A young person walks confidently through space. He is listening to music and thinking about his things. Until a group brings him back to reality. They look at him and approach him. They whistle at him and create a circle around him. He can’t go out anymore. They say nice words to him, but the attitude is threatening. They touch his shoulder. They tell him not to be afraid. That he’s going to have a good time. Until the initial trust fades and the victim is reduced to a ball on the ground.
Contrary to the image that many may have formed, the harassed person is a man. And the group of harassers is made up of women. It has not really happened, it has been a scene performed in a theater workshop to deconstruct masculinities, gender roles and violence.
“Ugh… How intense it has been,” comments one. “Do you need a break?” asks another. “It’s strong. Now you see why we don’t like compliments,” exclaims another. The idea to interpret this type of harassment came from a woman and, at first, she was the one who was harassed. The reaction of the actors was as expected. But then, the facilitator asked that the roles be rotated. And that disconcerted those present.
“We talk a lot and we know what we think and what we have to say. But here it’s about destroying all the intelligent things we say and letting the body speak. This is how the trainer Olivier Malcor explains the objective of the workshop he teaches, within the framework of the conference Men in Movementorganized by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in Barcelona.
Malcor has been developing games and theatrical techniques for 25 years to address power imbalances in relationships in a playful and collective way. He does this through the theater of the oppressed, a methodology that he defines as “a dialogue between the academy and the street arts” and that is based on experiencing different roles and situations of discrimination to put oneself in the shoes of others and seek solutions.
This methodology has been taken to marginal neighborhoods, prisons and even Parliaments such as the Brazilian or Italian one so that deputies can understand the social consequences of a law that is being debated. At the UOC workshop the audience is diverse: cis and trans men and women, as well as non-binary people of all ages – from 22 to 63 years old – and of various nationalities.
Anti-gender role-playing games
The workshop starts off soft, but raises existential questions almost from the beginning with the most basic exercises. For example: greet each other like a man would. Immediately, upright people shake hands with firm shakes. Loud pats on the back that turn into loud kisses if you greet each other like women. Soft hugs and high-pitched giggles culminate the collection of stereotypes.
But it doesn’t end there. “Behave as each gender would,” Malcor asks. They are rude, they lean their bodies forward and take up space. They show their muscles and have defiant, if not violent, attitudes. They, on the other hand, are fifis. But an interesting question arises. If the person who interprets them is a man, it shows a sexy and seductive image of the woman. Someone fragile, but playful. Instead, they perform themselves as tired, overwhelmed or bored people.
And the climax comes when the workshop leader asks the participants to relate to each other, maintaining their gender interpretations. “Why do I flirt if I have a man in front of me?” asks one of the workshop attendees. Another also ends the exercise confused: “I’m like a buddy, but if I have a woman in front of me I change to a defiant attitude.” And one last thing: “It makes me very angry: when I play a woman, why do I act like a gay?”
Malcor listens to them with a half smile. “We are performing gender to see all these binary issues that don’t make sense.” Taking roles to the extreme and caricaturing them is a way to see how each person behaves every day and where they feel comfortable in their gender expression, as the workshop leader points out.
It is there, when the participants already have more questions than answers, that Malcor asks them to act out a scene. The premise is to explain how gender oppresses them. There are those who depict more obvious scenes, such as street harassment or homophobic attacks in a nightclub. But there are those who go further.
A group decides to show a woman on the ground. Unconscious after being beaten by a man who, on his knees, cries and begs two other people. They look at them and laugh, insensitive to the pain. “It represents an oppressed person trying to be part of a group by oppressing someone even more oppressed,” summarizes Raphael, one of the members of the group. He is Brazilian and is very concerned about the exclusion of different people. “It’s something that hurts me because I’ve suffered from it all my life,” he says.
The group is based on the premise that, although the worst and most obvious victims of gender roles are women, men also suffer the consequences of machismo. “I feel very conditioned by what men are supposed to be and do. And I attend all the workshops and courses I can to deconstruct myself as much as possible,” says Isma, a 56-year-old anthropologist.
Various men in the workshop replicate this desire and assure that what helps them most to escape certain behaviors is to see – and experience – the fear and insecurity that women feel in the face of certain types of masculinities. “The best thing about this type of theater is that each performance can be interpreted in different ways depending on each person’s context,” Malcor reflects towards the end of the workshop.
But the objective of the theater of the oppressed is not to stay with the negative image, but to close in a purposeful way with a question: “Is it a fatality or can we do something?” And that’s where the scene opens to the rest of the class.
While they see how a group represents a harassed person in a nightclub, they begin to spontaneously come out and propose solutions. One, try to distract the attackers; another takes the victim to a safe place while another takes out her cell phone and records the attack. The latter is Sara, a 33-year-old non-binary young woman. “It’s fantastic to see that we are not alone in this, that there are more people than we think willing to change.”
Sara has not attended the workshop to deconstruct herself, but to see how other people of other ages and normative genders approach inequalities and gender roles. After an afternoon sharing and exchanging experiences, roles and pains, Sara and the other participants leave satisfied. “I leave with more faith and hope,” he says.
#Theater #deconstruct #masculinities #dont #compliments
