If you want to look at photos of this year’s SOAW vigil at Fort Benning Georgia. Please notice the wonderful puppets we were able to bring to life inspired by the Six Jesuit Priests, their housekeeper and her 14 year old daughter. These martyrs were assassinated by the Salvadorian army 20 years ago.

Linda Panetta’s photos

Tom Bottolene’s photos

ImaginAction photos

Dear Friends of IMAGINACTION,

Happy New Year! As we wrap up 2009 we wanted to share with you some of the highlights of the year. This past year has been exciting and has taken us to new places, including Afghanistan, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria and Ireland. We are proud that our work is part of a global movement that supports peace through justice and alternatives to violence.

This year Hector Aristizabal was invited by several organizations to two European tours where he performed his solo piece “Nightwind” and offered his unique and innovative blend of Theater of The oppressed and Awakening the Imagination trainings.

In October 2009 Hector co-created and co-directed a new Forum theater piece “Under Pressure” with Luc Opdebeeck , director of FORMAAT. “Under Pressure” deals with coma drinking and addiction among the youth in the Netherlands. The play, which premiered in October, has been scheduled for over 200 performances in schools and Juvenal facilities in Holland.

One of the major highlights of this year is the expansion of our work into Afghanistan. Hector was invited to Afghanistan by FES (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung) ICTJ (International Center for Transitional Justice) and AHRDO (Afghan Human Rights & Democracy Organization) for 3 weeks Hector led Theatre for Social Change workshops with women and community activists.  As Hector puts it, “I was honored to meet many courageous Afghan human rights activists working with victims of war, orphans, women, mental health providers, teachers and professional actors.”  While most of the work was in Kabul, Hector also conducted workshop in Herat where he worked with “Voices of Women” the organization founded by Suraya Pakzad, recipient of the 2008 International Women of Courage Award. “Voices of Women” is committed to providing Afghan women shelter, counseling and job training.

In Afghanistan, Hector had the honor of working with his longtime friend and T.O. colleague, Marc Weinblatt from The Mandala Center for Change USA, and Playback Theatre specialist, Karin Gisler, from Switzerland. The 7- week program in Afghanistan was envisioned and organized by Hjalmar Joffre-Eichhorn.

As part of our culture-bridging work Vivien Sansour offered three successful classes in Arabic language and culture in Los Angeles and Orange County and performed some of her new work at American Friends Service Committee “Colors of the Arab World” exhibit among other places.         Both Vivien Sansour and Hector Aristizabal participated in this year’s encounter of TO practitioners in CTORIO, the center created by Augusto Boal who unfortunately died in May of this year, a few months before this unprecedented encounter of nearly 100 practitioners from all over the world who have been inspired by his revolutionary methods.

As in past years we continued offering basic training and technical assistance to on-going projects in Colombia and Palestine, which we aim to increase in this coming year of 2010.

Hector continued offering his yearly intense trainings at Pendle Hill, the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) and The Ojai Foundation. He was also invited to do his work at Oberlin College,  DeAnza College, Foothill College, Swarthmore College, and University of Michigan.

Many of us at Imaginaction returned this year to Fort Benning, Georgia to make giant puppets and participate in the SOAW vigil to close the School of the Assassins. We participated in bringing imagination to other similar peace marches in the Los Angeles area including Free Gaza Vigils, The World Peace March, and the Martin Luther King Parade.  Our own Johnny Zeremeh is currently editing a documentary based on Imaginaction’s street theater and activism.

Finally we have participated in several conferences throughout the year doing presentations, performances and Imaginaction workshops. Recently we were in Barcelona at the Teatro y Salud Mental organized by Forn de teatre Pa’tothom, the Social work and Spirituality conference and the 15th Annual PTO conference. We are pleased to announce that Hector is now member of the PTO board of directors helping organize the 2010 PTO conference in Austin, Texas.

What About The New Year?

Vivien Sansour is working with theatre director, Naomi Newman, on a new piece based on dreams, drawings, personal story, and her poetry.

Hector has been invited to return to Derry, Northern Ireland to develop a 4 week intense program working with two different communities (Protestant and Catholic) dealing with the tensions of a the recent violent killing of a Catholic man.

We are working with FORMAAT to create a 4-week intense training in the West Bank and Gaza.

