VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

This proposal describes the main orienting principles and results of “IRROMPER” [Pt. break(ing) through], an empowerment lead, psychoeducational project within the field of theatre. This project refers to a line of post-doctoral research initiated in 2014, intersecting Theatre, Psychology and Education, in which artistic and scientific inputs and methodologies are used, to address, on a weekly basis, complex issues (mental and bodily) of a group of patients diagnosed with different psychological disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, among others). As the final part of the project got funded by the Portuguese ministry of culture (DGArtes) conditions were met for the devising and public presentation of the theatre performance “IRROMPER” which premiered in October 2021. The project aimed the empowerment and autonomy of the participants in facing a complex (and too often unsympathetic) world, and this required envisaging the participants as creative artists and placing them in the centre of all artistic decisions. A “professional” theatre dispositive was thus devised to create a collective, relational, and collaborative environment both challenging and supporting for the processes of change. As a departing point, the text was entirely written by the participants, having been invited to create narratives about their real-life experiences and/or fictionalize life experiences through imagined characters. From the point of view of the participants, this allowed, four different levels of Self-interpretation and presentation from which everyone got to choose (or interweave): a) real self-narratives; b) fictionalized self-narratives; c) real narratives of peers; d) fictional narratives of peers.