IMAGE THEATER

Image Theater includes a variety of workshops designed to develop individual skills of observation and cooperative group interaction. In Image Theater, the body is used to create images that help participants explore power relations and group solutions to concrete problems.Some of the most widely used workshops in the image theater repertory include:

Cop-in-the-Head: an introspective technique used to recognize and confront internalized forms of oppression. The workshop begins with someone recounting a personal experience of oppression, and then gradually goes from the particular to the general. In the end, the group, and not the original story teller, has become the protagonist.

Rashomon: an improvisatory technique inspired by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's study in multiple perspectives. It is used to highlight the role of perception in the creation of the “Other,” and is specifically designed for the study of rigid patterns of perception that give rise to distorted, incomplete, or mistaken impressions of others, and ultimately hatred, in closed, recurring situations.

Rainbow of Desire: is used to recognize and confront internalized forms of oppression, and explore power relations and collective solutions to concrete problems. The process begins with an individual recounting a true personal story of oppression and how she/he dealt with, but failed to resolve, the conflict. Next, workshop members create skits based on the scenario just described. This skit is acted out more than once: the first act recreates the story of oppression as it actually happened. Subsequent acts recreate the same scenario of oppression, but other members of the workshop are free to intervene at any time in the dramatic action to offer or propose alternate solutions to the original oppressive action.