Theatre for Social Change

This week's reading reminded me of The Magdalena Project, which focuses on raising awareness about the visibility of women within the theatre and art worlds, as well as focusing on issues of power and representation of women in general. The former is usually addressed through performances, plays and discussion forums; the latter, through practical workshops and participatory theatre plays.

https://www.themagdalenaproject.org/en

(Chilean Version Promo Video - 2013)

This is a promo video we did for the Mestiza Festival in 2013. We also did a longer piece in which we interviewed many of the artists and participants of the event, discovering an immense feeling of learning and empowerment from the workshops' participants, mainly local, working class women who were shown that theatre and performance could be used in order to bring the community together and, more importantly, to talk and share the community's concerns and feelings.

In the same vein (yet in a different media), we can also find research-based films. While many information-based and some documentaries have been made out of research (either on the social sciences or in the hard sciences), little fiction pieces have been produced in this way. Looking for films that conveyed research findings, and hoping to find projects that addressed social justice issues, I encountered this project, Rufus Stone:

https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2015/08/free-research-based-film-impacts-10000-viewers-so-far/

And here is the produced film:

RUFUS STONE from Kip Jones on Vimeo.

(direct link here: https://vimeo.com/109360805)