“REHEARSAL FOR LIFE” was the first part of a long term training course in THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED held from 10 to 19 FEBRUARY 2017 in KOSOVO, PRISTINA. The activities were held in a Recreation center which is located in a truly astonishing national park named Germia, near Pristina.

The Volunteers Centre Skopje as a partnering organization had sent three participants, Fjolla, Rexhep and Avram, which, actively participated in this whole process. The main goal of the project was to increase the capacity of youth work sector to raise the participation and involvement of young people in social processes and change. The methodology used was Theatre of the Opressed which aims to make people experience and understand how a change of an attitude, behaviour or thinking pattern can have a powerful significant effect on their life as well as lives of people around them. This is a very efficient methodology for handling social problems is not enough known and applied.

Forum theatre is one of the methodes practiced under the umbrella of the Theatre of the oppressed as well as image theatre and these two were the ones that we put most of our attention on.

Forum and Image Theatre methods are highly adaptable to the needs of different communities, with a large capacity to cover all kind of the social issues: human rights problems, power abuse and oppression in different ways, lack of activism, discrimination, exclusion, poverty, marginalization, xenophobia, etc. and through a creative approach provides a space for people to reflect, find solutions to these topics and transfer the solutions in their lives.

In the frames of the project, we also focused on expressing our thoughts and emotions after every energizer, activity and sessions. At each end of the first three days there were reflection groups in which we all shared our thoughts and opinions about the material and how we felt throughout the day.

We had a truly worthwhile experience during the project and are impatiently developing our part in the practice phase of the project, which is to develop a forum theater play of our own with the skills and know-how we had gained during this first training course.

Stay tuned and you will hear from us again!