In all experiences, sooner or later, you arrive at a theatrical workshop that stages the themes relevant to the path and the group. Who to invite into the group is an important question that is resolved in various ways: some prefer that the group be made up of oppressed people alone, others by professional actors from the company expert in Theatre of the Oppressed, others include experts of various types, activists, etc. For example, Boal worked with groups that were homogeneous by territory or theme (Nucleus of the favela or Nucleus of black university students) while the other components such as legal experts entered the Metabolic Cell. 

Metka Bahlen Okoli reminds us how important it is, if you work with vulnerable groups, to provide settings that support people and allow them to live the experiences without fear or negative repercussions. This means, depending on the case, ensuring anonymity, offering psychological support, creating opportunities for direct meetings with politicians and decision makers, in structured and safe settings. 

InterAct, after the kick-off meeting, proposed a 3-day community workshop where one could move from a verbal analysis to the staging of problematic nodes. Given the topic of the homeless, they chose to shift the focus to the phases preceding the loss of the home, to the challenges that many people face and that, if lost, lead to the streets. They thus involved several subjects around the same theme. From here, the group continued as a theatre workshop, alternating with some open rehearsals by invitation, used to test a specific scene.

The length of these workshops varies depending on the resources, the complexity of the topic, the competence of the actors (professionals or non-actors), etc. but a key suggestion is to take into account the possibility for people to remain for a long period.

In TO workshops, we usually start the staging from individual nodes, move to look for common points, called theatrical embryos, then we refine the scenes to make them suitable for the Forum Theatre, rich in real oppressive mechanisms. 

Let’s see some notes on these 3 steps. 

Typically, the process of identifying core issues, referred to as “nodes”, begins by engaging directly with the oppressed group. Participants are given the space to express, through words, images, or other creative means, what aspects of their reality they find oppressive and what they would like to change in their lives.

In the case of “Take Part: It’s About Us”, they conducted around ten awareness-raising meetings using theatrical tools. Through games and exercises targeting various sensitive areas such as employment, housing, health, and transportation, the team collected recurring situations that required change.

In other projects, stakeholder meetings were held to gather diverse perspectives. This included interviews or focus groups, the results of which were later brought into the theatrical laboratory for deeper exploration.

This dynamic of combining internal (from participants) and external (from broader stakeholders) inputs is essential. It helps prevent the reduction of complex societal issues to the experiences of a small group, namely, the lab participants, who, while directly engaged, may have a limited or partial view of the larger context. Not everyone can or wants to join a theatrical workshop, which requires significant physical, emotional, and psychological engagement. Therefore, when addressing topics that affect a broader population, it’s crucial that the identified nodes reflect the experiences of the wider community, not just a potentially more privileged or self-selecting group.

Staging of the problems to be faced is a pivotal step, every experience in Legislative Theatre passes through it. In the Theatre of the Oppressed, this phase is referred to as the act of “representing” oppressive realities. Unlike simply “reproducing” reality, “representing” means translating it into theatrical language. It goes beyond simulation or role-play, incorporating aesthetic choices, not arbitrary ones, but carefully considered elements that illuminate the deeper mechanisms of oppression and exclusion. To borrow from Bertolt Brecht, theatre must show not the real things as they appear, but how things really are.

Within the TO community, there are two dominant approaches to this process. One favors a naturalistic style, presenting events as they appear in everyday life, while the other leans toward symbolic imagery and metaphor, seeking to uncover meanings beyond the visible. The choice of representational style is something that should be discussed and shaped collaboratively with the oppressed group involved in the process.

In “Status Quo in the Labor Market”, the staging process unfolded through weekly TO workshops with a group of young people. The resulting Forum Theatre performance portrayed individual cases of injustice as symptoms of a broader, structurally precarious labor system, using theatre as a political tool. The staging process was complemented by input from trade unions and legal experts, who helped contextualize the problems within a larger socio-economic and legal framework.

