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Andrew Carstens

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Use Theater as a Social Development tool in rural and low resource areas to establish collective understandings of realities unspoken

I am the project leader of the La Otra Voz - Theater as a Social Development Tool in Peru.

The idea of this project is to raise funds to buy two cameras and two computers, give these resources to two geographically distinct and separate groups of adolescent girls,in domestic work in Peru, enabling them to tell their story. Working with the Lima based NGO, Asociacion Grupo de Trabajo Redes (AGTR) / La Casa de Panchita, the project will organize two weekend theater/film (following the methodologies from the Theater of the Oppressed and Augusto Boal’s work) workshops to train the girls in developing, filming, editing, and posting/sharing their interpretation of the Panchita story.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/110541?c=home&a=628657

I am by no means the father/mother of this idea, but I would like a critic and dialogue of the limitations and possibilities of this method. One of the major draw backs I have experienced is the fact to be an "established and well respected" performer you often need money. How does this change...

Can this project reach and engage enough people from the western world into the the local rural community culture attempting to be established on youtube?

One of the main issues I can see this project encountering is not enough people who are all ready interconnected and satisfied with the current media and YouTube videos offered will be uninterested in the project.

There we find the root of the problem, how do we establish an infrastructure for the development of media that does not reflect the same realities we are living? Too many people in the west are uninterested in investing in "unestablished" and "unprofessional" culture shows of the 'developing countries' The tourists want something they can understand and digest.

How do we let theater flourish naturally as a social development tool, with out underlying objectives of tourism or profit? ponder ponder ponder :)

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Topics: Culture in the age of the How to create a welcoming
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    Andrew Carstens

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    May 26 2012: What are some examples of when "storytelling goes wrong and encourages the ills it claims to be fighting"?

    How do you introduce these powerful globalized western forms and formats of storytelling, such as plays and youtube videos to communities who have their own strategies of story telling? Rather then creating a dynamic where its 'your way our the NEW modern form of story telling'... how do you create an approach that incorporates the two together, as to avoid the slow elimination of the old which does not have the capability if transmitting information as rapidly?

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