Acting the Words is Enacting the World
May 17 - May 28, 2011
Organized by Huong Ngo and Hong-An Truong
Acting the Words is Enacting the World is a two week long experiment in radical education which will mobilize Brazilian popular education activist Augusto Boal’s techniques of Theater of the Oppressed to prompt students to engage with the economy. The event will include a series of intensive workshops, discussions and performances that will explore how youth culture glamorizes consumerism in an attempt to examine capitalism through the lenses of art, history and culture.
With current debates and concerns on the future of the U.S. economy mounting in the news, high school students and young adults are faced with many complicated questions about how they fit into this overwhelming equation. While economic issues substantively affect young people as much as adults (especially upon their imminent entrance into higher education), it seems that students are widely excluded and sheltered from the economic conversation.
This group of young people, ages 16-20, will use public performance to explore different angles of capitalist issues. Using Theater of the Oppressed techniques, considered by many activists as a fundamental tool in collective organizing and learning, Ngo and Truong will act as arbiters as the students use performance to generate a democratic discussion about economic issues. The students will then reflect on their experiences through a collaborative video performance, which will be installed along with other creative materials in the alternative art venue EFA Project Space in midtown Manhattan.