In “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All”, developed by CAA Transformator and Pokaz, staging was not a distinct or isolated phase, but an evolving process that wove together personal testimony, aesthetic expression, and political engagement. Three Forum Theatre performances (Yes, I Believe You in Slovenia, and Labels and We Don’t Want Feminism in Schools in Croatia) addressed issues such as gender role construction, the intersection of gender and ethnicity (especially concerning Roma women), and institutional responses to gender-based violence. These performances were grounded in the real-life experiences of the participants, ensuring the authenticity and relevance of the problems portrayed on stage.

In parallel, a series of TO workshops in Slovenia involved eight young women who developed the performance One in Two Takes a Hit. This was not a Forum Theatre piece but an experimental performance that employed aesthetic strategies to shed light on gender-based violence and inequality in the cultural sector. The content was derived from the creators’ own lived experiences. The performance was staged twice and served as a springboard for the legislative phase, during which the audience was invited to propose legal changes, participate in public debate and vote on the presented proposals.

This phase means that, at a certain point, we have a theatrical draft and we need to improve it, to clean it, to include key elements, to clarify the oppressive mechanism, etc. This step is important in order to have a tool rich enough to stimulate the audience’s critical thinking.

In “Status Quo in the Labor Market”, a key innovation was the continuous involvement of labor rights experts and legal professionals throughout the development of the performance. These consultants helped shape the content and also served as crucial bridges to political and institutional structures. Although a formal legislative cell was not established, union representatives played a significant role in translating the issues raised during the Forum Theatre sessions into legislative recommendations.

The team behind “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All” strongly emphasized the need to adapt the Forum Theatre model to maximize its effectiveness within a legislative context. In this project, several purposeful adaptations were introduced. The original Forum play, Yes, I Believe You, was expanded through additional rehearsals to incorporate legislative dimensions, allowing the audience to engage with the scenes and also to participate in drafting policy recommendations.

In the case of “Easy Way Out”, some parts of the play were adapted from earlier plays performed by the same group, and re-worked to fit the format of LT. The fact that the core theme of the play was education made it easier for non-expert audiences to think in terms of legislation and policy-making.  

We have now arrived at building a so-called “model” of Forum Theatre, ready for an audience. We found different positions in the interviews.

For some practitioners such as Armin Staffler at the question “Should the classic Forum Theatre structure be adapted?” he answered:

<This depends on the Forum Theatre model that one is actually working with. My model is very much inspired by David Diamond’s Theatre for Living. There is no clear oppressor and no oppressed, there is no protagonist and no antagonist (or better said: all are protagonists). Of course there is oppression, of course there is conflict and struggle and injustice. All characters can be replaced. Not to turn them into nice people by magic but to honestly discover their struggles and how they could become part of the improvement of the situation. In my case, calling or labeling the people with disabilities as “oppressed” would have been an act of oppression itself (in my opinion). And calling the doctors, the caregivers, the politicians “oppressors” would have been too narrow minded. I think that the Forum Theatre model has to adapt always! To the circumstances, the group, the question, the joker, the times (as they are changing…)>.

About the relation between the model and the law he also says:

<We were looking for aspects that are relevant for the law. So we were looking for “areas” (spaces) where the law becomes visible. So we started with sites, like doctors, offices, care homes, work places…>

Michael Wrentschur differently says:

<We found, the Forum Theatre classic model worked well even for LT. Only the “Ware Wohnen Menschenrecht” could have been divided at least into three parts for three different legislative perspectives/events.>

Another perspective:

The “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All” project also experimented with modifying the traditional Forum Theatre structure. While classical Forum Theatre involves direct audience intervention on stage, this initiative incorporated structured deliberation sessions where spectators engaged in legislative drafting exercises rather than reenacting solutions. This allowed for deeper policy discussions and more concrete legislative proposals while maintaining the participatory nature of the theatre method.  

