"It is forbidden to walk on the grass.
It is not forbidden to fly over the grass" Augusto Boal.
Third way theatre is a cultural collective of people involved in social change through creative and critical-reflexive dialogue...for the most up-to-date news see our facebook site, or connect to our blog takinupspaceproject, and for those not on social media - email!!
Third-Way Theatre, recently completed a FORUM project with the Indian Australlian Women's community (2011). This project explored the cultural impact of silencing women's experiences of domestic violence and was performed in five different locations across Melbourne. Currently, we are working collaboratively on a project with Thai Community Theatre group GABFAI, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We are also planning a forum theatre project, with Barbara Santos, coming up in 2012 on gender violence - stay tuned.
Third-Way Theatre, based in Melbourne, Australia, grew out of the work of the Takin' Up Space project (1999). We run Theatre of the Oppressed training workshops annually. Work with communities to address social issuses using Forum Theatre. Our work is based on BOALS, Theatre of the Oppressed Techniques, with communities, to address concerns arising out of colonising assumptions where the superiority of some is taken as fact, and the inferiority of others as fate.
Third-Way Theatre also has roots in Paulo Friere’s work on critical pedagogy. It aims, in the work, to free up possibilities to move beyond the pathology of official narratives, and aspirations, freeing us to honor our unrecognized knowing, dreams, images and possibilities - as a movement towards a more just and humane world.
WHAT WE DO
Run training workshops in Theatre of the Opressed and Theatre For living with particular focus on the politics of oppression from a Freirean perspective. Devise Forum Shows, which arise from workshops with communities that come about through an invitation from community. As well as engage in other projects i.e community photo mapping - that utilise creative methods to generate community ownership in order to dismantling disabling sterotypes. Past projects have focused on the ongoing struggle for self-determination and agency, in the context of environments where discrimination and prejudice is rife. We have worked with women around domestic violence, people labelled as having mental health issues - dealing with community stigma, issues of prisonisation, as well as poverty, bullying, gender violence, suicide, racism, displacement, drug and alcohol addiction, anorexia, climate justice - experiences where silence is normalised - in order to give voice too injustices.
'Third Space comes from the work of Homi K. Bhabha, an Indian Philosopher. The Third Space is the shared space where each human being is involved in an exchange with the other. This exchange is not fixed, and creates the possibility of hybrids, an opportunity to escape from the static view of the world as one compromised of duality. Third spaces acknowledge the process of becoming, moving beyond a market place - rational and scientific framing of the world'.