One of Hector’s dreams is to be able to return to his native Medellin, Colombia and continue offering sustainable trainings to the young leaders at Red Juveniles and other community based organizations so we are working on making his dream come true by fundraising and organizing with locals on the ground in Colombia!

In the Spring, Lantern Books will publish The Blessing Next to the Wound by Hector and Diane Lefer, the story of his surviving civil war and torture in Colombia, his exile in the US, and accounts of seeking healing for himself and others through activism and art. They are also contributors to the forthcoming anthology, Peace Movements Worldwide (Greenwood/Praeger) and they have been invited to write about Imaginaction’s theory and practice for an anthology about new approaches inspired by Boal.

Diane has fiction on political themes scheduled for publication this year in The Ampersand, Evening Street Review, Platte Valley Review, and Santa Monica Review. Her articles about prisons and the juvenile justice system appear in LA Progressive. Beginning in January, she will lead creative writing workshops for adjudicated youth in Los Angeles which ties in well with Imaginaction’s upcoming collaboration with the Youth Justice Coalition, a youth-led organization that represents hundreds of thousands of young people who have, at some point, been in the custody of the State.

Finally, we are thrilled to announce that Imaginaction is now officially an incorporated non-profit organization that can receive tax-deductible contributions. If you feel inspired by the work we do and would like to make a tax-deductible contribution please contact us!

We wish all of you a wonderful New Year and we hope that this coming year will bring us closer to a world more just!

Warm Regards,

Imaginaction Board of Directors

Paths of Initiation

A Mentoring Retreat for Younger and Older Men

Mendocino, California ~ August 17-22, 2010

Mendocino Woodlands Camp, Mendocino, CA

Proceeds support Voices of Youth and Intercultural Projects.

For more information and registration visit the Mosaic website at: www.mosaicvoices.org or contact the Mosaic office at: 206-935-3665.

Paths of Initiation

A Mentoring Retreat for Younger and Older Men
August 17-22, 2010
Mendocino Woodlands Camp, Mendocino, CA

Proceeds support Voices of Youthand Intercultural Projects

Register Here

Through stories, poems and the compelling speech of the soul, through the suddenness of ideas and the surprise of ritual we will seek the spirit of practice and the life of the soul. The soul begins its initiatory path at birth, each birth initiating a particular life story. Awakening to one’s inner story and finding life-long initiatory paths comprises the “real work” and genuine opus of our lives. Although each soul is naturally gifted and secretly aimed, many aspects of modern culture lead us away from the very paths of knowledge that the soul would have us take. Inside, the dream of our life keeps trying to awaken us from the sleep of the daily world.

This retreat is about tuning in to the exact speech of the soul and to changes that the deep self would have us make in order to move further along the paths of healing and self-revelation.

Join us on this path of discovery as we approach the territory of initiation with a diverse and surprising faculty who will present ideas and elements of initiation from tribal traditions, spiritual practices, psychological perspectives, and a rich array of personal experiences.

For more information visit Mosaic at:www.mosaicvoices.org or contact the Mosaic office at: 206-935-3665.

Visit the Mosaic website, www.mosaicvoices.org, to view Michael Meade give a lively and engaging description of this upcoming Paths of Initiation retreat where he answers some of the most frequently asked questions.

Hector will return to India in December 2010 and participate in Jana Sanskriti’s Theater of the Oppressed Festival. More cities in India and events to be announced – stay tuned!

MUKTADHARA IV

The Forum Theatre Festival

By

Jana Sanskriti – Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed

BACKGROUND

The idea of Theatre of the Oppressed was born in South America in the early seventies from the work and practice of Brazilian theatre theoretician and director Augusto Boal. Jana Sanskriti was the first group to bring Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre to India.

In Forum Theatre members of the theatre team select, construct, and narrate a social problem from their daily life. With artistic direction this play is taken to an audience who must now find a solution to the problem. Passive spectators then become engaged spect-actors. Spect-actors come on stage to enact the solutions they have thought of, debating with trained activists about the feasibility of the solutions suggested.

