The Easy Way Out play uses the format of legislative theatre. It was devised throughout three workshops, with performers who have previously worked with us, along with a few newcomers. We have gathered the feedback of various audiences to articulate our proposals to the government. We have used social media in the form of an Instagram advocacy campaign, and facilitated a public discussion/roundtable including participants from civil society, the academic field and politics, some of them also members of the Roma community.

Adaptation of the Forum-theatre model to do legislative theatre

In my personal view, the difference between forum theatre and legislative theatre lies in the type of action that we are encouraging the audience to take, together with us. I see theatre of the oppressed in general as a tool for rethinking the structures of society around us. For a play to be a TO play, it needs to deal with a case of injustice that is rooted in the ways society works, on any level – from the problem of cyberbullying (where the context that allows the possibility of the children to weaponise Internet arises from society’s clear preference for cruel, shock-inducing stories that produce large emotions, and the desensitization of the people in general to the humanity of others outside our ever smaller in-groups), to the brutality of the EU regime that is responsible for daily cases of beatings, torture, theft and deaths on the Union’s outside borders. In all these cases, there is a power system that is either sanctioned by the state and/or tolerated in society, and there is an expectation that there will be real-life actions after the play. Many plays performed in the form of forum theatre do not challenge the system, instead, they deal with individual problems. Those plays can be very empowering to individuals, amazing pieces of art, or a helpful educational tool, and they have their place (I have facilitated numerous workshops that have produced such plays); however, in my opinion, a true TO play needs to tackle a larger, structural question, otherwise it stays in the realm of activism, to use Freire’s term, where in the worst case scenario it ends up helping maintain the status quo.
Once in the realm of TO, when we do engage with a larger issue in society, we can do it in two ways: by collaborating on implementing or fixing the policies that follow the basic political values of a society, or by building power to go against the unjust politics that are in the base of the system. In both cases, forum theatre must serve as a base, but only for the first one — working with policies — I see the role of the legislative theatre. In the second case, legislative theatre (or any kind of advocacy, campaigning etc) feels like a lost battle: we need different kind of organising and the true power of forum theatre. The work on the access to education for Roma children fits nicely in the legislative theatre niche, as Croatia is following, at least on paper, the main principles of children’s rights: non-discrimination, cultural rights of minorities, etc. This made it possible to build an advocacy campaign based on those principles and to use the play to make the children and their parents aware of the rights they already have (if only on paper). On the other hand, a play like Golden Girl by Jana Sanskriti, maybe the largest active forum play, that has been played countless times in India and abroad, is a good example of the power of forum theatre that is creating change by changing the fabric of the society, by subverting the basic power structures of patriarchy.
If we want change rooted deep in the system – confronting patriarchy, capitalism, and statism – legislative theatre is not a good tool. It is, however, extremely important in cases where we agree with the ruling politics, and we want to push for the implementation of existing laws, or for the creation or change in laws that are generally in line with the basic shared values.

The role of the Joker and what is asked to the audience during legislative-theatre sessions

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 then 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.