[NYTr] Upcoming TOPLAB Events Winter 2008

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
451 West Street *
New York, New York 10014
(212) 924-1858
toplab at toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

* travel directions appended below

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

founded in 1990


Upcoming TOPLAB Events Winter 2008

Except for the January 5 workshop, all workshops take place at:

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (travel directions below)
New York City

*****

Saturday, January 5, 2008 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

A Workshop in Image Theater, a Theater of the Oppressed technique

facilitated by Jen Berger and Marie-Claire Picher

at The Vermont Workers' Center
294 North Winooski Avenue
Burlington, Vermont

Image Theater is designed to develop individual skills of observation
and self-reflection, and cooperative group interaction.
Leadership-building and consensus-building games and techniques explore
relations of power and group solutions to concrete problems through
"living body imagery." Discussions begin through the language of
images, offering a fresh approach to power analysis and new
opportunities for the exchange of ideas.

Tuition--sliding scale: $20-$50

You can pre-register online at http://www.workerscenter.org/register/

For more information, go to http://www.workerscenter.org or write to
toplab at toplab.org

*****

Saturday, January 19, 2008 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and
Sunday, January 20 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm

A Two-day Workshop in Image Theater: Images of Gentrification

facilitators to be announced

Image Theater is designed to develop individual skills of observation
and self-reflection, and cooperative group interaction.
Leadership-building and consensus-building games and techniques explore
relations of power and group solutions to concrete problems through
"living body imagery." Discussions begin through the language of
images, offering a fresh approach to power analysis and new
opportunities for the exchange of ideas.

This workshop will emphasize topics related to gentrification and should
have special appeal to people who are working and organizing around
issues related to gentrification, as well as to anyone who lives in
communities that are threatened by changes that benefit the rich at the
expense of poor and working people. In addition, activists working on
other social and political issues will be able to adapt the TOPLAB
gentrification-issue model for use in their own projects. All
participants will come away with a greater understanding of some
critical issues facing our cities--and, increasingly, our suburbs. By
using those topics as the basis for this workshop, people working on
other issues will be able to enhance their own effectiveness among
their particular constituencies and within their organizations.

As part of this workshop, we are pleased that Rene Francisco Poitevin, a
researcher on urban and gentrification issues who teaches at New York
University's Gallatin School and is a member of the Brecht Forum's Task
Force on Gentrification, will join us to discuss the various issues that
will inform these sessions.

It is highly recommended that people read the book The Suburbanization
of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town,
edited by Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley Hammett (New York, 2007:
Princeton Architectural Press, $24.95. ISBN-13: 978-1-56898-678-4 and
ISBN-10: 1-56898-678-4).

Tuition--sliding scale: $95-$150

To pre-register, please send an email to toplab at toplab.org to let us
know that you will be attending.

*****

Saturday, February 2 at 7:00 pm

Diabetic Drama: A Workshop

facilitated by Robbie McCauley

Are you concerned with the personal issues, as well as larger social
issues, around the growing numbers of people with diabetes?

Prior to her March 1 presentation of excerpts from Sugar, performance
artist and teacher Robbie McCauley will hold workshops open to anyone
directly or indirectly living with diabetes, or who is interested in
diabetes--especially the race and class health care disparities
concerning that condition. She would like 12 to 15 participants willing
to engage with "diabetic dramas". Participants may be asked to come
back for one or more subsequent workshops (although participation in
the first workshop does not require one to attend subsequent sessions).
Each workshop will include story exchanges about all types of diabetes,
and dramatic exercises designed to share and obtain information, and to
break silences.

Then, on March 1 join us for a performance by Ms. McCauley of excerpts
from Sugar, her theater piece that looks at everything there is to see
about sugar, from slavery to colonialism to American mythologies to
diabetes.

Robbie McCauley has been an active presence in the American avant-garde
theater for three decades. One of the early cast members of Ntozake
Shange's *for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow
is enuf*, Ms. McCauley went on to write and perform regularly in cities
across the country, striving to facilitate dialogs on race between local
whites and blacks.

In the 1990s, she received both an OBIE Award (Best Play) and a New York
Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award for Sally's Rape, which she wrote,
directed and performed.

