In most workshops, there is the standard podium or table, the
PowerPoint, the attendees sitting in chairs, hearing, learning, making sense of
some important topic.
Not so much at the Young Women's Resilient Voices for Empowerment
Through Performance parallel session at the 2016 Commission on the Status of
Women. This was a fully engaged gathering of complete participatory theatre. A
program conceived and designed by Dr. Beth Osnes, Associate Professor of
Theatre at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Chelsea Hackett, PhD student in
Educational Theatre at NYU and the Starfish School in Solola, Guatemala, now
directed by Vilma Saloj, "Her Infinite Impact" is a 12-session introduction to
expanding vocal range and efficacy through exercises, games and theatre activities.
The session involved voice and body warm-ups, group imagery
creation and partner discussions which culminated in the entire group of about
16 and then smaller groups of approximately four each contributing to the
expression of what it means to empower women and how that would look as a
statue-like representation. Commentary was then offered on the perceptions that
each presentation elicited within each participant.
Developed as a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project, the
program itself is now mainly used in Guatemala at the Starfish School. Its
larger purpose, however, is adaptation to any group that wants to physically
empower womens' voices through the creation of strong, stable and secure
manifestations of the environment needed to do so and ultimately to transfer
that to the women themselves.
In the near future, the program will be
introduced in Tanzania, New York City and Boulder, Colorado, and it is working
to develop opportunities for women to advocate in communities through their
vocal and civic strength.
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