Forum Theater Project

 

Artistic Statement 

All theater mirrors its community. AtticRep’s new Forum Theater Project will strive to reflect the topics of San Antonio.Using performance strategies and theatrical language, Forum Theater Project will construct an original performance that focuses on the individual’s sense of belonging to our San Antonio community. In particular, this Forum will interrogate how belonging to a specific cultural and ethnic identity determines self- and public conceptions of citizenship in San Antonio and, by extension, America.AtticRep will provide the means to forge these ideas into provocative concrete form.The Forum Theater Project aims to stimulate dialogue; and through dialogue, change.

Pragmatics 

The Forum Theater Project is divided in three parts; research, workshop, and Forum Performance.

Research 

The first stage is to identify cultural communities within San Antonio that could inform the theme’s discussion. Once one or more communities are identified, a group of AtticRep artists will canvas the community to collect life stories from the members of the community.

Research 

The collected stories will be brought to AtticRep, and in a workshop environment using improvisational and narrative techniques, these stories will be translated into an original theatrical text. The text will then be workshopped, transcribed, memorized and rehearsed for performance.

Forum Performance 

The Forum Performance is divided in three events. 

Event One: 

The performance of the original text. 

Event Two: 

The repeated performance of the original text. This time, however, the spectators will be invited to participate in the performance with the objective of changing the outcome of the story. Spectators can do so by stopping the performance and taking the place of one of the actors on stage. More audience members can replace more actors, and the performance is continued to its final, often unpredictable, resolution.

Event Three: 

A discussion between the spectators, the actors, and the spect-actors, those spectators that took the place of the actors. The objective of this discussion is to bring to the surface the theme of the Forum Theater.Inspired by the work of Brazilian theater director Augusto Boal, this Forum Theater Project is the first of its kind in San Antonio. AtticRep will present this original performance in the Attic Theater at Trinity University on:  March 13th and 14th