As we were discussing “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, it occurred to me that there is a video for an ESL program created by NYC Mayor’s Office and CUNY. I used to be a volunteer facilitator for this program, teaching ESL classes to immigrants in NYC. This video is about how to use theater to teach immigrants and the victims of domestic violence how to stand up against it. I think it exemplifies how to use art as an educational tool for “the oppressed”. The video is free to download and the file is not big.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/weareny/html/episodes/domestic_violence.shtml
This is great! Thanks for posting. As a theatre-major student, I was going to briefly introduce Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” in my provocation on Paulo Freire’s Chapters 1 and 2 this week. Boal was hugely influenced by Freire and emphasized interaction and communication between the performers and the audience (he coined the term, “spect-actor”). As a form of activism and theatre, the methodologies of Theatre of the Oppressed have been performed around the world and you can check out “Theatre of the Oppressed NYC” by following this link: http://www.tonyc.nyc/.