HOW TO GET FROM GUILT ABOUT CLASS PRIVILEGE TO A WORLD WITH- OUT OPPRES- SION IN 10 STEPS:

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2 HOW TO GET FROM GUILT ABOUT CLASS PRIVILEGE TO A WORLD WITH- OUT OPPRES- SION IN 10 STEPS:

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13 WHAT THE HECK IS THIS? We took part in a teen theater group at Ma yan called That s Not Fair! This zine shows one of the activities that we did and we want you to try it, too. The activity is drawn from of a set of techniques called Theater of the Oppressed developed by Brazilian educator Augusto Boal. Here s how we did it: When we looked at the Ma yan Research Training Interns research data, we could see that there were a lot of people involved in community service who make up the different characters in the system: students, people who operate community service programs, people intended to be served by community service, school administrators, parents, etc. We thought about: What kinds of pressures do we imagine each of the characters might be under? What are the characters being told that they need? What are they being told to want? How do they react to that pressure? What are their hopes and fears? How does society see them? How do the characters interact with one another? To what extent do they have one another s interests in mind? Then we put the characters from the data in motion: With our bodies, we created a sculpture, composed of the different characters in the data, based on the research findings. The name of the first sculpture was, GUILT ABOUT CLASS PRIVILEGE. It represented a theme we saw in the data. We each picked a character and used our bodies to represent our character s hopes, fears, pressures, and relationships to the other characters. We added to the sculpture one at a time, walking around it to consider how we fit in. We asked: Is there another perspective we want to add? Is there anything we need to make it more realistic? As a group, we looked at the visual image we created and asked: What do we notice? What is the main idea of the tableau? What is this is a picture of? Where is the power located in the image? What might happen next? What do we think happened just before? How does the image make us feel?

14 Then, the image became dynamic: We unpaused the frozen image and showed what our character s next movement would be. We moved to position B, then back to position A. We looked at the movement and asked: What new information did we get? What did we learn about what the characters want? Then we counted to 10: In 10 movements, in slow-motion, we moved our character from GUILT ABOUT CLASS PRIVILEGE to a new sculpture called WORLD WITHOUT OPPRESSION. We took turns adjusting one another s work until we arrived on a representation of a world without oppression that we could agree on. Then we asked: How does this relate to reality? What does it represent metaphorically? Here s what we said: The hardest part of the exercise wasn t the first sculpture or the last sculpture The hardest part was figuring out what happens in the middle. How do we move from guilt about class privilege to a world without oppression? This activity helped us think about what happens in the middle and how to make social change. Try it with your community service group, your friends, your colleagues, your relatives. Or just think about it. Tell us what you figure out on the Ma yan Facebook page or Pippi at pippi@mayan.org.

15 WHO MADE THIS ZINE??? The TNF Gang: Emma Goldberg Leah Schwartz Ella Tav TNF Advisors: Pippi Kessler Beth Cooper Benjamin What s That s Not Fair!? That s Not Fair! is a three-session political theater program where 7th-12th graders use theater for social change. Participants learn about social justice and social change, theater and performance techniques, and how to creatively interpret research data. The workshop presents a unique opportunity for teens to practice making the leap between theory and action, between recognizing a problem and speaking up about it. What s Ma yan? Ma yan is a nonprofit research and education incubator focused on the cultural challenges and identity issues facing Jewish girls in contemporary society. Through research, innovative programming, and community events, we work with girls, parents, and educators to provide resources that help all youth grow into critical, curious, and committed global citizens. For more information about Ma yan, visit mayan.org.