32 images Created 22 Dec 2022
Playing with wildfires
This work animates a recent action-research situated at the interface between theatre-based artistic practice and social science research. The project investigating the lived experiences of wildfires in the Chiquitania region of Bolivia –an area with one of the largest and best-preserved dry forests in the world. This is an ecosystem most vulnerable to extreme fires, and all communities in the region have been and continue to be profoundly affected by intensifying wildfires.
Wildfires are one of the most pressing socio-ecological challenges of our time, driven by the rise in temperature and prolonged droughts liked to climate change as well as by changes in human activities, including agricultural practices, infrastructure development, demographic shifts, and urbanization.
This research deployed Augusto Boal’s celebrated models of Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre to generate community-based dialogue and response to the complex cultural, political, distributive, environmental conflicts entangled in issues sparked by wildfires.
A rich multicultural landscape, Chiquitania is home to indigenous groups, peasant communities, Mennonite settlements, urban dwellers, and others.
Rural migration, the expansion of the agrarian frontier, new major infrastructure projects and the endemic lack of resources are resulting in low intensity conflict between different communities.
In March 2022, 28 participants from 22 communities came together for a five-day workshop. Women and men from different indigenous, urban and migrant campesino communities shared their lived experiences of wildfires, and their stories were used to create four short Forum Theatre plays. Seven workshop participants were then selected to perform in four municipalities in the Chiquitania.
Engaging over 800 people, these plays were performed 14 times in different locations, from the main squares of towns to remote rural indigenous and peasant communities. In the tradition of Forum Theatre, audience members were invited to intervene and come on stage to explore possible solutions and futures to the ‘fictional’ conflicts presented on ‘stage’.
This series of pictures wants to represent the action carried out in the field, in a period of absence of fires: the images of the tour and the communities in which it was taken, switched with portraits of the protagonists in their real identity, and others in which they act - as during the theatrical action - the antithetical role of other subjects involved in the context of the fires. Actually in the theater creation process, the actors and actresses have been invited to exchange their roles – to not play their own story – to reduce the chance of reactivating trauma and help participants to understand the perspectives of their colleagues more fully. This exchange opened unexpected spaces for dialogue between project participants, themselves from communities often in conflict on issues relating to wildfires. More: playingwithwildifre.org
Wildfires are one of the most pressing socio-ecological challenges of our time, driven by the rise in temperature and prolonged droughts liked to climate change as well as by changes in human activities, including agricultural practices, infrastructure development, demographic shifts, and urbanization.
This research deployed Augusto Boal’s celebrated models of Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre to generate community-based dialogue and response to the complex cultural, political, distributive, environmental conflicts entangled in issues sparked by wildfires.
A rich multicultural landscape, Chiquitania is home to indigenous groups, peasant communities, Mennonite settlements, urban dwellers, and others.
Rural migration, the expansion of the agrarian frontier, new major infrastructure projects and the endemic lack of resources are resulting in low intensity conflict between different communities.
In March 2022, 28 participants from 22 communities came together for a five-day workshop. Women and men from different indigenous, urban and migrant campesino communities shared their lived experiences of wildfires, and their stories were used to create four short Forum Theatre plays. Seven workshop participants were then selected to perform in four municipalities in the Chiquitania.
Engaging over 800 people, these plays were performed 14 times in different locations, from the main squares of towns to remote rural indigenous and peasant communities. In the tradition of Forum Theatre, audience members were invited to intervene and come on stage to explore possible solutions and futures to the ‘fictional’ conflicts presented on ‘stage’.
This series of pictures wants to represent the action carried out in the field, in a period of absence of fires: the images of the tour and the communities in which it was taken, switched with portraits of the protagonists in their real identity, and others in which they act - as during the theatrical action - the antithetical role of other subjects involved in the context of the fires. Actually in the theater creation process, the actors and actresses have been invited to exchange their roles – to not play their own story – to reduce the chance of reactivating trauma and help participants to understand the perspectives of their colleagues more fully. This exchange opened unexpected spaces for dialogue between project participants, themselves from communities often in conflict on issues relating to wildfires. More: playingwithwildifre.org
