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From: The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) news and announcement list. <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 10:39 AM
Subject: [TOPLAB-ANNOUNCE] Next weekend 11/23-24: Cop-in-the-Head--A two-day workshop; Brooklyn/NYC
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The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)
--founded in 1990--
c/o The Brecht Forum @ The Commons
388 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11217
 (212) 924-1858
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http://www.toplab.org
http://www.facebook.com/TheateroftheOppressedLaboratory
Twitter: @ActRevoltChange


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

"We must emphasize: What Brecht does not want is that the spectators
continue to leave their brains with their hats upon entering the
theater, as do bourgeois spectators." --Augusto Boal

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
The point is to change it." --Karl Marx


The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

presents

Cop-in-the-Head

a two-day workshop

facilitated by Kayhan Irani and Marie-Claire Picher

Saturday, November 23, 2013 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm; and
Sunday, November 24 from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE BRECHT FORUM HAS MOVED, AND TOPLAB HAS MOVED WITH IT.

This TOPLAB workshop will take place at:

The Commons
388 Atlantic Avenue (between Hoyt and Bond Streets)
Brooklyn, New York

Cop-in-the-Head is a collection of Theater of the Oppressed techniques
that uses games and exercises to recognize and confront internalized
forms of oppression, and explore power relations and collective
solutions to concrete problems of everyday life. This is a method and
set of techniques that is especially useful for teachers and
educators, social workers, psychologists and mental health
professionals who work with disadvantaged populations, and for
community activists and organizers who are involved with marginalized
constituencies and constituencies which have traditionally been the
victims of bias, discrimination, police abuse and systemic
disempowerment.

This two-day workshop is open to all and no prior theater experience
is necessary to participate. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.
Please write to [log in to unmask] for further information or to let
us know that you will be attending.

Kayhan Irani, who recently returned from an extended residency in
India, is an artivist and and a writer, director, performer and
facilitator. In 2010 she won a New York Emmy award for best writing
for We Are New York a 9-episode broadcast TV drama and English
language learning and civic engagement tool for immigrant New Yorkers.
Her acclaimed one-woman show, We’ve Come Undone, which tells the
stories of immigrant women post 9/11, has toured nationally and
internationally. She is a TOPLAB facilitator and leads workshops for
diverse organizations and institutions on a local, national, and
international level—traveling as far as Kabul, Afghanistan (2010 and
2011) and Baghdad, Iraq (2004) to use theater for change. She has led
theater programs for community groups, public schools, juvenile
detention facilities, government agencies, and with the general
public. Kayhan has co-edited a volume of essays entitled Telling
Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Stories to
Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims (Routledge, May 2008),
about projects around the world that use storytelling as a way of
creating social justice. Kayhan is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild.

Marie-Claire Picher, Ph.D, is a co-founder (1990) of the Theater of
the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) and has worked and collaborated
closely with Augusto Boal until his death in 2009. One of the most
experienced Theater of the Oppressed practitioners in North America,
she has presented thousands of hours of training workshops in New York
and throughout the United States. She has worked in Cuba; in Quiche,
Guatemala on several projects involving community rebuilding and
healing following the 36-year-long civil war that resulted in the
near-genocide of the Mayan people and the murders of more than 200,000
indigenous Guatemalans; in Mexico City with street children, and also
with peace and social justice groups; in Tabasco, Mexico with a youth
community; and in the Mexican state of Chiapas with the Diocese of San
Cristobal de las Casas in the cities of Comitan and San Cristobal, and
in autonomous Zapatista communities elsewhere in the state.

Tuition--sliding scale: $95-$150

Register online at
http://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12577&reset=1

***

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory was founded in New York City
in July 1990, an outgrowth of a series of workshops presented by
Augusto Boal at the Brecht Forum the previous year. TOPLAB is the
oldest organization in the United States presenting Theater of the
Oppressed facilitation training. Its purpose is to provide a forum for
the practice, performance and dissemination of the techniques of the
Theater of the Oppressed. TOPLAB is a group of educators, cultural and
political activists and artists whose work is based on extensive
training and collaboration with Augusto Boal since its founding, and
its current collaboration with Julian Boal continues. TOPLAB conducts
on-site training workshops on theater as an organizing tool for
activists in neighborhood, labor, peace, human rights, youth and
community-based organizations. We work with educators, human service
and mental health workers, union organizers, and political, community
and solidarity activists who are interested in using interactive
theater as a tool for analyzing and exploring solutions to problems of
oppression and power that arise in the workplace, school, and
community--problems connected to capitalism and class society, such as
racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia and the specific problems
engendered by these, including family violence, homelessness,
unemployment, disempowerment and all the social injustices and
inequities systemically caused by and related to capitalism. TOPLAB
has given workshops in the New York City, and throughout the United
States, as well as internationally, including Mexico, Afghanistan,
Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Japan, Colombia, the Dominican
Republic, Canada, Pakistan and elsewhere. TOPLAB presents workshops
each year at the annual Left Forum in New York City and had
facilitated a number of sessions at the Occupy Wall Street encampment
in Zucotti Park. TOPLAB will neither facilitate workshops for, nor
accept funding from for-profit corporations and similar enterprises.


"I believe that all the truly revolutionary theatrical groups should
transfer to the people the means of production in the theater so that
the people themselves may utilize them. The theater is a weapon, and
it is the people who should wield it." --Augusto Boal

***

Other Upcoming TOPLAB Workshops and Events

Sunday, December 15, 2013 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

An Introduction to the Theater of the Oppressed

facilitated by Marie-Claire Picher

at the Westbeth Community Room
55 Bethune Street
New York City

more details to come

***

Note: TOPLAB's Winter/Spring 2014 schedule will be announced and posted soon.
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