Evaluation

The students gave written feedback on the course. According to the students the main problem of the first year project was the lack of the members of the Russian minority taking part in the process or the event. Fortunately this was problem only in the first year, since there were enough Kurds as spect-actors in the second year to participate in the discussion of the later event. Both groups of students found the method useful in making the attitudes towards the minority groups more positive.

The original idea was to have the forum theatre event of the second year as a part of the multicultural World Village Festival. However, it was later turned down because of the position of the stage offered to us. The stage was in the middle of the main exhibition tent with no possibilities for the audience to stop and concentrate on the forum theatre, it was really designed for promenade performances.

The lesson learnt was that forum theatre must always take place in a location where it is possible for the spect-actors to stay from the beginning without distraction from outside. The place can be outside, but not where people can just stop for a few minutes when walking by. The reason for that is first of all practical. In such a location, it would be impossible to explain the rules of forum theatre to the audience every time someone new comes in, but this has to be done to create real spect-actors of the event, rather than just being an ordinary audience. Secondly the very nature of the forum theatre is to present scenes of oppression, i.e. there is always oppressor on the stage. It would be too uncomfortable for the actors impersonating the oppressors to stay in their roles all the time different solutions are studied, if there are persons watching not aware of others being in character. For that kind of an action there is another method of Theatre of Oppressed developed, namely Invisible Theatre.