Teaching & Popular Theater
Drama for youth development, community empowerment, and social justice
Popular Theater is an international movement that links arts and social justice, defends diversity, and celebrates community. ‘Popular’ means belonging to the people rather than commercial.
Popular Theater draws energy and insight from the languages and lived experiences of the people who take part in it. It helps individuals and disempowered groups gain confidence and skills to create positive change in themselves and their surroundings.
Popular Theater involves the entire group in selecting and defining issues, developing scripts, and telling their story. Lively, improvisational games with rhythm and movement help group members build trust, collectivity, and a common sense of purpose.
Ras Mo is trained and experienced in Paulo Freire’s popular education pedagogy and Augusto Boal’s Forum and Image Theater. He guides groups through an artistic inventory of interests and skills and teaches new creative forms, using activities and games developed by the international P.T. movement and by himself.
Sometimes the process culminates in a formal performance that dramatizes a problem: its causes, effects, and especially practical, positive responses.
Popular Theater is not only used to create plays on social issues.
IT CAN ALSO HELP GROUPS:
- recognize and address sexism and unhealthy power relationships
- deal positively with diversity
- set organizational development goals
- do strategic planning and evaluation
- devise more effective curricula
- improve skills for education and outreach
- resolve conflicts
- develop more participatory processes