre to critique the society in which they live.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Cus i just HAD to...

Birthday Trip











Another volunteer and I took a birthday trip this past weekend to the "Cascades'd Ouzoud," which we had heard were the the most beautiful waterfalls in Morocco. I must say, having grown up in good ol' Sioux Falls SD, a city named for this phenomenon of water meeting gravity, I feel I have the right to judge the awesomeness of waterfalls with reasonable authority--and the falls at Ouzoud were spectacular!



We had quite the weekend of hiking adventures in the area, and aside from sharing a cab with some fun polish guys along with an Iranian-Lebanese American and his Irish girlfriend, here were some of the highlights in pictures:

1. Pretty Falls

2. Crossing a "Bridge"

3. Finding a stray donkey (only in Morocco...)

4. Yes, that's a Bob Marley themed campground

5. On our way back, the ferry guy who had taken us across was on gone on lunch break. After seeing this bridge, we realized why there was a ferry guy in the first place. Unfortunately, he was gone and we needed to cross somehow... I will, however, refrain from revealing how that was accomplished because it will help my mother sleep better at night.