Theater Advances Gender Rights in El Salvador

What started out as a pilot will takeoff as a full-fledged project in 2011. In 2010 Chilean theater artist Antonietta Inostrozo Garabito initiated the partnership between ArtCorps, Oxfam and its grassroots partners. During 2010 Antonietta worked with both professional actors and community members and field staff who had never used theater before, empowering them to use theater to address gender violence in the communities where they live and work.

2010 Pilot Activities

1. Forum Theater for Professional Actors

Oxfam America often collaborates with Escena X, troupe of professional actors in El Salvador, to engage audiences in its campaign to prevent gender violence.  Antonietta worked with Escena X to add Forum Theater skills to their tools. Forum Theater is a social action tool that seeks to tackle the dramatization of conflicts by inviting actors to act out alternative outcomes to a scene based on input from audience members. It generates a debate and joint problem-solving; it is dialogue in action. Escena X has now begun using these skills to engage students in prevention of gender violence.

2. In 15 Minutes

In order to contribute to the sustainability of ArtCorps’ work, Antonietta is training 10 members of Oxfam’s field staff to create and present 15-minute plays about violence prevention throughout the country in the municipalities where they work. This will give Oxfam partners hands-on experience applying creative tools in their programming.

3. Community Theater

Community theater groups are comprised of your neighbors, your aunt Maria, your best friend Angelica and your third grade teacher. They are amateurs who do theater because they love it, and they are able to act in a public sphere because community theater groups are inclusive and open to everyone and anyone who wants to participate. Antonietta is working with Escena X to help them strengthen skills that will allow them to develop community theater groups in the places that they work. These skills include singing, vocal techniques, choreography, rhythm, clowning, humor, understanding the collective history of Salvadoran communities.

2011 Planned Initiatives

Due to the success of this pilot, in 2011 ArtCorps will be continuing its partnership with Oxfam America to bring theater into the programming of grassroots organization Asociación Agropecuaria Salvadoreña (AGROSAL). AGROSAL’s principal goal is to improve agricultural production and food security. In addition to farming and livestock programs, AGROSAL promotes healthier communities through workshops and trainings that empower and educate the families of its members. In 2005, AGROSAL joined forces with Oxfam America and three other development and women’s rights organizations to address the vulnerability of women in El Salvador. This gender-based violence prevention network challenges the government to provide better protection; trains and mobilizes women and men to change the machista culture in the country; and raises public consciousness through the media, street theatre and other public events. In 2011, AGROSAL and Oxfam America will be implementing Saving for Change, a community finance program that will further empower women by providing them access to savings and loan services.

ArtCorps will focus on four areas during the three-year collaboration with AGROSAL and Oxfam America: developing agents of change; transferring technical skills and knowledge; developing critical and creative thinking; and mobilizing people to action. These initiatives include:

• Building the capacity of staff members and youth to use theater to raise awareness about and engage communities in preventing violence against women and developing healthy relationships.
• Strengthening the Saving for Change program by providing innovative training tools to educate women about financial management, business strategy and civic engagement.
• Developing the creative facilitation skills of Ponchinoto, a group of five local youth artists, who will support the integration of the arts into AGROSAL’s programming.

Stay tuned for the next update from ArtCorps Artist Naphtali Fields, the artist who will be leading this project in 2011.