HITT Tackles ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’

The Eastside HITT students lead a Forum Theatre and Image Theatre workshop with community members.  Students lead some ice breaker games and theatre exercises for everyone to get to know each other and feel comfortable creating with each other. Then the students used the format of image theatre and forum theatre to address conflict situations and community issues. Issues and stories were generated by both guest participants and by the Eastside HITT class. Some topics that the group discussed were homelessness; bullying; treatment/funding of athletes versus artists; fair treatment of all creatures; communication within families; the terms “wrong”, “sick”, “crazy”; and the economic gap. Everyone participated fully and were engaged for the entire process. The students and guests came together to work on an equal level to achieve a goal. The response from the guests was very positive, they were very proud of the students and would like to participate in an event like this again.