Saturday, April 20, 2013

Resourses

On Participation
http://www.neotericdesign.com/blog/2013/3/lets-move-on-from-badges-and-points-game-psychology

On Sexuality 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Games?

What do games do? Add your equations.
games= stake
games=pleasure
games= pretend
games= accessing different parts of your brain
games= laughter
games= engagement

Friday, November 9, 2012

Are we there yet?

Stumbled upon Are We There Yet? - a participatory play produced all over Canada (with adaptations for rural, urban and Aboriginal communities). Apparently the main metaphor compares navigating sexual decision making to mastering driving skills? 

This below from their website:
Drawing a parallel between mastering driving skills and negotiating relationship dilemmas, this award-winning play humorously opens a dialogue on sex. As teens watch and advise characters on stage, they feel as safe and free to talk about sexuality and relationship issues as they do about learning how to parallel park. Road-testing their knowledge in the environs of theatre, they become better— and safer— drivers of their own sexual growth

Curious about how the metaphor work for folks who live in urban centers where driving is a non-issue - but I do like the image....



Oh wow - and watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KY3uo8V9tA

From Nikki:
Thanks so much for posting, Al. This stuff is eerily similar to FYI. Some REALLY good resources online. Also, the publication that they put out is really, really helpful. Sort of sets the stage for a Community workbook... Also, a quote that I think beautifully connects theater to sex positivity:

"Participatory theatre is a form of theatre often used in popular theatre work because it facilitates collaborative, action-oriented problem-solving. Effective participatory theatre builds a collaborative relationship from audience to performer and among audience members (Selman et al. 2008).
Three core concepts from theatre literature formed the basis for this study:
theatre provides powerful opportunities for pleasure (enjoyment), identification, and distancing. Pleasure leads to openness, creativity, and receptiveness. When these conditions are in place, people want to engage. The theatre’s broadest function is to give pleasure."

link to full article here

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Creative Liberation= Sexual Liberation


When we free ourselves up to be fully creative, we become braver in our ideamaking. When we are unafraid of strange or new ideas, we innovate and progress. When we trust our voice, we use it. The components of creative liberation align with those of sexual liberation, especially regarding self-determination. Self-determination helps us remember that all people are worth profound love and pleasure. It helps us remember our ideas are worth sharing.

And isn’t the root of creativity about creation- as in, to actually birth an idea? Isn’t sexuality also rooted in creation? Not just baby stuff- but the creation of a cocktail of hormones that produce pleasure we can’t experience in any other space but our sexual universe?  How do both sexuality and creativity birth new ideas about our self-worth? 



Historical Contexts



Use of theater in health contexts
 Common Trends, Themes, Ops for Growth

  • Evidence-based interventions 
  • Non-Ebis (theater programs using health ed, health programs using theater, etc)
Use of theater in other community-based contexts
We are not the first to think of this. And we are not the first to use theater to create community dialog. FYI’s work is influenced by…
  •       Augusto Boal
  •    Bertolt Brecht
  •       Violin Spolin
  •       Michael Rohd



WHY use participatory theater to improve community health?


Four useful CATEGORIES for WHY. Participatory Theater provides opportunities for:
1. Pleasure (AWTY)
2. Identification (AWTY)
3. Distancing (AWTY) 
4. Voice (FYI)

What examples/ stories do we have to illustrate these categories? Can we work to refine these categories as the bookmarks to the community workbook?  

Participatory theater promotes democratic education, reducing youth shame in participating in health programs
  •       Educators and learners meet each other on the same plane and share power
  •       Participatory plays and theater games necessitate youth voice and participation


Participatory theater provides the opportunity to practice for real-life experiences, reducing shame around said life experiences
  •      Acting is doing
  •       Affirms non-dominant relationships, sexualities, identities and possibilities


Participatory theater offers refreshment, vitality, and energy to existing curriculum, reducing shame in engaging with said curriculum
  •      Provides space to play and follow intuition
  •       Provides freedom


Evaluation/Approval in participatory theater activities is non-judgmental and affirming, reducing shame around youth sexual decision-making
  •      Breaks traditional classroom expectations. No ideas fail.
  •       Students take risks


Participatory theater creates safe, accessible dialogue, reducing shame in engaging in conversations about sexuality
  •       Others’ perspectives as a tool for learning and decision-making
Here is my bibliography of resources that further prove these points. 
Here is another bibliography that I found very useful, out of Alison's Canadian find, that also prove these points. 

Notes on Shame


History of shame and sexuality. How theater uniquely reduces shame.  Many of the tools in this book were developed specifically to reduce shame around sexual decision-making. Some evaluation interpretation here. 

Some questions from FYI's eval related to shame:
I feel more comfortable talking about sex after the play
I think my ideas were important to this play
I had something in common with one of the characters in this play
I heard someone say or ask something during the play that I was afraid to say or ask
I heard a question in the play that I will ask in my own life