A core member of the American Festival Project, she has practiced and
taught theater in several communities throughout the US and abroad. She
is anthologized in several books, including Extreme Exposure; Moon
Marked and Touched by Sun; and Performance and Cultural Politics, edited
respectively by Jo Bonney, Sydne Mahone, and Elin Diamond.

In 1998, her Buffalo Project was highlighted as one of the "the 51 (or
so) Greatest Avant-Garde Moments" by the Village Voice, a roster that
included work by artists such as Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and
John Cage. Her recent piece, Sugar, a work in progress, was presented at
Ohio State University in collaboration with several institutional
departments and organizations as well as with members of Columbus' Near
East community.

Robbie McCauley is on the Performing Arts Department faculty at Emerson
College in Boston.

Admission by voluntary contribution

To pre-register, please send an email to toplab at toplab.org to let us
know that you will be attending.

*****

Friday, February 15 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm,
Saturday, February 16 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and
Sunday, February 17 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm

De-masking Stereotypes: An Approach to Healing through Storytelling

facilitated by Potri Ranka Manis

A practical workshop on the Paulo Freire methodology as applied and
experienced within the historical context of the social and political
struggles against oppression in the Philippines.

Potri Ranka Manis is a registered nurse and a member of and facilitator
with the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory. She is also the Artistic
Director of Kinding Sindaw (http://www.kindingsindaw.org), a Filipino
indigenous dance, drama and martial arts ensemble. She created and
choreographed several Kinding Sindaw dance dramas and has trained since
childhood in all the traditional dance, music, and martial art forms of
the Maranao people of the Philippines. She is an award winning poet and
playwright, and has performed throughout the Philippines, Middle East,
Hong Kong and the United States.

Tuition--sliding scale: $110-$165

To pre-register, please send an email to toplab at toplab.org to let us
know that you will be attending.

*****

Saturday, March 1 at 8:00 pm

Sugar

performed by Robbie McCauley

Award-winning actress Robbie McCauley returns to the Brecht Forum to
present excerpts from her performance piece Sugar, which looks at
everything there is to see about sugar, from slavery to colonialism to
American mythologies to diabetes. This presentation, an ongoing
work-in-progress, will incorporate some of the story exchanges told by
participants in the "Diabetic Drama" workshops facilitated by Ms.
McCauley in February at the Brecht Forum. Through the interweaving of
stories, images, facts and historical legends we will see that diabetes
is not only a medical issue but also one of race and class, and we will
also see how sugar is sometimes something that is very bittersweet.

Robbie McCauley has been an active presence in the American avant-garde
theater for three decades. One of the early cast members of Ntozake
Shange's *for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow
is enuf*, Ms. McCauley went on to write and perform regularly in cities
across the country, striving to facilitate dialogs on race between local
whites and blacks.

In the 1990s, she received both an OBIE Award (Best Play) and a New York
Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award for Sally's Rape, which she wrote,
directed and performed.

A core member of the American Festival Project, she has practiced and
taught theater in several communities throughout the US and abroad. She
is anthologized in several books, including Extreme Exposure; Moon
Marked and Touched by Sun; and Performance and Cultural Politics, edited
respectively by Jo Bonney, Sydne Mahone, and Elin Diamond.

In 1998, her Buffalo Project was highlighted as one of the "the 51 (or
so) Greatest Avant-Garde Moments" by the Village Voice, a roster that
included work by artists such as Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and
John Cage. Her recent piece, Sugar, a work in progress, was presented at
Ohio State University in collaboration with several institutional
departments and organizations as well as with members of Columbus' Near
East community.

Robbie McCauley is on the Performing Arts Department faculty at Emerson
College in Boston.

Contribution--sliding scale: $6-$15
Free for Brecht Forum subscribers

*****

Saturday, March 8 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and
Sunday, March 9 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm

A Two-day Workshop in Forum Theater, focusing on gender oppression

facilitators to be announced

As part of International Women's Day this workshop will focus on gender
oppression in all of its forms and manifestations.

Exercises, games, and improvised scene work from the Theater of the
Oppressed repertory developed by Brasilian director, popular educator
and Workers Party activist Augusto Boal. Boal's interactive approach to
theatrical expression emphasizes physical dialogs, non-verbal imagery,
consensus-building and problem-solving processes, and techniques for
developing awareness of both external and internalized forms of
oppression.

