Building Community Through Theatre
Theatre inspires collaboration: inviting community to share stories, build confidence, co-create and advocate for the change they want to see on and offstage.
Community Acting Together
Learn ways to safely and positively transform community low-level violence using theatre.
What is Community Acting Together (CAT)?
- Collaboration between the Community Development Framework, Branch Out Theatre, Community Mediation Ottawa with funding from Crime Prevention Ottawa.
- Using popular theatre methods to build people's skills (or capacity) to address low-level violence (ie. constant street harassment, intimidation, retribution, common assaults, incidents linked to the drug trade) in neighbourhoods by developing understanding and strengthening relationships among neighbours to positively and safely respond
What did we do?
- Trained participants in facilitating popular theatre workshops and learning how to use Forum Theatre. Forum Theatre plays present worst-case scenarios and invite the audience to step into the action of each scene to rehearse how to transform conflict, in our case specifically-low-level violence.
- Co-created three short Forum Theatre plays that were used in neighbourhood workshops and combined into a city-wide full production.
Participants experienced increased:
Understanding of the experience of low-level violence in neighbourhoods
Engagement and skills to address low-level violence
Confidence to safely and positively intervene in low-level violence situations.
What participants say...
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Check out the scenes from our Community Acting Together play:
These Scenes include interventions suggested by our spect-actors-audience members, from three Ottawa performances. We hope these interventions are helpful and inspiring!
Note: Videos include worst case scenario examples of low-level violence followed by suggested positive and safe solutions.
Community Building: Promoting A Community Where Everyone Belongs
Racial Profiling: How To Address Racism From Police And Build Community
Substance Overuse and Parenting: Identifying the problems and working together to find solutions
Discrimination in the Classroom: How to Address it from a Teacher and Student’s Perspective
Home Takeover: How To Equip Seniors with Tools and Resources to Feel Safe and Supported
Drug Dealing: How to Stand up to Peer Pressure and Find Safety in One’s Community
Facing Intimidation: How to Find Safety in the Community
Check out the resources to facilitate a 2 hour or 4 hour workshop in your neighbourhood. We hope you'll give it a try!
*For more popular theatre facilitation training, please contact: info@branchouttheatre.com
Additional resources used by Community Acting Together
Crime Prevention Ottawa:
Theatre Resources:
Our Partners
