READY TO REJUVENATE?
Then, come train with Just Act’s Executive & Artistic Director Lisa Jo Epstein Ph.D, a seasoned T.O. leader and theatre director with more than 2 decades experience teaching Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, facilitating applied T.O workshops & residencies, as well as jokering public Forums.
JUST ACT INSTITUTE
for Theatre of the Oppressed
Educators, facilitators, social workers, artists, activists, organizers, healers, creative place keepers and makers, investigators of human relations of all kinds, Just Act offers multi-level Theatre of the Oppressed technique training for those embarking on a journey OR to go deeper with your practice and self-understanding within an anti-oppression framework.
Just Act’s programs are applicable to all levels of justice work committed to social action and transformation—educational, political, creative, cultural and beyond.
Whether you are looking for:
- a powerful introduction to Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O) or Forum Theatre,
- a refreshing new take on T.O. to strengthen your knowledge & practice within an anti-oppression framework, or
- highly-focused, Advanced Joker Trainings by a seasoned T.O. facilitator, to deepen your facilitation practice
- Then the Just Act Institute is for you.
Our experiential model for processing T.O. ‘games’—experience, reflect, generalize & apply—is unique to Just Act. It enables our training to dive deep to root issues, enabling people to internalize, not intellectualize, refreshing discoveries, and practice making change with compassion and new courage.
Forum Theatre and all of the tools of Theatre of the Oppressed kindle a new sense of hope and understanding that moves participants beyond perpetuating internalized, often unconsciously oppressive behaviors to realizing their ability to confront thorny realities with natural intelligence, creativity and purpose.
Learn, strengthen and expand personal and professional skills in using Theatre of the Oppressed as a tool for social and civic change as well as interpersonal and community healing.
Through the Just Act Institute, you can:
- Gain skills and knowledge in Theatre of the Oppressed while creating and practicing ways of promoting healing and taking empowered, just action around complex, often divisive, systemic challenges where you work and live.
- Build and/or deepen your T.O. practice and gain new, unique facilitation skills from a seasoned T.O. practitioner.
- Improve your ability to effectively engage justice, equity, diversity & inclusion issues.
- Activate awareness through embodied exploration of oppression paired with a creative critical reflection process unique to Just Act.
Raw and real theater was created from the energy and experiences within the room. I experienced the reality of a spect-actor, and for me it really made theater much more accessible, which is my personal mission with my craft. Beneficial elements besides the whole weekend? I would say finding new ways to explore conflict internally and externally.
“I think the most powerful thing for me is this idea of revising, re-creating, rehearsing, deconstructing, etc. When things happen that are unjust, it’s a powerful to be able to see those things as fodder for re-imagination, for creativity, for generatively, for transformation…For me, I came away thinking of TO as a kind of social dreaming.” Educator (participant), Forum Theatre Intensive
up next:
Just Act's Annual Forum Theatre Intensive
Summer 2022 Forum Theatre Intensive will be ONLINE
DATES: Part I: June 24-26, Part II: July 8-10
TIME: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 8am-4pm EST
Just Act’s Forum Theatre Intensive is geared towards individuals seeking to develop or deepen and strengthen facilitation skills and training in Forum Theatre and core TO techniques to improve your ability to effectively engage JEDI concerns–justice, equity, diversity & inclusion–, and use interactive theatre as a tool for personal, interpersonal as well as community repair and change.
Our Forum Theatre Intensive culminates in a free public performance of the Forum Theatre pieces created by participants.
At our annual Forum Theatre Intensive, you will learn:
- Foundational training in the theories and techniques of Forum Theatre & Theatre of the Oppressed.
- Practice the techniques within an anti-oppression framework developed exclusively by Just Act.
- Experience spect-actor intervention with community members.
- Engage in self and relational transformation as you practice new patterns of action and thinking that will also support work on external structural change.
We will guide you through the experiential learning process we utilize for noticing and investigating inner and outer work such as:
- Investigating what happens in our bodies, feelings and thoughts when we do a TO activity–making the ‘invisible visible.’
- Understanding how these aspects—including how we read the non-verbal body language of others—inform and shape our actions.
- Identifying challenges to changing patterns of behavior in our everyday social interactions, and unconsciously perpetuate inequitable systems of oppression.
- Recognizing the impact on our own bodies and minds of these habits, of this social conditioning that may in fact be sabotaging our social justice efforts.
- Practicing how to access & utilize our radical imagination to flip the scripts & author new narratives.
Forum Theatre Workshop Details
DATES: Part I: June 24-26 and Part II: July 8-10
TIME: 8am-4pm EST (total 36 hours of training)
WHERE: Online
STANDARD COST: $500
Limited financial aid based on need available. Email us to learn more.
SOLIDARITY RATE: $600 If you can personally afford it, or if you have institutional/organizational support, please consider this rate. Just Act offers our workshops–online or in person– lower than most trainers. By paying the SOLIDARITY rate, you can help us offset costs of participants who can’t afford the standard rate!
REGISTRATION OPTIONS:
$250 upon registration; $250 on June 1, OR
$500/$600 Full amount upon registration
Click below to reach the Registration Form!
