Reflections on Adrian Jackson’s residency

with zAmya in May of 2024

By Maren Ward, zAmya’s Artistic Director

Last month zAmya had a rare and profound opportunity to spend a month with artist in residence Adrian Jackson, focused on our Forum Theatre project, Locked In. In 1991, Adrian founded Cardboard Citizens UK - a theater company in London with a mission similar to zAmya’s. Adrian shared with us his story of starting the theater in “Cardboard City” in London, so called for the boxes people lived in (“here you have tents, we didn’t have those”). “The Citz” specialized in Forum Theater, a branch of Theater of the Oppressed. The methodology associated with this movement is articulated in a series of books by Augusto Boal that have been translated into English by Adrian. These texts and their interpretations by other practitioners locally (like Jan Mandell) and nationally (like Michael Rohd) have greatly influenced how zAmya creates our work and runs our company. So…. to get to immerse in a month long study with a foundational teacher was a great gift for us as a company.

We began the residency with a three day training in Forum Theater by Adrian that we promoted through our mailing list and in targeted outreach to housed and unhoused actors, activists, and care providers. The relationships made and content generated over this weekend filtered into the rehearsal room where we worked furiously to generate a production. Ideas became improvisations became words on the page crafted by Adrian who wrote a part for all 17 of us.

“Care-fully Breaking Free”, our new Forum Theater play about public health and homelessness, debuted to 200 people at the Conn Theater at Plymouth Congregational Church three short weeks after the training!

The Forum itself was our first time as a company doing this technique and we all wished we’d had more time for it or could have done it again. In Locked In, our Forum Theatre event that preceded this work, we invited the audience to replace anyone in the scene and/or add characters. In contrast, Adrian was training us in the original Forum model which only allows replacing the protagonist, who in our case was a young queer person, newly homeless. Some audience members struggled with what felt like ‘questioning the choices” of someone who didn’t have any. A fair point. The intent here, however, is to find agency where there appears to be none. Adrian insists if you change the systemic characters, you are taking power away from the protagonist. We agreed, we could have been more clear about this intent for those unfamiliar with this form.

That said, we celebrated how audience members intervened to push back at bigotry and model different versions of care. We are now in the process of assessing what shifts we want to make to the play and what venues we want to perform it in. We want to consider a Legislative Theater event where there is enough time to move the interventions into policy design and action planning. Could we get some politicians in the audience?

The residency wrapped up as a few cast members and I traveled with Adrian to the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Florida where we shared some scenes and major takeaways from the process in a conference session, and some of us swam in the ocean for the first time. A proper cleansing of a rather intense, at times triggering and difficult, month.

The impacts of this time are still making themselves known. Adrian tested our limits and increased our capacity for rigor. Some actors are still marveling at what we accomplished and hankering for more. In addition to planning next steps for the piece, we’re starting to talk about hosting other lead TO practitioners to continue to train and build community through this work.

Actors shared some reflections:

We’re grateful to our donors for supporting this transformational experience for us.