Tour
"Dialogforum: Miss Perfekt hier und dort"
06.09.2019 im Begegnungszentrum in Großhennersdorf, Sachsen
12.09.2019 im Kronenkino in Zittau, Dreiländereck, Sachsen
04.10.2019 Festival "Ästhetics of Solidarity"
Uferstudios gGmbH in Berlin
Forumtheaterfortbildung von Frauen* für Frauen*
Theater der Unterdrückten Frauen* in Bautzen
Februar bis Mai 2019
Am 18. Mai 2019 findet die Aufführung von Madalena Bautzen bei dem Festival "Bouncen in Bautzen" statt!
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Im Rahmen der Forumtheaterfortbildung war Madalena Berlin in Bautzen mit dem Legislativen Theaterstück "Nein heißt Nein" |
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Theater der Unterdrückten Frauen* Multiplikation Teil II
Westsahara - Tindouf Wylaya Aserd
05.-09.01.2019
zum weiterlesen auf spanisch...
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Reflection
about a Workshop Facilitation with the Worrior Woman Theater Group in
Delhi, India.
„Today, I am so happy – today I understand that we can be so different, but at the same time we are the same. We are woman.“
These
are the words one girl of the group the Warrior Woman, said to me
after the Theater of the Opressed (TO) Workshop in Delhi. The Kuringa
and my friend Dilreen Kaur created a space for woman and girls
in the ages between 17 and 45, from the marginalized
communities of the southeast part of Delhi - a slum area - to come
together. Since half a year, the warrior women work and share during
workshop times in the group. During the workshop process, we were
exploring issues around gender stereotypes and social and cultural
norms that oppress girls and women in India. Exchanging dialogue
about patriarchal ideas, which creates an environment of injustice,
abuse and violence in our daily lives, makes us understand that
cultural, age and language barriers are breakable. However in India,
a country where the dowry of the daughters marriage brings risk of
poverty to the family, there is a big lack of opportunity for
education and development for girls and women.
Women
learned to keep silenct and to keep secrets. As a TO facilitator, I
understand my task to create a space where we can speak out and
dialogue about things women would not so easily talk about. The TO
games support to open the body and break the fear of speaking out. In
moments of sitting together and reflecting, I noticed that there is
trust inside of the group and the desire or the want to share about
their own stories. Stories about the daily life where they have to
face in their home, at school or work place, where harassment seems
to be a normal part of a girl’s life. The power of this women’s
space is about searching for a way to break the boundaries inside,
and to put what we can outside. During this process we created a
space where it is possible to find solidarity and open ears, which
listened about the oppressions women face in India, where it is
permitted to cry and laugh together and to „celebrate strength“
as Dilreen stated.
We
did some TO games like the collective body including different daily
life speeds movements. We also did the finger tip dance and the 4
directions mirror. My idea was to experiment together to occupy as
much space as possible to guide the girls during different daily life
speed moments to a reflection about the experience of their right to
occupy space, with the intention of connecting to the right of
existence as a girl in India, where it can be quite common to kill
daughters because it’s impossible to pay the dowry. The finger tip
dance was heplful to create an atmosphere that built confidence
between the women, and to to build up trust through the power of
leading and letting yourself be guided by another woman. Learning
through the language of the body about an equal exchange: following
and leading at the same time.
I
ask myself: what is this idea about, to control women and to create
all these limitations on her possibility to have choices. To choose
who she wants to love and to marry? “Where does society’s right
to control and regulate individual action end, and the personal right
to determine one`s own destiny begin?” “Where does a girl or a
woman have the control to lead her own life’s choices and where are
the limitation of liberty?”
During
the workshop we discovered...
Her
grandmother was not sent to school, but she is sent to school.
At
the grandmother’s home there was no electricity, but at her home
there is electricity.
The
washroom and toilet were outside, today the toilet is inside the
house.
The
world is changing. India is changing.