An innovative approach to public forums, Forum Theater is rooted in the
Brasilian popular education and culture movements of the 1950s and
1960s. It is designed for use in schools, community centers, trade
unions, and political, solidarity and grassroots organizations. It is
especially useful as an organizing tool in protest movements. Workshop
participants (the actors) are asked to tell a story, taken from daily
life, containing a political or social problem of difficult solution. A
skit presenting that problem is improvised and presented. The original
solution proposed by the protagonist must contain at least one social
or political error. When the skit is over, the audience discusses the
proposed solution, and then the scene is performed once more. But now,
audience members are urged to intervene by stopping the action, coming
on stage to replace actors, and enacting their own ideas. Thus, instead
of remaining passive, the audience becomes active "spect-actors" who
now create alternative solutions and control the dramatic action. The
aim of the forum is not to find an ideal solution, but to invent new
ways of confronting oppression. In Brasil and other parts of Latin
America, as well as in India and Africa, Forum Theater has been used
with peasant and worker "audiences" as training in labor and community
organizing and participatory democracy.

This workshop is open to everyone.

Tuition--sliding scale: $95-$150

To pre-register, please send an email to toplab at toplab.org to let us
know that you will be attending.

*****

Saturday, March 29 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm (workshop), and
Saturday, March 29 at 8:00 pm (performance)

Along These Shores

a workshop and a performance

facilitated and performed by Gail Burton

Along These Shores is a solo performance piece in development which
seeks to explore what it is to be an African American female citizen of
the US in the 21st century who experiences violence--or the threat of
violence--in its many forms, simply by being. Along These Shores
explores the forms and manifestation of violence derived from the
experiences of both the performer and interviewees. These are expressed
in spoken word poetry, storytelling, movement, body sculpting,
improvisation and "spect-actor jokering" in order to engage the larger
community in dialog as a means to break the silence that masks the
impact of violence in our daily lives.

Using Body Interviews to tell their stories, women sculpt their
experiences by using their bodies and voices to document their
experiences for the performer. Gail Burton, as performer, will serve as
an empathetic witness to and facilitator of the storytelling process.
Once told, the stories are then re-sculpted by the interviewee on the
body of the performer. The process of Body Interviewing is derived from
Image Theater techniques created by Augusto Boal. Using this technique,
Burton will weave the interviewees' stories together with memoir,
spoken word, political biography, genealogy, African American history,
storytelling, song, movement, origami and audience interaction to
communicate our universal experience.

Several problem-posing questions will be considered: What does it mean
to be a citizen? What role does storytelling and dialog play in
educating citizens within a democracy in order to come to consciousness
and rehearse for action? How does universal understanding which arises
from the specificity of experience allow us to transcend the lines of
global particularity and difference?

Finally, we will look at the meaning of violence, which might be viewed
through the theoretical lens of Franz Fanon, as the death tolls of young
people of color in urban Boston rise, day-by-day, within a "business as
usual" deafening silence. As citizens, what are our roles in both
instigating change as well as colluding in the silence? In considering
Franz Fanon, what is the role of the native intellectual in 2007? How
might Fanon view urban violence in its current post-colonial
manifestation? How can creative and expressive dialog within community
contexts be used as a form of action and situate oppressed people in
both historical and present freedom struggles?

Gail A. Burton grew up in East Harlem, New York City and graduated from
Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She has been a member of the
Medea Project Theater for Incarcerated Women in San Francisco. As a
workshop leader for her New Freedwoman Project, based in Massachusetts,
she has utilized spoken word and movement to support healing,
sisterhood and therapeutic transformation on the journey to community
re-integration with women at the Suffolk County Sheriff Department
Women's Resource Center.

She received the Cambridge Peace Award in honor of Muses, her first
play, and the community-building and organizing activities surrounding
its production, which celebrated and created positive visibility for
LGBTQA communities of African descent in Massachusetts.

Burton trained with and is currently a member of and facilitator with
the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory in New York City. She has
studied Augusto Boal's Image, Forum, and Rainbow of Desire theater
techniques under Marie-Claire Picher and Julian and Augusto Boal.

Workshop tuition--sliding scale: $20-$35
Performance contribution--sliding scale: $10-$20
Performance free for Brecht Forum subscribers

To pre-register for the workshop, please send an email to
toplab at toplab.org to let us know that you will be attending.