Katy Rubin’s opinion clarifies a distinction: <For sure the Forum Theater model needs to be adapted. The focus of the problem needs to be on the structural and policy problems. It’s not about an individual instance of oppression or discrimination. It’s about oppressive and discriminatory and unjust policies. And how does the play ask the question about that policy? So it means it needs some research. It needs some understanding of the bureaucracy, kind of who made these decisions, how did they get made? When did they get made? Where did they get made? And ideally, that is worked into the play. So that people really think clearly about what they’re answering.>

A critical point which emerged from our discussion is “Why is legislative language not accessible to everyone?” The strangeness or even incomprehensibility of the legal jargon is a  form of alienation for people, who cannot interpret the important societal regulation which affects our lives. However, the question arose whether a “clear” legislative language is even possible – or if its purpose is always to obscure and alienate (as, for example, classical Marxist critiques of the bourgeois state have claimed). We would have liked to explore this issue more deeply.

We wondered if the role of the Joker and the questions posed to the audience during Legislative Theatre sessions is different to Forum Theatre. We asked interviewees if they first invited classic Forum Theatre interventions and then asked for legislative proposals or whether they asked for legislative proposals directly, and whether they invited audience members onto the stage to make their proposals or did something different entirely.

Armin Staffler responded:
<I didn’t ask for legislative proposals. None of the people in the audience studied law. It would have been presumptuous. But we asked for desired change to be shown in the interventions.> 

And Michael Wrentschur: 

<In our case we first ask for classic interventions and then ask for proposals, which is sometimes a consequence, when we don’t find an alternative way of acting because the laws, structures are preventing alternative actions. This means that the question “which structural change do we need?” has been asked during the reflection of an intervention. But we also gave the people the possibility to write their proposals down after the Forum phase.>

Josipa Lulić states:

<If the dramaturgy is based on that of Forum Theatre, the only difference will be in the way of jokering, and in the planning of the actions that will happen after the play (that can be done by other people, not necessarily – only – by the joker). 

How we approached the jokering was by handing out pieces of paper and pens, and asking the audience to write down any thoughts they had on possible ways that the situation shown on stage could have a systemic solution. At the same time, we also invited interventions, both individual and collective, that served as a way to illuminate better how the current system was failing Roma children – even when there was an intervention that was able to change the example shown on the scene. 

For example, a few times a group of students entered the scene and challenged the teacher who did not want to give the test to Roma students. The display of solidarity was important, but then we asked them how and why this could happen at all, and how we could work together to create a different system. These were the ideas that ended up in the objectives brief that we used in our advocacy campaign. If we were to do it as a Forum Theatre, the joker would ask the audience to think in a different direction – that of creating and sustaining these displays of solidarity in our everyday lives, connecting and scaling them.> 

In some experiences, such as that of “Drama for Democracy”, the promoters decided to organize an open test where the model could be tested, before going on a tour of the region in search of solutions. This is a session that is very different in its aims from the following ones, as the public is asked to analyze the model and make comments on its adherence to reality, completeness, coherence, richness of elements, ability to involve the public, etc. We can call it a “Constructive Forum”. In the open test “Drama for Democracy” project invited both politicians and NGOs and people with disabilities of various kinds. 

“Goods. Housing. Human Rights” and “Playing Together” also used to alternate the laboratory with open tests, to verify the adequacy of the individual scenes in preparation, and inviting people of various types from the network of alliances, who could give different and in-depth readings based on their skills. Which people? How many open tests? They suggest not to create illusory expectations in the participants, to avoid, as happened in the project, that those who participated in the initial phases expect to be part of the actors’ group, given that this group cannot be too large for various logistical, economic and organizational reasons.

Once the Forum Theatre performances were prepared, all of the projects we analyzed included at least one Legislative Theatre session, even if LT sessions are usually more than one, to reach a wide range of audiences. 

This stage marks a crucial shift from exploring interpersonal and social solutions to addressing structural issues through laws, policies, and regulations. In other words, after having prepared the model to be used, all the processes arrive at the moment in which this is presented to an audience to involve them in the search for proposals for change at the legislative level. The objective can be to create new non-existent laws or replace old unsuitable ones, as in the case of Augusto Boal’s “Political-Theatrical Mandate”, “Can’t Get Right”‘s project or “Take Part: It’s About Us”’s. 

