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Drama in the Rainforest - 21 September 2009

Forte Theatre took a dramatic change of audience when they recently teamed up with the USA based Global Law Brigades to run workshops with the indigenous communities in the rainforests of Panama. The brigades work with the natives of the communities to help their development and understanding of daily life events and challenges within and outside of their village.

Forte Theatre was commissioned to create and deliver workshops based on the topic of Alternative Dispute Resolutions to help the communities with: conflict, communication skills, active listening, conflict de-escalation, analysis, creativity, and collaboration.

More than often the villagers have disputes with other communities and have not experienced or learnt about the best ways of dealing with such situations. The workshop was organised in order to help them become knowledgeable on the topic and experienced in resolving conflicts.

During the summer months of 2009, Forte Theatre, the Global Brigade leaders and their volunteers took the workshop into the villages of Embera Puru & Embera Drua near the East Coast of Panama by a town called Portobello.

With an early start, a fresh sunny morning and misty hills, we took a 45min canoe ride (albeit with a motor!) down the fresh waters of the Chagres river with the luscious green banks of foliage and extensive wildlife. Dodging the dead trees and reflecting eyes of the Camens (small crocodiles) the traditionally dressed native men took us on a tranquil yet speedy journey around the bendy river banks to their home.

Finally we arrived and were welcomed with music and drums played by the children and elders while others hurried to come and meet us in their traditional clothing of brightly coloured materials, beads and jewellery. Before the first workshop took place we spent some time re-hydrating, getting acquainted with the workshop participants and exploring the entire village. Dogs, cats and chickens roamed the land, a basket ball court fashioned from a palm tree was the centre focus of the village and the children happily entertained themselves with sticks and pebbles or latching themselves on to the visitors!

The workshop space was in a raised hut of wood and palm leaves made by the community (which can normally take 3 months to build). People of all ages turned up to take part or to be spectators of the workshop and as the day developed, more and more people kept showing up to see what the noise was all about and to join in the fun and games. With a combination of Spanish and their native dialect Embera, the entire group smoothly managed to communicate the information we came to offer and explore.

The games and exercises were greatly received with much laughter and enthusiasm and the group discussions evidently were a safe chance for the community to express themselves about current or past issues within the villages or with outsiders.

A couple of scenarios were acted out to actively explore the situations and analyse them in an interesting and alternative way with everyone’s support. They absorbed the opportunity to share their real life examples and gained confidence in themselves with being assertive and how to deal with future incidents.

The workshops were a great success with promising results. We will be able to learn about their post-workshop development and progress as we have communications with two Peace Corps volunteers who live in the villages and help to organise these types of workshops.

At the end of a lovely day, the community served us with a candle lit dinner of rice, beans, vegetables and steak and the freshest tasting pineapple straight from the tree. As the evening closed in the night life came out with distant sounds of monkeys, exotic birds and beady eyes closely watching our camp – eight beady eyes and legs in our case!

As an overall outlook, the natives are very intelligent and receptive people but because of their gentle and kind nature they can often be taken advantage of by outsiders. They have a high awareness of one another and strong personalities but when it comes to confrontation they don’t always give themselves the benefits that they deserve.

A general result from the discussions showed that most of the villagers thought of themselves to be passive or aggressive when dealing with conflict and they don’t have a steady in between level of resolving situations. None of them knew how to be assertive by taking careful steps to calmly deal with incidents and possibly achieve win-win situations. Within their village they either have fiery discussions with no resolutions or with outsiders they don’t say anything at all and leave issues burning in the background ready to flare up again. Either way they are not achieving anything and this workshop was highly beneficial for their leaning and the brightness of their future.

With us giving the community the opportunity to create an awareness of their reactions and behaviour with conflict and teaching them about being assertive, we hope this will leave them to put this into practice and finally be able to find themselves in win-win situations; feeling like equals within their villages and with outsiders.

Tags: Conflict, Communication skills, Analysis, Active listening, De-escalation, Creativity, Collaboration


Conflict Resolution workshop for schools and colleges

This academic year, you can take advantage of our Conflict Resolution Workshop with your students as we are bringing it straight from the rainforest to your school.  The workshop – suitable for all ages – comes with a physical theatre twist, and can tie in with any drama or issue based class including PSHE.

Through vocal and physical awareness it will help the students to:

Home  |  Bouffon  |  Commedia  |  Mask  |  Bespoke  |  Conflict Resolution  |  Theatre Overseas  |  Training for Actors |  Contact Us  |  Book Now  |  About Us