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Katharine Means What a Riot! Response

In 2005 Mady Shutzman was invited by CalArts CAP to write a play for the teenage participants Plaza de la Raza arts center in East Los Angeles to perform. At first I was intrigued by this, as my limited knowledge of Boal and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques has been around the participatory games, activities, and techniques used to build community. I know some about Forum and Legislative Theatre, but had little conception of what a TO play would look like. Shutzman's piece, UPSET!, was modeled using Boal's Joker System. There is a character called the Joker who probes the characters and audience during the play with the "ultimate goal to raise questions, offer multiple points of view, and encourage dialogue". Shutzman used this form as a "means to incorporate the teens curiosity, dismay, outrage, confusion, fear, and inspiration in relation to the subject matter of the play within the play." The teens decided upon Rodney King and Claudette Colvin (a young African-American woman who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger nine months before Rosa Parks but did not receive the same national attention) as the historical characters they wanted to explore. These teenagers were predominantly Latinx and did not want to be cast as "poor Latinos", but "in the spirit of what the theatrical arts have to offer, they wanted a different part". Some of the methodologies Shutzman and the teenagers used to construct the piece include obviously Boal, but also Brechtian, and poplar theater techniques from the San Fransisco Mime Troupe and Teatro Campesino. It is this melding of pop culture, like the Wheel of Fortune segment in UPSET! to comment on both historical and contemporary life that I am most drawn to.

Some questions I have for Mady are:
Why in the roundtable discussion you held with the production team of UPSET! that is heavily quoted in this article were there no voices of the teenagers included?
How did you balance your desires as a playwright with the desires of the teenagers? For examole, it seemed many students expressed a desire to play a single character. How did you weigh their wants against your own?
Can you explain further what you mean by Manichean?

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