Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal’s 'Theatre of the Oppressed' (TO) uses theatre as a conduit to promote change, where the audience becomes active in exploring and transforming the reality that they live in.

To share our understanding of the medical humanities with the LGBTQI+ community, iHEAR TransCare conducted a TO workshop today, ahead of the TransCare MedEd National Conference on making healthcare trans-affirmative.

The workshop starts with prompting everyone to introduce themselves with an adjective preceding their first name, paired with an unconventional photo: no job titles, no hierarchy, no formalities.

From Aaila Aqsa to Rustic Raghav, the unfolding community gets a tight-knit start through trust building exercises where one person follows another’s lead, making their way around a square room with their eyes closed.

No conversations are allowed unless the Joker, who is the orchestrator of the workshop, signals that we can talk.

The trust building exercises progress into finding a partner and introducing them to the rest of the room, after 30 seconds of observation — without exchanging any words. At this point the joker asks: When you were introducing your partner, were you really introducing them or introducing the projection of yourself through them?

We move on to hypnotizing our partners with their gaze fixed on the hynotizer’s hands, till the roles are reversed, creating a shift in the dynamics and pressures that come with holding power, and alternatively, experiencing the control held by the one in power.

After convening for a conversation on the ‘oppressor’ and the ‘oppressed’, we create images through our body language of a time we were oppressed, and then break into groups of 5 where we share our stories of experiencing oppression.

The workshop ends with performing these stories in front of each other, where the person who experienced oppression in their story, takes the role of the ‘oppressor’.

All this culminates into a final performance on May 6th during the TransCare Conference, where spectators from the audience will find the agency to intervene.