Calling peacebuilders, healers, conflict workers, teaching artists and educators! Join us for an advanced training in Augusto Boal’s tradition of “Rainbow of Desire” with a focus on embodied tools for transforming conflict and harm.
You can apply the tools we are sharing both to conflicts in your own life and/or to your own facilitation practices.
Rainbow of Desire provides a framework for deepening understanding of the difficult ways we move in the world, with an emphasis on internalized messages of oppression, the internal narratives and tensions we carry.
Boal originally developed his participatory theater technique “Theater of the Oppressed” under 1950s Brazilian military dictatorship. His aim was to transform spectators into protagonists, or “spect-actors” where every moment is an opportunity to observe, or to act. During his exile in Europe, Boal observed that people identified less with the idea of being oppressed, and while trying to adapt his work to this context, he determined that in the global North the oppressor was often internalized (ie the cop in your head). This is where the work of “Rainbow of Desire” begins.
Be ready to dive into complex interpersonal dynamics using the language of image, physicality, and movement.
Reach out to [email protected] with any questions or to request a scholarship/trade!
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS
Tatiana Chaterji and Levana Saxon are Freire-heads, mamas and comrades who found each other in their shared passion for Arts-Integrated Participatory Action Research and Theatre of the Oppressed.
Tati uses T.O. to activate community members harmed by the criminal legal system, moving in the space between healing based models of justice, drama therapy, martial arts, and theater. She proudly coordinates restorative justice and youth leadership at Fremont High School in East Oakland, and spends time outside of the classroom tending to interpersonal, social, and ancestral wounds through conflict work and cultural resistance strategies.
Levana develops strategic methodology, curriculum, training, and research projects to support movement building and popular education. She has facilitated thousands of children, youth and adults in agitating for climate justice, migrant rights, racial justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. She makes giant puppets and can be found designing artistic interventions for direct action through the Ruckus Society and beyond. Her work focuses on both facilitating community-led groups in devising their own assessments, plans and actions and coaching organizational leaders to implement more democratic and equitable practices with the communities they serve. Her work outside of work is tending to her severely disabled partner with ALS so he can continue his fight to transform the finance industry.
Levana and Tati serve as lecturers in the Department of Theater and Dance at Cal State East Bay where they steward an initiative in Theatre of the Oppressed including coursework and a joker training program. With Rainbow of Desire, they are thrilled to hold a dedicated space for learning and experimentation in “unsticking the stuckness” of our lives.