Sometimes these are laws, sometimes municipal regulations or other types of legal results; sometimes the outcome is a clarification or renewal not of the laws but of local policies with respect to the given theme, other times an agreement is reached between groups as in the project “Playing Together”. 

Augusto Boal pioneered this with his “Chamber in the Square,” where audiences debated and proposed legislative changes. Other projects, like “Can’t Get Right”, further developed this model, inviting audiences to formulate concrete legislative proposals. Some projects retain the classic Forum Theatre interventions and later build legislative suggestions from the solutions enacted on stage.

Augusto Boal focused on a few proposals developed by the “Metabolic Cell” that attended the various previous Forum Theatre sessions and then made proposals, voted by all the oppressed in the so-called “Chamber in the Square”. Other subsequent experiences invite politicians and decision makers to public sessions and push them to take a position. So we can say that we see a spectrum of possibilities: from a simple collection of proposals to be sent to politicians to a session of presentation of the proposals in front of decision-makers and politicians who are engaged to take a position immediately. 

In “Goods. Housing. Human Rights”, the Joker invites the audience to write down proposals on slips of paper during and immediately after the Forum Theatre, which are then passed to a group of legal experts who analyze them in legislative terms. They also used streaming to reach more people and also to bypass the Covid problem they faced and the consequent restrictions on in-person meetings. 

A similar process was used in “Status Quo in the Labor Market” by CAA Transformator and Zavod Bob. Both collected proposals written on slips of paper by the audience and organized the Metabolic cell involving legal experts to be present at the events. They previewed a break at the event while the Cell members reviewed the proposals, categorized them, and ‘translated’ the proposals into legal language. Where possible, they also indicated which legislation could be supplemented by a particular proposal. Then, the audience gathered again and the Jokers facilitated reading the proposals one by one, which were then discussed and voted on. The Legislative Theatre phase was central. Following the performances, audience members, guided by Jokers and supported by a Legislative Cell, identified gaps in labor law and co-developed policy proposals. These focused on strengthening worker protections and improving recognition for precarious labor conditions. Legal experts from unions played a key role in refining these proposals and incorporating them into broader advocacy efforts.

In the project “Estudantes por Empréstimo” at the end of each session the participants filled out a questionnaire to identify the changes in law that they considered most urgent. The proposals collected were published on a well-known blog, to ensure both transparency and continuous involvement. 

In “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All”, the performances were followed not only by traditional on-stage interventions but also by structured deliberation sessions. Spectators identified legal gaps, shared personal testimonies, and collaboratively formulated legislative recommendations. These discussions were facilitated using Image Theatre techniques and guided questioning to ensure the inclusion of diverse, often marginalized perspectives.

In the project “Take part, it’s about us”, the Joker didn’t directly ask for legislative proposals. Instead, the focus was on staging the desired changes during interventions, allowing a more intuitive emergence of political demands.

In the “Goods. Housing. Human Rights” and “Playing Together”’s project, a hybrid model was adopted. Spectators first intervened in the scenes as in classic Forum Theatre. When no personal or relational solution could be enacted, because the obstacle was structural, the Joker invited the audience to reflect on necessary systemic changes. Legislative proposals could then be voiced during the session or submitted in writing afterward.

In “Drama for Democracy”, before discussing specific policies, Jokers asked the audience to envision their ideal policy landscape. This visioning exercise helped ground the conversation and encourage more focused policy proposals.

In performances of “Easy Way Out”, a mixture of on-stage interventions – both individual and group – and deliberation on legislation was used. The audience was asked to come up with ideas for possible changes in policy and the legal framework, without worrying about how to legally formulate these proposals. This re-formulation came in the follow-up campaign, where, on the basis of proposals gathered from various audiences, the team formulated a series of demands and proposals to the institutions.

