Radiant Hearts Forum

After participating in the Elevating Hearts through Theatre training session at Bosch from July 13-17, I facilitated an Image Theatre session in Urbana, IL at Heartland Baha’i School. The session was on Friday, July 20 and lasted for one hour. I had roughly 26 participants for the session and the location was at a very empty public mall space. To start the session, I used a google slides presentation to give the participants some background information on applied theatre, theatre through the faith, and image theatre. Then I had them split into three groups and led them through a couple warm-up activities. This really helped bring energy to the participants. After this I had each group pick a social justice issue they were passionate about and sculptor to create the image. Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job explaining the quiet environment they should try to create, and it didn't help that other groups were in close proximity at different stages of the activity. Once a group had finished their image, I took a picture of it and then told them to consult and make one change to their image that would help alleviate the social injustice. When they finished this, I took another picture and told them to find a quote in the Writings about their issue. Once I had pictures of all three groups and both of their images, I uploaded them to my Google drive and put them in the Google slides presentation. For the debrief, I went through the groups one by one and their images. I told everyone what the issue was first and then asked them what things they saw in the image. Then I had the group whose picture it was explain their image and its different elements. After this I went to the image with the one change and facilitated a short discussion and analysis of it. The groups also read the quotations they had chosen. Due to the time limitation, we weren't able to have a very long discussion. I did have a co-facilitator but she wasn't able to help much because I didn't have much time to bring her up to speed. For the future, I'll try to format the session in such a way that the groups are in the same stage of the activity to allow for a quieter, more concentrated environment when the image is being sculpted. Overall, I had a very good experience and thought that the participants definitely took something away from it! Group 1: Issue: Harming the Environment Picture 1: Picture 2: -The woman on the left changed from shooting down birds to shoveling in order to plant trees Group 2: Issue: Ageism Picture 1: Picture 2: -This group had three smaller scenes and made a change to each scene. Plus two additional people joined the image. Group 3: Issue: Mistreatment of the Deaf in School Picture 1: Picture 2: This group's change was very subtle and was from the two individuals in the back (Alejo (red shorts) and Katya (black polka dot shirt)). They created a sign language symbol between the two of them that is trying to help the deaf person on the ground.