November 2019

Pleșoianu High School

As we promised the youngsters at our last visit, we returned to ”Captain Nicolae Pleșoianu” Technological High School in Rm.Vâlcea. We continued with knowing-each-other, team building and group activities. It was fun to learn each other’s birthdays, places of residence and favourite meals through games. We understood the importance of being a team in our activities. In the games played, we understood how a team should behave outside personal skills. Seeing each other again brought smiles and joy to both sides. A bigger openness and involvement of the students towards us were seen and felt, this determining us to thing that, together with our return, we were able to observe the impact of our past interactions with these youngsters.

Forum Theatre Training

During a week in this month, we learned a new non-formal method which we will use in the future activities of the project. In this training, we learned “What is Forum Theatre” and “In what cases this can be a training method”.  Forum Theatre is an instrument of social intervention created in 1973 by Augusto Boal, a type of theatre which gives the possibility of interaction and debate with the audience. The play is held in order to give the possibility to a group of people to exchange ideas and opinions and to look for solutions or ways of action proper to the situation in which they are involved. We realised how an impressive art theatre is. While expressing ourselves, we learnt that we should use our mimics, how we can use our bodies in order to express certain situations, emotions, how we can enter in the skin of the created character. When we speak about Forum Theatre, the play we need to bring in front of the spectActors needs to present a real problem from the community, to affect several persons or groups for the impact to be a real one. The play is performed two times, is short – 10-12 minutes, the first performance has a dramatic end, not having a happy ending. In the second part, people from the audience have the permission to interfere and change characters in order for the ending to be a positive one, finding solutions for the presented problem or improving the situation presented by the author. The passing between the plays and the changing of the characters is made with the help of the Joker, its role being to create a bridge between the actors and the spectActors. Moreover, also the Joker is the one that initiated the discussion (forum) and coordinated the debate on the play’s topic.  On the last day of the training, we created a scenario and prepared a demonstration for our friends.  The next days, we prepared a theatre performance and prepared an event for this. In the prepared performance, we explained the bullying made by an individual made to another person. We realised that some people’s innate character was like this, while others understood that it was a habit that was acquired later.

Economic High School

We started the week at Economic High School, a school predominately focused on tourism and adjacent services. We found out that a part of the students in this high school have the possibility to participate in Erasmus+ projects in order for them to complete their profile practice session. In this context, some of the topics proposed for activities were: team building, personal improvement, traditions, holidays in different countries, bullying.  For starters, we created diverse tasks for a different kind of “Mission Impossible”. They enjoyed a lit this activity, in the end also having a small debate. Step by step, we discussed and made them think about bullying. Then we talked about traditions and holidays specific to each country, the students sharing historical stories about Halloween.  The game we enjoyed the most was “Ear to ear”, played with words from our languages: Turkish and Macedonian. In this way, they were able to enjoy learning words and phrases from different cultures. We were also pleased to carry our culture to this place.

Stand Up and find a Solution

The day in which we had to present the forum theatre play created by us in front of the audience came in November. Location – Economic High School in Râmnicu-Vâlcea. In our scenario, we dealt with discrimination and bullying.  The topic of our play was bullying and elements regarding minority discrimination were also observable. The place in which the four scenes was the school, the road between the house and the school and, what teenagers love most – a party. We have shown the dialogues between a gypsy class mate and an aggressive character, how people react positively and negatively. We empathized with being excluded and being bullied. Our colleague which played the Joker managed to moderate the dialogue in the forum section, asking the viewers to correct the situation by giving them the right to change the characters except the oppressor. And we saw how the behaviour changes positively and how solutions to some problems from the community, which affect people on a large scale, can be found.  The atmosphere was friendly, positive and it was a very good experience.