Community Art » theatre and prisoners

Over the past few years, there have been a number of exciting ad-hoc performance projects involving inmates in the Netherlands and Belgium. Jos Zandvliet and Lotte van den Berg are names that come to mind. In places like Chile, South Africa and the UK, theatre in prisons is already quite developed. At the University of Manchester it is even possible to do a Master’s degree in the subject.

Teatro Pasmi (Chile) meets Dutch Escape Artist Jos Zandvliet

On 16 March 2007, at CAL we filmed an animated conversation between Ivan Iparraguirre from Chile and Jos Zandvliet from Holland. Ivan is the founder of Teatro Pasmi, an avant garde theatre collective from Santiago that has been working in Chilean prisons for more than six years. Jos Zandvliet was one of the original founders […]
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Offenders’ Theatre Symposium, Durban (SA) 10 - 14 March 2008

In March 2008, The Community Art Lab helped sponsor the participation of Rustom Bharucha in a symposium on offenders’ theatre held at the Westville Medium B Correctional Centre in Durban, South Africa. In the event, staff from the university of KwaZulu-Natal participated along with staff from the Department of Correctonal Services, international experts and male and female offenders and ex-offenders. The aim of the symposium was to generate a number of recommendations for integrating theatre arts in the personal development and rehabilitation of offenders. This report includes unique video footage.
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Inspired speech by the late Augusto Boal
webcast

On 11 January 2008, Augusto Boal officially opened the new studio of Formaat Work Place for Participatory Drama in Rotterdam with an exciting speech about his past and current work in and outside Brazil. In this video, Boal talked about his work in prisons and with the handicapped.Boal started working with the Arena theatre in […]
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SANe The Social Arts Network (UK)

SANe is an interactive self-supporting virtual network for people interested in socially inclusive arts. It was established earlier in 2008. CAL’s Eugene van Erven met SANe initiator Matthew Taylor at a recent conference in Lund, Sweden (14-16 March 2008), where Matthew spoke about his ‘Escape Artists’, an organization that works within prisons. Click here to […]
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Spotlight 3: Development of an Art Form

This session was in essence a dialogue between dancer Hooman Sharifi and theatre maker Lotte van den Berg, who both operate on the avant-garde edge of community art.
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Arturo Morell

Arturo is a Mexican lawyer, actor, producer and theatre director. Since 1999 he has been working in prisons.
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Lotte van den Berg

Lotte van den Berg (1975) is a theatre director who favours a minimalist style with little text. Occasionally she makes theatre at the community-level, such as with inmates and guards of an Antwerp prison.
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Ivan Iparraguirre

Ivan was born in Peru, where he also received his theatre training, but he has been working in Chile for more than a decade. He is the founder of Teatro Pasmi, a group that creates its own performance but also works with residents of working-class neighbourhood and with inmates of two Santiago prisons.
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Teatro Pasmi

Teatro Pasmi (Chile) is a community-based theatre company from Santiago working with prisoners and other vulnerable groups.
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