English Drama for Development in Post-war Iraq Arabic
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Workshop

At the beginning of the project we were concentrated manly on the educational part of the project, which was educating the participant on various theatrical disciplines, also introduced the work of Augusto Boal, the theatre of the oppressed, as a theoretical and practical base for our work and research.

Exploring through out the workshops the necessity of theatre as a medium of change, also, as a possible model for our future work, focusing on the forum theatre as a new theatrical form at the Iraqi theatrical scene.
I will draw some reflection and thought especially from the workshops and the experience of the Ddpwi (drama for development in post-war Iraq), Which I initiate and developed in Baghdad.
Working on forum theatre is not that easy in Baghdad, especially when it comes to choose the theme of the scene. It is not that there is lack of themes; it is exactly the opposite of that. There is a plenty of urgent and relevant themes to deal with.
Theatre in Iraq reflected always the superficiality of society's matters and complication and that is for many, recent and Historical fact.

Therefore, theatre has never been equivalent to the development of societies, as it is in many other countries, examples, in Europe in general.
There is fear from dealing with political and religious aspect, the actors tend to be more negative in his roles as a mediator. He or she, used to learn manner of stereotype methods and has never learned creativity and innovation as an education base in the theatrical process.

At many workshops, we had differences regarding our common understanding about violence for example. Family violence, regards among many in the Iraqi society as essential part of raising children, and never been recognized as violence.
Therefore we had to find ways to present this violence and it's effect on society without provoking any part of them. we had to start some times from making freeze images, images which has no verbal language, which can not be interpret in different ways, and then gradually, we had these images speaks in its contains, so it make sense for the audience, that what they see is a pure violence and nothing else, and gradually we had to build up these scene to put it in a contents.
Forum theatre workshop with Women net work organization in Baghdad

Teenager forum theatre workshop in Baghdad in cooperation with Al amal organization