Students perform in front of students at R.A. Riddell Elementary School. Photo credit: The Hamilton Spectator.
“Forum theatre is classified as ‘theatre for the oppressed,’” explains Riddell teacher Jan Bard, who brought the troupe to Riddell. In this art form, actors pause a performance involving oppression, so the audience can shape a more positive outcome on the stage.
In May, these creative, inquisitive guests from Toronto-based Mixed Company Theatre visited five Riddell classes. Director Simon Malbogat and his actors wanted to talk with students in Grades 4 to 6 about various forms of bullying.
They spoke with teachers, asked for definitions of bullying, and gathered anecdotes about real bullying. They met with Lesley Cunningham, a Board social worker specializing in violence prevention, who was also present for each of the classroom visits. They spoke with Principal Wes Hahn as well.
Then, the actors went away for one month to write.
Riddell’s input became the raw material for an anti-bullying play performed by Mixed Company and a troupe focused on younger kids, Up Your Nose and In Your Toes (UNIT). In June, clowns Morro and Jasp, as well as Wit Ness, entertained and let students re-enact scenes to inject their own anti-bullying solutions into the play.
“They tried to do what the students said, so they walked through the performance and would ask, ‘Is that what you meant, or should we do something else or add something else?’” Bard explains. “They came up with interesting reactions.”
It was an entertaining, interactive and educational message on anti-bullying for the 200 students from Kindergarten to Grade 6 who saw it. They learned bullying is not an argument between friends, but is a persistent force that must be stopped.
“They learned a lot of new strategies,” Bard says of the troupe, which will visit other HWDSB schools in October as part of an anti-violence program.
