Czech Theater of the Oppressed festival - Divufest 2015 - ends today

Performances by actors’ groups throughout the Czech Republic and a German partner organization, a three-day training of jokers led by experienced instructor Terry O’Leary, and workshops of the Theater of the Oppressed for advanced and beginning performers with instructors from Germany (Hamze Bytyci and Christoph Leucht) are part of the second annual festival of the Theater of the Oppressed, Divufest 2015. The workshops are free of charge and interpreted into Czech.

The festival this year is being held in Prague from 26-28 November. The concept of the Theater of the Oppressed was created during the 1960s by Brazilian theater-maker Augusto Boal, and was pioneered in the Czech Republic by Lenka Remsová of Masaryk University in Brno.

Three years ago, this form of theater began to be developed in Prague by Dana Moree and Líza Zima Urbanová, who decided to enrich the concept by involving a mixed non-Romani and Romani group of actors. "Today, when winners are the ones being privileged, people’s oppression is not usually discussed, because the oppressed do not emerge from situations of oppression as victors. The Theater of the Oppressed attempts to get rid of the taboos around discussing oppression. Audiences can attempt to prevail over oppression and fantasize about how not to give up. When they next encounter such treatment from those around them in reality, they won’t put up with it and may be able to be more genuinely themselves," Moree has said of the concept.