Here is a sequence we found in “Can’t get right” that can be a concrete example of a LT session, even if many other experiences differed:

1- A community group starts by sharing stories and creating the play. With the group decide which story will be developed into Legislative Theatre. Discuss the present context and which moment is a good moment for that issue to move forward. Intervene on something already being discussed by politicians and stakeholders.

2 – Invite policy-makers also called “Power rangers/Policy rangers”. Not only one type of policy maker, you want different kinds of expertise, also activists. In the audience, invite people working on the issue from different angles.

3 – Forum Theatre plays:

– Warm up – watch the play – don’t just follow one character – zoom out most – reveal the legislative so we know what we want to change… ideally.

– Ask: What are the problems? Do you recognize them? Which are the rules that create these problems? design, structure…

– Interventions (With actors prepared to react to the new reality -> if the rule changes which other problem will remain?)

– Articulate what was behind the interventions. People on a projector that write all the things that came out.

4 – Small groups of 2-3 people write 1 proposal.

5 – Intermission. Policy team categorizes proposals. Audience can assist the discussion to determine a few bigger proposals.

6 – Back together to look at the screens and assess the proposals. What is still missing? Live amendments are made.

7 – Vote to prioritize -> one proposal that will make the biggest difference.

8 – The policy team make commitments: what initial action they can take in the next 8 weeks towards implementation.

9 – After 8 weeks, check in and report on how much has been done.

A single session of a Forum play and LT session lasted from 3 up to 5 hours, depending on the project.

Tools and resources can help like play-books or guides tailored for Legislative Theatre to navigate practical and strategic concerns.

A theme that some have raised is that of the accessibility of language, which is essential so that the Legislative Theatre sessions are fully participatory, especially for the oppressed groups involved. 

Three experiences involved an issue that can occur in a Legislative Theatre process, the question of different languages: 

In “Take part, it’s about us” there were participants with different disabilities and translation between verbal and sign language was required.

In “Playing together” the performances drew a large audience, especially young people, around 60 to 70 attendees. To make the performances accessible, they provided translators, knowing that German wasn’t the first language for many of the young people present.

During a Legislative Theatre Festival, TONYC provided simultaneous translation services. Everyone who requested it was provided an earpiece where they could hear translation from English to Spanish and vice versa depending on their requirements.

Some proposals can be legislative in nature, others focus on adjustments in policies or changes in municipal rules. We can be open to affecting change at the level that makes sense and where a change is both possible and meaningful.

In “Goods. Housing. Human Rights” and other projects some of the recommendations were legislative, others targeted local regulations and administrative measures. 

In “Playing together”, the goal wasn’t to change the law itself, but rather to alter the rules so that young people could access the school sports areas. 

José Soeiro says: <Challenges often lie in law enforcement, public policy effectiveness, and societal conditions for exercising rights rather than in the laws themselves>.

This stage also revealed several recurring challenges across projects, particularly in sustaining the commitment of oppressed groups and activists:

• Time constraints often limited deep, sustained participation, due to the absence of structural capacity and long-term strategy.
  
• Insufficient funding hindered the ability to compensate participants, even through basic reimbursements.
  
• Limited support from the broader network of associations involved in the process, which made collective advocacy efforts harder to maintain.
  
• Lack of institutional engagement, often due to perceived administrative burden or political sensitivities around certain issues (e.g., gender studies).
  
• Internal organizational hurdles, as Legislative Theatre is complex and many facilitators and participants lacked prior experience.
  
• Fragmentation within the human rights sector, where collaboration was hampered by differing agendas or competition for resources.
  
• Low visibility and outreach, limiting the impact of the performances and proposals beyond the immediate participants.
  
• Challenges in mobilizing the affected communities, many of whom were already facing socio-economic burdens that limited their ability to participate.
  
• Weak or unsustained lobbying efforts, reducing the chances of legislative follow-up and long-term impact.
  
