Exploring Domestic Violence Issues and Resolutions Through Epic Theatre and Forum Theatre: The Good, the Baddesse and the Ugly

Confronting, responding to and interpreting domestic violence remain challenges, despite current efforts to mitigate and manage this problem and to understand and support victims and perpetrators. The UWI Department of Creative and Festival Arts presented Baddesse as its student production in April 2019. The production employed an epic theatre (Brecht in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Methuen, London, 1964) and a forum theatre (Boal in Theater of the Oppressed. Pluto Press, London, 1979; Boal, Theater of the Oppressed. Theatre Communications Group, New York, 1993) approach and a critical pedagogy perspective (Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed [Pedagogia Do Oprimido]. Translated by Myra Ramos. Herder and Herder, 1970, 1993) to narrate and dramatize the multifaceted experiences of victims and perpetrators. It invoked audience participation and evoked human compassion and revulsion. It promoted individual and community-level dialogue about mediating and negotiating related emotions and approaches to conflict management and communication. It did so within contemporary cultural and social contexts. It dared the audience and the participants to confront the genesis, development and consequences of domestic violence. It explored what happens when a vigilante group of female activists intervenes in an effort to bring about social justice and restorative justice. It presented options for resolution and healing behaviour for the victims (including their survivors) and the sometimes unwitting and intentional perpetrators, and invited the audience to choose. This chapter describes and interrogates the use of epic and forum theatre. It explores the issues and implications related to using epic and forum theatre in confronting, coping and resolving this socially stigmatic, traumatic and often misunderstood and mismanaged human tragedy. It confronts the good, the baddesse and the ugly and demonstrates how communication and community participation and activism through epic and forum theatre can contribute meaningfully and positively to understanding the many faces of domestic violence and possibilities for dialogue, intervention and resolution.