This past summer, Upper School Spanish teacher Julia Garner worked for a third year with two theater groups based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — groups designed to give a voice to marginalized groups in and around Rio.

Garner primarily spent her time with “Centro de Teatro do Oprimido,” which translates to Center of Theater of the Oppressed. The opportunity to work with “Oprimido” was provided to her through a Parker enrichment grant. Garner trained as a “Curinga,” or facilitator, and helped participants in the program develop skills, ideas, and scenes based around Theater-Forum, the popular performance style developed by the organization.

Theater-Forum is a system where the performers act out a scene in which an oppressed group unsuccessfully fights the oppressor in order to prompt the audience into discussing and acting out a resolution themselves.  Popular performances tend to be ones that directly relate to problems in Rio, such as violence incited by the police. Garner herself facilitated a scene about the lack of police presence in areas in Rio that require it.

As a political theater organization, “Oprimido” often uses Theater-Forum to engage members of communities in dialogues about patterns of discrimination and oppression that they witness around them. The participants also discuss and perform methods to effectively combat such mistreatment. According to Garner, perhaps the most impressive attribute of the organization is the hard work and dedication of its directors and employees, a statement that also applied to the people she worked with at another organization called “Entre Lugares Maré.”

Garner first came into contact with “Maré” two summers ago. The organization focuses on more traditional styles of theater, working with young, aspiring actors from a “favela” — an underprivileged neighborhood usually characterized by high crime rates — in the north of Rio called Maré. In contrast to “Oprimido,” “Maré” focuses on script-based theater, having its actors, often teenagers, perform classic works by both English language and Brazilian playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, William Shakespeare, and Augusto Boal, the founder of the organization.

Despite the fact that Garner’s initial work with this organization happened over two years ago,  she kept in contact with the directors of the program and was brought back this year to serve on a jury during a theater festival that was organized and hosted by “Maré.” Garner first came into contact with the directors of “Maré” during one of her annual trips to Brazil.

Why theater programs for this Spanish teacher? “I love the theater,” she said, “and I love working with young people, and the fact that I got to make that connection was very lucky.”

Through her work with “Oprimido” and “Entre Lugares Maré,” Garner has come back to Parker with ideas on how to not only further engage students in important dialogues and discussions about privilege and community in the classroom, but also with ideas on how to address themes of racial discrimination, oppression, and gang violence in Chicago.