Forum Theatre Design

Conflict is a normal part of life. Everyday we encounter it in our personal, social and professional spheres. However, we rarely have the opportunity to be in the safe and creative spaces needed to open up real dialogue and gain the necessary skills to move through the discomfort and experience transformation. Forum Theatre offers communities a means to thoughtfully and playfully do just that.

Forum Theatre is a unique type of theatre process that allows for this necessary journey of transformation and understanding. Established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and activist Augusto Boal, Forum Theater is one of the most popular forms of his Theater of the Oppressed approach. In Forum Theater, actors present a short play in which the protagonist experiences a conflict or injustice, and ultimately fails to reach their goal. Then the Joker, the narrator and facilitator of the play, engages the audience in a conversation and invites them to change the outcome of the play. The actors begin the play again and audience members are given the opportunity to simply say, “STOP!” when they wish to change the action in the play. As audience members stop the play, they are invited to imagine a new choice that could have been made in that moment and to roleplay an action that would create a better result for the protagonist.

Imagine designs Forum Theatre models for companies and communities looking for creative ways to explore various dynamics that could inhibit progress.

Topics could include miscommunication, cultural misunderstanding, gender-based inequity, microaggression, power, bias, and other interpersonal dynamics. This unique interactive process presents a short fictionalized drama demonstrating the issue. Following the drama, the group is led through a carefully facilitated role-play process in order to collectively explore the situation and find tangible ways to navigate it.