Since 1991, Jana Sanskriti has removed itself far from conventional theatre and spread the practice of Forum Theatre to remote villages of the Sunderban in Bengal. With 20 theatre teams active in rural Bengal, Jana Sanskriti is today perhaps the state’s largest theatre group. Jana Sanskriti has also taken this theatre pedagogy beyond the boundaries of the state to different parts of the country – to Tripura, Orissa, Jharkhand, Delhi, Utranchal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Jana Sanskriti believes that every individual is essentially intellectual. Not only great men thinks but also all men think, philosophy exists in the thought of so called illiterate human beings. But they are not aware of it all the time. The political culture never takes care of this intellectual faculty of the people. They are made blind followers. Jana Sanskriti on the other hand wants to develop rationality within the people.  Through out in last two decades this is where Jana Sanskriti has focused her artistic activities. They have always tried to make the qualities of human being visible which is normally invisible to the people.  Creating rational people is the main focus of Jana Sanskriti’s work. This is how they want to bring change in the society.

Jana Sanskriti believes the biggest form of violation of human rights is not to create democratic space for the people to think. They should not be seen as the implementers only they can contribute in the making of the policies. That is the reason Jana Sanskriti left propaganda theatre and started Theatre of the Oppressed devised by Augusto Boal. They are the first exponent of Boal here in India and the largest and long-lasting Theatre of the Oppressed movement in the world according to Augusto Boal.

Today Jana Sanskriti has created the Federation of Theatre of the Oppressed, India where a number of large activist movements are present. They have handed over theatrical means (means of making theatre) to the poorest of the poor, to the tribal communities, lower caste, to the rural people.

Jana Sanskriti is a work of art and the name of a space where total transformation is constructed. It is an organization founded in 1985 which practices Theatre of the Oppressed among the most disadvantaged sections of Indian society. From its inception in one remote village, Jana Sanskriti now has constructed theatre teams consisting of men and women agricultural labourers. These actors come together transcending divisive social and political affiliations to plan constructive action and provide dynamic leadership for social justice and community development. Their plays onstage and their political activism offstage feeds one another to mobilize around issues as wide-ranging as domestic violence to political violence, from reconstruction of public institutions to resistance against aggressive forms of development. Rather than use theatre to deliver development messages and services, Jana Sanskriti has used theatre to establish dialogue in society. They believe that dialogue allows for informed critical thinking and prevents a human being from following blindly – whether in pursuit of material things, an ideology, or a person. This form of dialogue is an aesthetic experience of life, an internal transformation which inspires action for external transformation. This is what we mean by total transformation.

WHY A FORUM THEATRE FESTIVAL

In our work on Forum Theatre we have dealt with a range of issues which are relevant to different groups in different regions – Displacement, malpractices in the public distribution system, communalism, exploitation by contractors, undemocratic culture of political parties, and corruption in the Panchayat, blind superstitions, domestic violence, insurgency and terrorism etc.

The important reason for holding this Festival is that it becomes a meeting ground for the Forum Theatre teams trained by Jana Sanskriti all over India. Each of these teams is active in their own regions; most of them are also heading organizations engaged in struggles to assert the rights of the marginalized. Though all these teams are linked to each other through their commitment to the Forum Theatre movement, they have had very little opportunity to interact with each other and see each other’s work. At this Festival we were able to provide this valuable opportunity. This interaction has, as seen from the last three festivals, no doubt, imbued each individual and team with the feeling that they are not alone in this challenging task of establishing dialogue in society.

Usually Forum Theatre is performed before audiences who are also facing the problem portrayed in the play. Since problem solving and understanding the problem sociologically through collective action is the primary intention so the spectators and actors form a homogenous group. But in this Festival like the previous three that we had we will again try to have all kinds of interest groups involved and interested in theatre of the oppressed in the audience, from all over the world!  And since Forum Theatre allows room for debate and discussion, the audience emerges from the experience with a more human outlook.

Finally, the name ‘Muktadhara’! ‘Mukta’ means free and ‘Dhara’ is a flowing steam. A flow that is free from dogma and all those structural constructs that prevent a dialogue between people, is what is implied by the term Muktadhara – celebrating movement in peace and togetherness! This is when the glory of development is said to have taken place – participation in togetherness.

Where

• The festival will be held at an open air venue in the centre of Kolkata.
• Workshops will be held either in a Mango Garden or by the side of a river.
• There will be one more workshop on Rainbow of Desire, we will place it in the festival schedule and will let you know.

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