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Arts Training            ActiveArts            Applied Arts

Stage Left Productions is strongly committed to educating others on how to use the arts to affect personal and social transformation and on alternative, community-based artistic practices. To this end, we facilitate and/or host a large number of classes and workshops that provide skilled instruction in specific artistic disciplines and/or that integrate the arts into community and social justice practice.

Stage Left Productions' ActiveArts Drama Program provides comprehensive theatre education and production opportunities to hundreds of disabled people each year. ActiveArts participants are supported in using the performing arts to strengthen the skills necessary for meaningful community inclusion, in practicing the ability to articulate and advocate social concerns, and in sharing personal experiences with the larger community through creative, constructive media.

2008 Transitions participants are enjoying three programs:  (1) Digital Diaries, (2) Introductory Performance, and (3) Performance Creation. Youth participating in the Digital Diaries stream are learning to use film and editing techniques to create self-portraits. Youth participating in the Introductory Performance stream are learning to use a variety of performance methods to create a short play about what’s important to them. Youth participating in the Performance Creation stream are creating a multidisciplinary play and serving as leaders within the other two streams.

All three programs are creating work that will premiere at the AAFS night of Balancing Acts8 in late November/early December.

Summer Series
We are putting together a series of stand-alone summer workshops that provide arts immersion for adults with disabilities in a variety of arts and performance techniques.

QUICK LINKS:           
Arts Training            ActiveArts            Applied Arts

Stage Left offers in-depth training on how to use the arts as an effective community development and social justice tool. Our workshops teach how the arts can support people to take action in their own lives as well as toward a more just world, fostering a greater sense of personal and social awareness by facilitating honest, compassionate dialogue that allows for profound sharing, mutual learning, and collective action.

Applied Arts is our workshop series, through which we provide in-depth instruction on the creative convergence of community development, interactive drama, and direct social action. The Applied Arts model is a participatory, performing arts-based, anti-oppressive, social justice practice that fosters self-advocacy, community-based action, and direct representation of personal concerns and social issues. Applied Arts offers theoretical exploration and practical immersion in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to engage communities in critical discourse. Dramatic team building, personal story-telling, anti-oppressive analysis, improvisation, theatrical exploration, and creative problem solving are all part of the Applied Arts process.

We typically offer Applied Arts as a week-long Introduction to Theatre of the Oppressed workshop every second summer. We also offer Applied Arts on demand, for specific community groups and human service providers wanting to enhance their community capacity and/or tackle a specific need or concern. We also offer special, workshops on demand as part of our role as a Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, such as The Art of the Joker. In addition, we are beginning to offer short Applied Arts workshops as part of our Theatre of the Oppressor Series: Unlearning Racism, Unlearning Sexism, Unlearning Heterosexism (and Homophobia), Unlearning Classism, etc.. And, we are publishing several "manuals" on adapted Theatre of the Oppressed practice.

The Art of the Joker
Theatre of the Oppressed Training for experienced practitioners
A special joint venture between Stage Left Productions (Canada) and the Mandala Center (U.S.) co-facilitated by Michele Decottignies & Marc Weinblatt.
 
This is a 5-day advanced training in the art of facilitating Boal-based theatre work. Much of the time in this workshop will be for participants to practice leading each other under the guidance of 2 highly experienced “Jokers”.
 
We are offering this one-week intensive training to people who have had significant practical (not theoretical) experience in leading Boal-based work in grassroots community contexts. Participants must have Joked a minimum of 3 different Forum Theatre projects prior to this training and have plans to do others. An application is required (see below). Maximum 20 practitioners will be accepted for this training.
 
The only way to give people techniques is to do the work with them subjectively. Be prepared to use your own life as subject matter. This training will focus primarily on Image and Forum Theatre with participants doing a significant amount of the Joking. We will spend time each day looking objectively at each other’s Joking/Facilitation. In addition, we will use Forum to brainstorm and practice solutions to challenging (“Nightmare”) Joker moments. This training requires a basic understanding of and buy-in to Systematic Oppression theory (a power based analysis of the “isms”).
 
Registration deadline is May 30, 2008. A detailed description of relevant experience (resumés, reference letters, etc.), along with a short statement about your interest in this workshop, must be submitted in advance of registration. Please send copies to both Stage Left and the Mandala Center (by e-mail please), along with name, address, phone, fax, e-mail. You will be informed about acceptance into the workshop at which time a $100.00 non-refundable registration fee payable to Stage Left will be required to hold your space. Payment options include money order, check/cheque, VISA, or MasterCard.
 
When: July 20 - 24 (Sun – Thurs), 2008; 9:30 AM - 6:00 PM daily
 
Where: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
 
Cost: $500 Canadian (some financial assistance available, on an as-needed basis)
 
Travel, lodging, and food is additional.
 
Stage Left will provide support in locating affordable accommodation, including a limited number of billets/homestays (which will be prioritized according to need). A package of lodging options, as well as travel and venue detail, will be forwarded with your acceptance into the workshop.
 
For more info, please contact
Stage Left (Michele Decottignies)
403-829-2307
michele@stage-left.org
 
Mandala Center (Marc Weinblatt)
360-344-3435
marc@mandalaforchange.com

Workshops on Demand
Stage Left hosts arts-based community development workshops throughout the year. These workshops satisfy the specific interests of the communities requesting them, and are effective in capacity development and in dealing with challenging personal and interpersonal issues. These workshops support the professional goals of any human service or social justice organization by providing capacity development through in-service training. Sample topic areas have included the use of the Stage Left model to provide alternatives to school suspensions, to satisfy parole conditions, to identify and explore potential solutions to work-place challenges, to engage in dynamic team building, to recover from burn-out, to undertake creative goal-setting, to increase cultural capacity, to foster consensus, to stage creative protests and lobbying campaigns, and so on.... You set the goal and Stage Left will set the stage!

Applied Arts workshops also support the personal goals of any community by providing experiential exploration of exceptionally difficult issues, and creative immersion in healing processes. Sample topic areas have included the use of the Stage Left model to engage in addictions recovery; healing from sexual, emotional, psychological, and/ or physical abuse and other forms of violence; living with the legacy of historical trauma, colonization, and disenfranchisement; challenging discrimination (racism, sexism, homophobia and heterosexism, ableism; etc.); overcoming internalized oppression; and so on.

For more information on an Applied Arts workshop for your community group, please email us.

Applied Arts Manuals
As part of Stage Left's role as a Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, we are engaged in research laboratories that address specific aspects of Theatre of the Oppressed practice and its application in communities. Current topics of exploration include: adapting the processes for use with communities of people with developmental disabilities; offering adaptations for people with physical disabilities or mobility barriers; how to successfully use actors without alienating or silencing the community being served; and attentiveness to cultural ethics.

These laboratories are an extensive, long-term process and we're writing up our research findings as our explorations become conclusive. Our goal is to ultimately create "manuals" in each research area and disseminate them throughout the international Theatre of the Oppressed network.