MISSION
We are a community of theatre practitioners working directly with people currently and formerly incarcerated in the Washington, DC metro area to creatively reimagine the prison system as we know it. Through theatre for social justice workshops, script writing, performances, and advocacy partnerships, participants affected by incarceration are given a platform to share their stories, tackle complex issues, and lead the criminal justice reform movement.
VISION
A justice system radically reimagined
– by people directly impacted by that system
– using theatre as a tool for changing policy and social attitudes, growing community, and achieving economic
and racial justice for all people
(Photo by Manaf Azzam)
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OUR APPROACH
Voices Unbarred seeks to reimagine the entire criminal “justice” system as we know it. This includes working towards the end of mass incarceration, exploring restorative justice and other approaches, shifting disparaging narratives about people who have been impacted by incarceration, and exposing the systemic racism and intersectional systems that funnel a disproportionate amount of Black community members into jails and prisons.
To achieve these transformations, Voices Unbarred recognizes the need for a change in how activists and policymakers approach reforming these systems. At the core of Voices Unbarred’s strategy is organizing people directly affected by incarceration and centering their ideas. Voices Unbarred participants use their lived experience and learned theatre techniques to advocate for themselves and the changes they want to see in the system.
We use Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), a revolutionary art form that helps people analyze the world around them, explore social and political issues, and create solutions, to accomplish the following strategies for change:
- Organizing & Base Building
- Narrative Change
- Advocacy
- Capacity Building
- Coalition Building
- Healing from Trauma
(Photo by Ryan Maxwell)
ABOUT THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED (TO)
Theatre of the Oppressed, or TO for short, is a revolutionary art form that helps people analyze the world around them, explore social and political issues, and create solutions to transform the reality in which they live. TO was developed in Brazil by a man named Augusto Boal in the 1950s and was later elaborated on in the 1970s. Boal was inspired by Pedagogy of the Oppressed (written by Boal's friend, Paulo Freire), which challenged the “banking model of education” and, instead, suggested a model where teacher, student, and society were all co-creators of knowledge. Boal took this idea and developed a series of theatrical activities and analyses that could be used to promote social and political change. In one of these activities, Forum Theatre, true stories of oppression are dramatized on stage. The audience is then encouraged to jump in and try out different ways to stop the oppression. As a community, we discuss the potential outcomes of each presented solution, both short-term and long-term, as well as how feasible it is. By playing out each solution in real time, we are rehearsing for the revolution in a safe space.
“We are all actors; being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.” - Augusto Boal