*****

Saturday, April 12 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and
Sunday, April 13 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm

Techniques for Facilitating Image Theater

An advanced training workshop on facilitating a basic two-hour Image
Theater module

facilitators to be announced

In this advanced workshop, TOPLAB trainers will provide the module and
demonstrate methods and techniques of facilitation. Participants will
then spend the rest of the time practicing the techniques both
individually and with a partner, receiving feedback from the group, and
reflecting on the practice.

This is an advanced workshop open to people with prior Image Theater
experience who would like to use and apply those techniques in their
social, political or professional work. Participants must have a solid
working knowledge of Augusto Boal's theories and approaches; required
reading includes Boal's Theater of the Oppressed and Games for Actors
and Non-Actors.

Tuition--sliding scale: $110-$165

This workshop is limited to sixteen people and an application and
pre-registration is required. For more information, or to receive the
application, please send an email to toplab at toplab.org

*****

Monday, May 12 through Saturday, May 17

Two workshops with Augusto Boal and Julian Boal

Workshop details will be announced in December and a description, along
with information about the application process, will be sent out.
Application and pre-registration is required. Tuition: $550 per
workshop.

*****

Travel Directions

The Brecht Forum is at 451 West Street (West Side Highway) in Manhattan,
between Bank and Bethune Streets, 1-1/2 blocks north of West 11 Street.

IND Eighth Avenue A, C, or E train to 14 Street or BMT Canarsie L train
to 8 Avenue (take a few minutes to look at "Life Underground", Tom
Otterness' series of whimsical bronze sculptures scattered throughout
both sections of the station); walk down 8 Avenue to Bank Street, turn
right, walk west to West Street, turn right.

IRT Seventh Avenue 1, 2, or 3 train to 14 Street; get off at south end
of station, walk west on 12 Street to 8 Avenue, left to Bank Street,
turn right, walk west to West Street, turn right.

New Jersey PATH train to Christopher Street; walk north on Greenwich
Street to Bank Street, left to West Street, turn right.

#8 bus to West Street; walk up West Street to 451.

#11, #14A or #20 bus to Abingdon Square; walk west on Bank Street to
West Street, turn right.

#14D bus to 8 Avenue and 14 Street, walk down 8 Avenue to Bank Street,
turn right, walk west to West Street, turn right.


===
The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
toplab at toplab.org
http://www.toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
                                        --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult,
and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
                                        --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

"Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new
struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will
prevail."
                                        --George W. Bush, January 10,
2007

"Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy."
                                        --George W. Bush, March 19, 2007

+U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
+U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
+U.S. military fatalities through January 10, 2007: 3017
+U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217
+U.S. military fatalities as of December 17, 2007: 3894 (this figure
exceeds the number of people killed in all of the incidents that
occurred on September 11, 2001)

+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of September 2004 (estimated by
The Lancet): 100,000+
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of July 2006 (estimated by The
Lancet): 654,965
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of December 17, 2007 (estimated
by Just Foreign Policy): 1,132,766*

*These figures are based on the number of deaths estimated in The Lancet
(the British medical journal) study through July 2006, and then updated
based "on how quickly deaths are mounting in Iraq". To do that, Just
Foreign Policy multiplies The Lancet figure as of July 2006 by the ratio
of current deaths reported by Iraq Body Count (IBC), divided by IBC
deaths as of July 1, 2006. The IBC numbers, considerably lower than
those cited by The Lancet, Opinion Research Business (a British polling
firm which estimated 1.2 million Iraqi deaths as of September 2007),
and even the Iraq Ministry of Health, are based on the number of
fatalities cited in various news reports and have been criticized, with
much justification, for not giving an accurate assessment of the real
Iraqi death count. The much more rigorous and statistically-reliable
study, conducted by teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia
University and Al-Mustansiriya University, and published in The Lancet
in September 2004, put the figure at around 100,000 civilians dead.
However, that data had been based on "conservative assumptions",
according to research team leader Les Roberts, and the actual count at
that time was credibly assumed to be significantly higher. For example,
The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated fatalities in Fallujah
due to the surveying problems encountered there at that time. The
second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006, indicated that
654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqis have occurred since the outbreak of
the aggression and genocide committed by the United States against the
people of Iraq. The current figures provided by Just Foreign Policy
seem to be logically consistent with the increasing rates of death from
2003 to 2004, and 2004 to 2006.

Sources: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf

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