Using Interactive Theater to Introduce Violence Prevention and Raise Civic Responsibility (運用互動劇場–介紹暴力防治與提升公民責任)

Time: 
11/06/2019 - 09:30 to 11/06/2019 - 11:00
Room: 
302b
Type: 
Proposal(Workshop / Presentation)
Coordinating organization: 
Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation
Theme: 
Art and Advocacy
Language: 
English
Organization Name: 
台北市婦女救援基金會 (Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation)
Proposer: Ansel
Describe your workshop/presentation (300-500 words): 
Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) has been conducting violence prevention programs in recent decade to raise the public’s awareness of gender-based violence. By operating a volunteer group for violence prevention programs in communities and operating AMA museum as a public education center, TWRF engages in innovative methods and introduces interactive theater for training and advocacy of violence prevention.

Interactive theater involves performance, roleplaying, playback and games with body movement. It creates sociocultural contexts for the audiences to know better about how social norms affect the prevalence of gender-based violence. It also promote inner motivation for the audiences to link personal experience to violence issues.

TWRF uses interactive theater in training of volunteers, these audiences were normally regraded as irrelevant to gender-based violence who are not victims, perpetrators or professionals. However, TWRF found that interactive theater might trigger the reflection of their relevant experiences on domestic violence, inter-personal violence, or other forms of violence. The sudden exposure of the traumatized memories could be hurtful. Therefore, experienced facilitators build safe atmosphere and guide for positive sharing which make it possible to raise the awareness of violence issues from personal level to collective level.

Using interactive theater is also a way to bond violence prevention to the public, and it allow the audiences to think in both places of victim and perpetrator. Most importantly, interactive theater encourages the audiences to act more willingly as bystanders (or Up-Standers) in violence incidents.

In this workshop, TWRF will briefly demonstrate interactive theater on violence prevention, and share challenges and limitations TWRF has encountered.
Slides: The presenters don't authorize the sharing or distributing of their presentation content.