Our work is rooted in the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) methodology developed by Brazilian artist and politician August Boal, as inspired by Paulo Freire’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. TO provides tools for creating original performances within communities that may not have traditional acting training, focused on activating audiences and directly addressing legislative, systemic, and cultural change.

Central to our approach is our network of Forum Theatre Troupes; created in partnership with direct service and advocacy organizations across the city. Through these Troupes, we pay individuals from communities confronting systemic oppression to create original plays about their lived experiences, which are presented to audiences that we curate to include activists, advocates, legislators, policy-makers, community members and other stakeholders. As part of each performance, audience members are invited on stage to improvise as one of the characters they have seen represented; testing out alternate approaches to entrenched systems and collectively, creatively brainstorming change.

Recent and ongoing partners include or have included Housing Works, serving individuals experiencing homelessness and/or affected by HIV/AIDs; Breaking Ground, serving individuals who have experienced homelessness; the Ali Forney Center, serving LGBTQIA+ youth experiencing homelessness; the Red Hook Community Justice Center, serving youth affected by gentrification, over-policing, and the school-to-prison pipeline; Neighbors in Action, serving youth in Crown Heights affected by violence; and the Fortune Society, serving individuals with justice histories. We also run two Rapid Response Troupes, which create and rehearse a repertoire of plays that they are then able to perform on short notice at advocacy events and campaigns around the city. ESCUCHA, our Spanish-speaking Rapid Response Troupe, was seeded with immigrant activists based out of Sunset Park and Jackson Heights.

Through working with TONYC, actors have the opportunity to gain new skills, exercise their creativity, connect to a supportive community, and share their unique perspectives with an audience of community members and stakeholders. Actors develop a vocabulary with which to decode the social, political, and economic forces creating the conditions they see in their neighborhoods and city. With this broader contextual understanding, participants are better empowered to advocate for systemic change. All actors are paid for their participation, and for the expertise of their lived experience. For in person programs, we provide metrocards and food, and for digital cycles we have offered to purchase tablets for actors to access online programming.

We offer a multitude of opportunities throughout the year for actors to deepen their engagement with art-making, advocacy, and as leaders in our organization. This includes as members of our Rapid Response Troupes and through our paid Joker Training program, through which actors can train, and ultimately be hired, as TONYC facilitators. We reserve at least one Board seat for a Troupe actor, and do not require a set minimum financial give, in order to ensure accessibility. Actors are also able to join our Front of House team, through which they are paid to represent TONYC at public events and offered opportunities to train in public speaking, fundraising, and other related, transferable skills. We regularly create temporary committees, through which actors can directly influence administrative projects. Our opportunities to train in TO techniques extend to a broader community of activists, artists, and educators around the world. We regularly offer group trainings in facilitation and private trainings to schools, non-profits, and other values-aligned organizations. In 2022, we published The Wildcard Workbook: A Practical Guide for Jokering Forum Theatre; a free, 212 page interactive manual detailing our unique approach to the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology.

THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED NYC

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