• Different timing: challenges that come with the rapid pace of decision-making in the sessions. While it’s thrilling to make decisions in real-time, we also want to balance this urgency with the need for careful, thoughtful policy development. Our goal is not only to engage the public in the theater but also to push for tangible action and hold policy makers accountable for the changes we propose.
  

• Managing Expectations: balancing what could realistically be achieved within the project’s scope against the aspirations of participants and stakeholders; <with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been helpful to address this from the outset, clearly communicating what was feasible and what wasn’t>, Armin Staffler said.
  
• Documenting the Process: one regret is the lack of video recordings of the performances and workshops. 

Despite these obstacles, the Legislative Theatre sessions proved to be transformative spaces where participants moved from theatrical intervention to political action. They demonstrated the potential for theatre to not only raise awareness, but to catalyze concrete policy change, when supported by strategy, resources, and sustained alliances.

– Katy Rubin suggests inviting in the cell called “Power rangers/policy rangers”, politicians not of just one type, but with different positions of power, just as the Joker during the session with the audience invites people to work on the issue from different perspectives (educational, social policy, awareness, etc.).

– Josipa Lulić underlines the fact that repeating so many times can be difficult for a group of actors who have to work a full-time  job for a living  and therefore have limited time to rehearse and perform.

– Even José Soeiro in “Unpaid care” laments the difficulty of sustaining the motivation of the participants for a long time which is the time of legislative changes.- Gavin Crichton draws attention to the balance between the need in a single session to arrive at proposals and vote on them, but also that of making proposals that are sufficiently in-depth to be feasible.

The presence or absence of the Metabolic Cell and at what point in the process it intervenes, is also a theme running through Legislative Theatre.

In other words, there is a gap between the proposals an audience can make and the form in which laws/rules must be written. Moreover a law can already exist and the problem is rather applying or amending it. In all these cases some legal expertise is required.

For the composition of the Metabolic Cell or alike see chapter 1.

Here we describe what is done after the audience has formulated some proposals.

– In “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All” the Forum Theatre session was followed by a discussion with the audience that identified legislative gaps and formulated recommendations. The jokers facilitated the discussion using Image-Theater and “dynamic questioning”, that is: 

<Dialogical, responsive, and rooted in mutual exploration. It is a process of inquiry where questions evolve in response to participants’ reactions, emotions, and insights; the facilitator listens attentively and asks questions that deepen reflection, provoke new perspectives, or shift focus when needed, ensuring that all opinions, especially those of marginalized groups, were included in the proposals>. 

The proposals were after that elaborated by a legal expert who combed through legislation in the field of gender equality, gender-based violence and sexual violence and suggested which law the proposal should be placed in and which decision-maker is responsible for the law in question. 

– The team of “Status Quo in The Labor Market” connected to two unions, Union of Precarious Workers and Union Youth+, that took over after public sessions of LT. An expert on labor law from the Union of Precarious Workers elaborated on the proposals and coordinated with the Union Youth+ to involve some of the proposals into their advocacy processes.

– In “Students by Loans”, after each session, participants completed a questionnaire to identify the legislative changes they considered most urgent. The collected proposals were published on a weblog, to ensure transparency and continued engagement.

– As highlighted earlier, “Easy Way Out” chose not to adopt a Metabolic Cell, opting for a more horizontal and flexible system. A key part of the process was re-formulating the disjointed ideas from various audiences into a series of proposals directed at the institutions and publicly emphasized during the “Quality School for All” campaign. This was done through a group effort of all participants, with the help of external consultants on some points.

– In other cases where the Metabolic Cell is not  present, the desires from the audience are immediately passed to the decision-makers.

– The team of “Take part, is about us” wonders how to translate the actions and ideas brought on stage by the audience into a legislative text. It requires a lot of attention and creativity to overcome the gap between the expressive and dynamic medium of theater and the rigid and formal structure of the law.

Suggestions
Metka Bahlen Okoli suggests allocating specific funds for legal support and the presence of experts on the topic. Having these figures to help create the legislative proposals increases the strength of impact, because they more easily align with the legislative framework and the proposals for change have a greater chance of actually being implemented.

