Saturday, November 28, 2009

Bárbara Santos - Kuringa (English)

Woman, Black, Mother, South American, Brazilian, Sociologist, Actress and Kuringa*, Bárbara Santos was General Coordinator at Centro de Teatro do Oprimido (Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed) www.cto.org.br , from 1994 until 2008. She had the honor to work with Augusto Boal, creator of the Theatre of the Oppressed – TO, since 1991 until May 2009.

Responsible for the conception and coordination of several projects in communities, schools, cultural centers, hospitals and prisons, at the moment she leads an international program (Brazil, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique with repercussions in Angola and Senegal) of diffusion of Theatre of the Oppressed through the training of TO-Practitioners.


As Kuringa she has worked with several community groups – youth in social risk and/or in conflict with the law; learn disable and blind people, woman victim of domestic and/or social violence, prisoners and guards – and TO-Practitioners: Human Being with different colors, cultures, religions, languages, necessities, desires and ideas. Always people who needs and wants to face the oppression, has identification with the oppressed ones or/and is engaged with social change.

Her international experience also includes Canada, US, Egypt, UK, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Switzerland, Palestine, France, Denmark, Portugal, Sudan, India, Jordan, Argentina, Spain, Netherlands, Croatia and Austria where she has been acting, leading workshops, taking part in conferences, directing forum plays and/or setting up and supervising TO groups.


*Kuringa - artist with a pedagogical function; practitioner, studious and researcher of Theatre of the Oppressed, a specialist in a constant process of learning.
Curinga is a title which comes from a creative process of acting that Augusto Boal developed in the Teatro de Arena, in São Paulo-Brasil, during 1960s. Afterwards he used the same title to identify the practitioner of his Method – Theatre of the Oppressed who has the function to stimulate the theatrical dialogue in Forum session. The literal translation into English is Joker that is also used in several languages. To refer to the Theater of the Oppressed expert in any language I chose to use the original terminology created by Boal in Portuguese but write it with K: Kuringa.

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