La Xixa's Methodology
La Xixa works based on the integration of three primary axes: theatrical tools encompassing the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) methodology and Forum Theatre tool, Process Work, and various Creative and Action Research Methodologies.
La Xixa works based on the integration of three primary axes: theatrical tools encompassing the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) methodology and Forum Theatre tool, Process Work, and various Creative and Action Research Methodologies. These three axes have common elements: they are critical in questioning power relations, participatory, offer frameworks for knowledge creation, work from cyclical processes of awareness, and are oriented towards social transformation for a fairer world. Additionally, these methodologies complement each other.
Below we detail schematically the three axes and methodologies:
Theatre of the Oppressed
Main reference: Augusto Boal
The Theatre of the Oppressed puts theatre at the service of education and collective empowerment.
Developed in the 1970s by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal, the Theatre of the Oppressed has become one of the main tools of participatory communication and Latin American popular education movements. Unlike many forms of social theatre, the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is political theatre. It is a collective rehearsal for emancipation. Based on the epistemology of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, TO allows analyzing through theatre the abuses of power systematically perpetrated in our daily micro-structures. This methodology consists of various tools: Image Theatre, Forum Theatre, Legislative Theatre, Rainbow of Desire, Invisible Theatre, and Journalistic Theatre. TO uses theatrical games to demechanize our perceptions, making us aware of our cultural filters through the explication and collectivization of our conflicts and experiences. The collectivization of individual problems and subsequent extrapolation to a group story allows for seeking collective alternatives to situations that are often difficult to solve individually.
Forum Theatre is the main tool of the methodology. In Forum Theatre, actors develop a short play based on the collectivization of their own experiences or act-activism. This piece mainly consists of various characterizations: the oppressed, the oppressor, the allies, and the Joker or Curinga. The Joker is the character who interacts with the audience. The premise of the piece is that the oppressed always have the capacity to act against the oppressor. At the moment of greatest conflict, the Joker stops the play. Through open dialogue by the audience, alternatives are proposed to try to resolve the conflict on stage. The Joker then invites the audience member to replace one of the characters on stage. As many alternatives are tried as proposals emerge.
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Process Work
Main reference: Arnold i Amy Mindell
Process-Oriented Psychology helps us become aware of how we perceive and experience things, offering tools to learn to change our focus.
Process Work (PW) or Process-Oriented Psychology (POP) offers a model that integrates and utilizes contributions from various disciplines to facilitate transformation and growth, both individually and collectively. Its methodology applies in different areas: community and organizational development, diversity training and leadership, individual and family psychotherapy, relationship consulting, and group facilitation.
Process Work primarily focuses on developing a state of consciousness; that is, helping people and groups become aware of how they perceive and experience things, learn to change their approach and discover the information that they do not notice or marginalize, limiting their responsiveness. Much of the information we need to transform and grow is not perceived because it is a challenge for our ordinary consciousness. Unknowingly, we marginalize certain aspects - which we call subjective - of our daily experience: emotions, desires, dreams, intuitions, fantasies, moods, etc., because they conflict with our basic belief system or the dominant culture to which we belong. Therefore, we do not allow ourselves to feel or talk about experiences that are outside the margin of our ordinary consciousness and perceive signals and information from an extraordinary reality. Fortunately, what we marginalize does not disappear; it just takes different paths to manifest and be considered, whether on a personal or collective level.
Information - like energy - is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed; it generally takes the form of something that repels or disturbs us. Physical symptoms and illnesses, addictive tendencies and addictions, impossible dreams or desires, sudden accidents, relationship problems, shifting or difficult moods, group conflicts, global tensions, etc. have a "why" even if their meaning or value is not initially understandable. PW consists of, on the one hand, cognitive learning (theories, methods, and structures) and, at the same time, requires profound internal work and a "spiritual" attitude that allows us to take advantage of even the worst problems and the most polarized situations as opportunities to awaken the great gifts of people. PW teaches us to connect with our deeper being and learn to flow creatively amidst extreme circumstances.
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Creative and Participatory Methodologies
Main reference: Paulo Freire
Participatory Methodologies enable a group with diverse interests to take a leading role in analyzing their own reality and in decision-making that affects them.
Popular education is a philosophy and pedagogy based on Paulo Freire's concept of liberating education, in which:
a) All agents are capable of teaching and learning.
b) All agents possess some knowledge.
c) All agents are subjects of the process and never objects of the process.
d) All agents have the same right to speak and be heard.
e) All agents have the same right to propose problems, options, contents, and solutions.
Participatory Action Research (PAR) consolidates this way of teaching-learning into a method of knowledge creation. Popular education and PAR analyze how, in social contexts, men and women lose their humanization through the non-reflection of power situations, and therefore lose their innate capacity for transformation (Freire, 1973). The subjects participating in these processes are both knowledge generators and agents of transformation simultaneously.
Popular education and PAR are based on an awareness-raising cycle through which we reflect-act-reflect to gain cultural awareness, dialogical awareness, and awareness of power structures.