This phase sometimes is strictly connected with the previous one, so the audience make proposals, the Metabolic Cell elaborate them and introduce to the audience who vote

• Augusto Boal has been using the so-called “Chamber in the Square”, that was prepared with documents distributed to oppressed groups who live a certain oppression and who are invited to participate in this event.

In this session the Metabolic Cell has developed proposals based on the interventions of the public in the previous Forum Theatres and the participants can now express themselves and vote, as if they were in the House of Representatives of a Municipality. Interventions for and against and then votes, rituals of an official session accompany the event. From what we know the only politician present was Augusto Boal who then reported the decisions to the real City Council (Camera do Vereadores).

– In subsequent experiences Michael Wrentschur led the group of homeless people (in a project not described in the fact-sheets) to perform the Forum Theater inside the City Council itself, or Katy Rubin and others invited the decision-makers in this phase to take a clear and direct position on the proposals that emerge.

– Again “Goods. Housing. Human Rights”, concludes the journey with a full day of session called “City Council” where they re-presented the scenes of Forum Theatre with the proposals that had emerged. Then they facilitated the discussion to refine them making sure they were clear, feasible and well supported. Finally the citizens voted and those that reached 90% of the consensus were included in the final report to the competent authorities.

– In the case of “Estudantes por Empréstimo”, at the end of the academic year the university students were invited to a special session of the Parliament where José Soeiro was a deputy, and 10 proposals were presented, developed by the Metabolic Cell.

The attendees voted on the first 3 proposals considered priority which were then followed by a petition sent to Parliament.

– “Drama for Democracy” brought the Forum Theatre to the Scottish Parliament, both to present the results of the process and to push the parliamentarians to take a position on the proposals that had been created. This represented the culmination of the process.

– In “Take part, is about us”, they also conclude the process with a Forum Theatre session at the regional Parliament underlining the strong symbolic value of having actors/oppressed occupy the seats generally reserved for Ministers.

– In the case of “Can’t Get Right”, Katy Rubin invited a city councilor who sympathized with the LGBT+ issue and who had presented the proposal for the Citizen Identity Card, to attend the Legislative Theatre session and stand.

– In the project “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All”, the team came to produce 12 proposals that they sent to 28 institutions and ministries, on the protection of female workers, a gender-sensitive education curriculum, mechanisms for preventing violence against women, etc. but their response was minimal, only the Ministry of Labor responded that some of them were already included in existing policies. A notable exception was Tatjana Bobnar, the Slovenian President’s advisor on human security, who attended a performance and received the collected proposals. However, no lasting institutional dialogue followed. This example illustrates a partial identification of institutional nodes, relevant bodies were targeted, but the connections were not sufficiently activated or sustained.

– In “Playing together” at the end of the second performance, they held a roundtable discussion, including some of the young actors from the group as well as local politicians from the city of Graz, representatives from the nearby schools, and individuals from various youth initiatives and mediation organizations. It was really effective to have a roundtable to discuss proposals immediately after a performance.

Obstacles.

Tjaša Kosar and Doria Jukić criticised:

– bureaucratic obstacles that prevent formalizing collaboration with some institutions;

– policy makers who often remain distant;

– the actions of lobbies that do not have the LT process as a priority.

Suggestions.

Gavin Crichton would like to explore a more participatory approach, asking the audience not only to make proposals, but also to think about what they could do individually to help address the problem being discussed theatrically as well as pressuring politicians to hold them accountable for their commitment.

Gavin Crichton is thinking of including the use of smartphones during the session of Legislative Theatre to allow spectators to send their bills also during and not only at the end, showing them on a screen as they arrive, in order to make the process of choosing the bills more transparent and participatory. The Metabolic Cell or as he calls it the “Policy Rangers”, hold a lot of power and he would like them to interact more with the public by facilitating a dialogue between decision makers and the public that leads to collaboration to create new policies together. 