But
what about a change of the focus on whom to marry or not? At what
age? and does she want to marry at all? Make a decision about
studying and when to have children, or even to use contraception if
her husband and in-laws are opposed to it. Determine the number of
children she will bear, or to choose the sex of her children, and in
case giving a birth to a girl with a stroke. To marry means, for
example, she couldn’t validate the choice to not cook today because
she is tired, wants to study, or she wants to go out with her
friends. In the words of the Bangladeshi feminist author Srilatha
Batliwala about women’s rights and choices in India:
„She
has no choice about working for wages, or the kind of work she will
do – she must take whatever job an unskilled, uneducated woman can
get, for however little it pays. On the other hand, a middle or
upper-middle class woman cannot choose to go out for work if her
parents, husband, or in laws raise objections and forbid it. A woman
cannot determine how much of her husband`s earnings she needs for her
household expenses – he chooses how much to give her, and she must
make do; nor can she have a say in what her husband spends on liquor,
gambling, or the cinema. I know that many would like to dismiss these
statements as rabid exaggerations – I dearly wish they were!“
This
is the reality for the vast majority of India`s women. This reality
lets us understand that marriage is a hard business, likened to
going to prison. In the workshop there was an energy full of life, of
power and will. They want to study and they want to decide if they
will wear a sari or not. While playing the games one of the girls
explained:
„Even
my mother and grandmother they are born in Delhi, but they were
allowed to wear sari only, and they had to do all the household work.
Even my mother was working, she was running a boutique, but she has
to do all the household although. In their life like, during my
grandmother’s time they were living in an very simple house,
cooking on fire, now they have a modern kitchen facility but nothing
changed. The woman does all the household work alone.“
Deeper
and deeper I understand the power of theater. About discovering the
right to have visions of their own future. The necessity of the
recognition of alternatives, which leads to the understanding of the
right to have choices. It is about having rights to live the life you
want, because it’s your own life. But also to understand how strong
patriarchal dominations impacts our choices. There are may stairs and
steps. One is to speak up about the right to have choices.
Dilreen
tells about a woman of the group she was fighting with for these
little steps to have a change in her personal life, which make a huge
difference. She used to go back home after work and cook for the
whole family and now, after the sharing in the Warrior Woman Group,
she is able to negotiate with other family members, and there
are some days of the week where the dinner is ready when she comes
home.
The
outcome energy of the workshop was: it`s possible to create awareness
through sharing with more and more women using the power of TO. And I
have to declarate of the whole Network, the warrior woman are
Ma(g)dalenas.
To
end this text I would like to share a little story from the way to
the workshop space.
Dilreen
took us to a street to have lunch and we entered in an temple. There
we saw a totally covered woman with very beautiful, strong,
attracting eyes. Spontaneously we told her „your
eyes are beautiful“
and
these eyes became even more coruscant. Till, one second after a man
stepped beside her and said „What do you want, she is my wife“
and her eyes moved from this brillant curiosity to an excited
expression. We just answered that we were commeting on her beautiful
eyes and the man response was so aggravating that we just left. He
said something like her body is even better...
Understanding
the world where women are property of man, makes us as TO
facilitators understand why we do this job. To create a space where
we can break the silence and talk about these issues between girls,
women and wives. With this feeling we actually entered in the school
space to do the workshop. After some time, we left the school with
this sentence I started to write: “Today, I am so happy – today I
understand that we can be so different, but at the same time we are
the same. We are woman.“
The
power of the game of „the
collective body“
facilitates
for me in a way this possibility to feel that collectively we are
strong and we can have solidarity between women. Having had
situations of feeling afraid, the collective body teaches us that we
are never alone.
We
have such important voices that contribute and that we can make a
difference because we matter and we are enough if we are together!
Thank
you!
Liviana
Coranda
Closing
the workshop:
Ending
the workshop with the game „Stop
and Go“
made
us aware that even in these conditions we try to change every little
second in our daily life. Voices raising up were documented by Isis
Violeta doing an video during the workshop. But the power we
constructed together, impossible to pass through text or video, about
„Yes I want this“, or „No! I don`t want“, felt like: Yes! we
can train us ourselves as warrior woman between us, and there outside
we will give everything we need to survive in these oppressing
conditions women have to face day by day. We had some moments of
happiness and together the girls kept on training with the stop and
go game, with some of them leading the game, multiplying Warrior
Woman.
During
the time in India and though my research about Woman Empowerment and
TO, I got inspired by the feminist author Srilatha Batliwala, and in
this text there are thoughts added from the book „Engaging with
Empowerment an intellectual and experimental journey“ (2015).
Batliwala says that the situation of women in India, even if they
study, work and earn their own daily money, is such that it is so
difficult to have the right for your own choice. So the only way to
regulate individual action for women and develop their personal right
is outside of a married life. On the other side, for some, the
starting point of the personal right is after marriage. And then it
depends on the husband when there is an ending of the individual
action.
(photos
by Isis Violeta)
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