nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

importantly however, these exercises gave everyone a chance to re-work fearsand scars left with their bodies and to dynamise as Boal puts it, alternativeand empowering ways to deal with authoritarian violence in such moments.The workshop concluded with the plan to prepare for the next protest witha workshop session on games and exercises that can be played within themargins of a demonstration, that help to help ‘rehearse change’ together thereand then.Invisible Theatre – a desire to shape the cityThe desire to take the experience that was shared in the safe setting of thenano workshop spaces into the streets was voiced very early on in the process.We explored it through different practices (see ‘Street Training’ for example)and were considering experimenting with Invisible Theatre. Finally wedecided to combine elements of SOMA and Theatre of the Oppressed, to findways of translating the ambient and relational settings of the nano workshopsinto public urban space (parks, streets). A particularly string desire was touse these newly found tools in collective urban experiences of protest. Thusour aim was to bring our ways of connecting and communicating with eachother into the temporary spaces of a demonstration, to find ways of involvingpassersbys and observers in this shared dynamic, in order to use the exercisesto open the floor for more collective non-verbal exchanges. Another aspectof our engagement with the margins of a demo was to use the performativityof the games to visually ‘write’ our images of power and change into thecityscape. We looked at the route of the protest and mapped selected gamesand exercises onto different locations along this route. This became a ‘treasurehunt map’ – the treasure to be found by playing the games was a safer, morecollective, trusting and playful space, similar to those of the nano workshopexperiences.Endnotes1. Many of these can be found in Augusto Boal (1992), Games for Actors and Non-Actors,London: Routledge.2. See Augusto Boal (1995), The Rainbow of Desires, Routledge, Oxon.theatreoftheoppressed.org/en/index.php?useFlash=03. Augusto Boal (1992), Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge. p.17591