For “Gender Equity Rules: Creating an Equal Society for All”, Internet use played a key role in educational components of the project and engaging a broader audience beyond the live sessions:

• Social media platforms were used extensively to share performances, podcasts, campaign materials, and invitations to public events. 
• Podcasts were published on appropriate platforms, and the project’s website, making them accessible to a broad online audience, particularly targeting young people. Each podcast episode was shared with educational institutions and youth centers via digital channels.
• A dedicated web page hosted all project materials, including educational toolkits, legislative proposals, a research article, and links to recorded performances and interviews.
• An email outreach campaign was conducted, distributing the educational tools and podcast links to about 200 addresses, including NGOs, policymakers, educators, and media representatives.
  In the follow up project they are collaborating with media outlets for recording parts of the performances or discussions.

Zavod Bob, CAA Transformator and others insist on the importance of not focusing only on in-person theater, which can limit the reachable audience, therefore suggesting both to also use the online dimension, and to combine the theatrical path with other initiatives: campaigns, debates, press conferences and digital products such as podcasts, video testimonials, etc., also involving politicians and journalists. 

• CAA Transformator has produced 8 podcasts on the topic of gender violence and related laws, interviewing experts and activists and survivors. The podcasts have made knowledge of the laws accessible to many and stimulated a broader discussion of the issues raised in the Legislative Theatre. They suggest not to limit the action to changing the laws, but to adapt it to the local context and also aim at raising awareness and empowering communities. In order to achieve systemic change, projects need to complement grassroots activism with structured lobbying and media support.

• TONYC accompanies the Legislative Theatre process with organising ACTIVISM SESSION. For instance in the Housing Circus (not analysed in this compendium) project in New York, related to housing they followed by a participatory budgeting session. 
• Additionally, Voices of Community Activists and Leaders (VOCAL-NY) led a session on the basics of Community Organizing, promoting leadership development and engagement. During this session, actors, audience members and TONYC staff decided to hold a press conference on the steps of City Hall to support advocacy being done to raise the age of youth housing from 21 to 25 and improve caseworker training and oversight in youth shelters. Actors performed poems and excerpts from the Ali Forney Center and Fortune Society Troupes.

• In the Bric project, (not analysed in this compendium) TONYC organised 3 INDEPENDENT SESSIONS:

• SHARE IT: IMMEDIATE ACTION. The “Share It!” session was designed for people who needed to leave and can take quick action to support the proposals. People were given the option to: (1) Sign a Letter of Support for the policies created during the event that TONYC would mail to the Chair of relevant City Council Committees and (2) Tweet at the Chair of the Relevant City Council Committee with the policy proposals. 
• REHEARSE IT: LONG TERM ACTION. The “Rehearse It!” The session was set up to give people the opportunity to (1) practice talking to strangers about the proposals from the play they watched (2) identify self-interest of others and (3) practice talking to people they know and elected officials about the proposals. 
• DESIGN IT: LONG TERM ACTION. The “Design It!” session was designed to create an outline for possible artistic protest and awareness campaigns around the proposals.

• TONYC also organises annual festivals where they invite different stakeholders to attend and watch different Forum Theatre performances prepared in the current and past projects. For instance in 2017 they held the 5th Annual Legislative Theatre Festival; it was the largest in the TONYC history taking place over the course of three days in May and spanning three boroughs. Each Festival day ushered in a newly devised and performed play by a different acting troupe. This expansion was implemented with the goals of providing more opportunities to engage with Legislative Theatre and make the events more borough specific.

• In “Status Quo at The Labor Market”, workshops and capacity-building sessions were organized to educate participants on labor laws, legal rights, and advocacy strategies. These sessions empowered young workers with the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in labor rights activism. 

Moreover, public interventions played a significant role in raising awareness beyond traditional performance spaces. These interventions included street theatre, direct action performances, and artistic disruptions in public spaces, engaging passersby in spontaneous discussions about precarious work.