One of the workshops that we did with women’s network organization was in a relative poor area in Baghdad; the spect-actor's were mostly women from the same area. The inhabitants of this area belong to multi-religious and ethnic backgrounds. This gave the subject of the workshop a different flavor.
The racism and the sectarianism in the Iraqi social scene was the subject that the group chose for the workshop; we chose forum theatre as a medium to transform and discuss this matter with the spect-actor.

The scene was as follow;
A girl loves a man truly and sincerely. He thinks in his own interests only, he thinks about what he can gain from this relationship. The father of the girl wants to force the girl to marry her relative. She refuses this marriage and takes refuge with her lover to save her from that.
Her lover finds out that she belongs to a different sectarian group; he pulls out and leaves the girl alone. Scene ends.

Defeat the oppression or justified the oppressor
This matter is very sensitive and touches every one right now in Iraq, because of the complication which has arisen lately and the differences between the different sectarian groups in Iraq.
At the beginning of the workshop, I presented the reason behind our work, and I have talked about forum theatre as medium and an aesthetic substitute to the traditional theatre in Iraq, especially now in these circumstances
Then the actors presented the scene which was talking about sectarian problems in Iraq. When the scene had finished, I asked them about what they saw and if they thought that there was any kind of oppression that we, all of us, can change or help the actors to change.
There was silence for a moment until an angry voice came from the audience, criticizing the male character, and the way he categorized people according to their religion or sectarian background.
There was other voices coming as well, talking about the same issues.
Of course there was a positive position from the women, but their position wasn't strong enough to criticize the situation outside the workshop.
We could feel that there was a shy acceptance of reality, because of the huge oppression outside, and because of the weakness of the women.

Forum theatre or fake reality
  Another intervener started to lecture us about the needs of the Iraqis, and said that we do not need you to create an illusion and fake reality. I told him that we are not here to create any kind of illusion, we are here together to practice live and encourage each other to point out the oppression and help each other on this free platform that we are offering.. Another man intervened and started to argue with the first man and the discussion became tense... I broke the discussion and said that we have achieved the goal of the workshop in creating this discussion; we might not solve any problem, but at least we practice how to solve the problem
Then some women chose some possibilities to change the scene and help the girl. The solution was that the girl tries to convince her father to let her marry the man she loves.
The interesting thing in their solution was that they chose to change the girl, the victim of the oppression, and not the oppressor himself, namely the father, who forced the girl to marry her relative.
Of course there is awareness about why women take that choice. And that is because of the cultural and religious background .Women need more encouragement and support and that can be done throughout the program that the ddpwi run in Baghdad together with other Iraqi and non Iraqi NGO's.