November 14, 2008: First Interview

Dear Friend,

Alex works for Chance for Life, another organization based in the city that works with forum theatre. When I proposed the idea of doing interviews with the A.R.T. Fusion volunteers, it was suggested I also interview people outside of A.R.T. Fusion who work with forum theatre. It sounded like a good idea. My first interview was with Alex.

According to what I found out from Alex, forum theatre and other Boal practices are slowly making their way in Romania. He told me he started out as a volunteer and is now a coordinator for Chance for Life. He’s worked on forum theatre projects addressing drug abuse in schools, the HIV stigma, and cultural prejudice. He believes very much in the ability to help people take responsibility for social change through the use of forum theatre. He’s had little experience in other forms of theatre but has been to many forum theatre trainings. He insists that people be well enough trained before facilitating and making forum theatre, as the “instrument,” as he called it, is quite complicated and delicate. Forum theatre can and has been used for the wrong reasons. Therefore, full knowledge of the instrument is required in order to use it successfully.

Volunteering in the city is difficult. Alex told me that many of his volunteers have become busy with other things in their lives. One of Alex’s jobs is recruiting, finding a new generation of willing volunteers to make up a new forum theatre troupe. As Romanians are skeptical about volunteering in general and forum theatre specifically, Alex has his work cut out for him. He remains optimistic, though, about the benefits of doing forum theatre and has seen the affect it has of returning responsibility to the people. With more positive outcomes like this, people will become more open to volunteering, whether with an organization or just in their own lives, in making Romania a better place to live.

Blessings.
Kailen