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: June 1, 2022
Lisa Jo is a masterful maestra with an uncanny gift for tapping into our heart's inner hunger to educe something luminous, vast, and Divine! She can transform any place into a safe space for diverse groups of individuals to cast aside our inhibitions and trust her process. Lisa Jo’s passion is infectious and her keen ability to empathize with a broad spectrum of humanity allows her to effectively gauge the general emotional state of her players and improvise during any situation at any given moment to fulfill the needs of the group she’s working with. When you couple Lisa Jo's unique intuitive sense with her high-level expertise then you get a facilitator who is brilliant, piercing, and dynamic!
MASTER CLASSES: ADVANCED JOKER TRAINING 1 & 2:
If you have taken at least one Theatre of the Oppressed training with Just Act or the equivalent, and have some experience using TO and jokering public Forum Theatre events, then these 2 workshops are for you!!
2 workshop options available to meet different needs.
SPECIAL DISCOUNT if you take both Joker Training 1 & 2
Advanced Joker Training I:
Sequencing & Facilitating T.O. games-ercises.
- Build skills for engaging JEDI issues through purposeful design of your Forum Theatre creation process and facilitation choices
- Utilize TO games to critically & creatively investigate how we mobilize power, and practice alternative ways of making change
- Get coaching on cultivating presence in facilitation & embracing the complexity and insight into learned behaviors that perpetuate oppression which all TO games-ercises reveal
DATES: Stay tuned for 2021 online Joker Training!
WHERE: online
COST: $285 (limited financial aid based on need available. Email us to learn more)
REGISTRATION for Advanced Joker Training 1:
$50 registration fee
$285 Full amount
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: TBA
Advanced Joker Training 2: DEVising Techniques for Forum Theatre
In-depth Forum Theatre Joker Training, from guiding a devising process for participants’ personal growth & development of Forum Theatre pieces, to facilitation practice & coaching
- Expand & deepen your knowledge of devising Forum Theatre
- Train in Just Act’s group process that responds to emergent needs around racism through an intersectional lens AND supports the creation of the Forum piece itself
- Get facilitation practice & coaching on consciously jokering through a JEDI lens
DATES: 2021 dates TBA
WHERE: online
COST: $300 (limited financial aid based on need available. Email us to learn more)
REGISTRATION OPTIONS for Advance Joker Training 2:
$50 registration fee (non-refundable after JTBA)
$300 Full amount for either Joker Training 1 or 2
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: TBA
$520 SPECIAL DISCOUNT if you want to take both Joker Trainings
The Joker in Theatre of the Oppressed is an artist with pedagogic and political functions who helps people to understand themselves better, express their ideas and emotions, re-see themselves in relation to society, seek their own learning and alternative strategies for change.
The Joker facilitates by asking questions and making connections. They don’t need to have the answers for their curiosity helps them formulate questions to draw out the ideas and self-knowledge of the group.
Jokers see in the next frame, encouraging active participation and acting on their belief in everyone’s gifts and their ability to make change
Seek their own learning and develop new strategies for change
Anti-oppression, diversity training and inter-group dialogue facilitation experience helpful
“Just Act’s workshop was an opening to new and profound approaches in learning, teaching, creativity, and moving through the world. Each person in the workshop participated fully in a thoroughly absorbing range of exercises and activities. The experiences were transformational and reinvigorated my relationship to teaching and to myself. I introduced these new approaches to my students immediately and continually build on them. Her workshop further solidified my belief that real learning comes from doing, through one’s body, heart and mind. This innovative approach to theater arts is intimately connected with living one’s life.”
Course Offerings at the Just Act Institute
Forum Theatre and all of the tools of Theatre of the Oppressed kindle a new sense of hope and understanding that moves participants beyond perpetuating internalized and openly oppressive behaviors to realizing their ability to confront thorny realities with innate intelligence, creativity and purpose.
T.O Foundations: Introduction to Theatre of the Oppressed
Games-ercises & Image Theatre for group-building, cultivate knowledge awareness, analysis of shared challenges, envision solutions & stepping stones to change. Options: 1-3 days, 8 hours/day; or customized to a 90 minute- 3 hour training.
A serious and fun introduction to the ways in which Theatre of the Oppressed techniques make the invisible visible, with a focus on systematic oppression and an awareness of the emotions and actions that perpetuate injustice on a local, individual level.
Participants will gain skills to support the following:
- Collective & self-reflection on our role in shifting our own thinking to support individual and community change;
- Building trust and group cohesion
- Creative asset-focused, problem-solving process.
Annual Forum Theatre Intensive (5 day training, culminates in public Forum Theatre sharing)
An intensive introduction to Forum Theatre, for anyone interested in:
- theatre-based tools for deep personal work that supports the collective,
- embodied exploration of systematic oppression and individual actions,
- creative conflict resolution,
- impactful approaches to ensemble-building,
- facilitation to grow trust and group cohesion across difference.
Introduction to Forum Theatre (2 hours-2 days, customized)
A shorter training on Forum Theatre that introduces the basic elements of Forum Theatre.
Participants will:
- Gain courage to investigate thorny issues creatively
- Exchange ideas about conflict and strategize solutions
- Learn to build consensus and rehearse solutions to implement in the real world.
Advanced Joker Training 1 (3 days)
Sequencing, facilitating TO games & Image Theatre within an anti-oppression framework
Advanced Joker Training 2 (3 days)
In-depth Forum Theatre Joker Practicum
Introspective Techniques
Cop in the Head, Rainbow of Desire, Boal’s method for theatre & healing from internalized oppression as a result of systematic oppression.