Methods for Social Change by Andreea-Loredana Tudorache - HTML preview

The Joker Role in Forum Theatre

-guidelines

The Joker is considered to be one of the crucial roles in Theatre of the Oppressed especially in Forum Theatre (as well as Image, Legislative and Rainbow of Desire). The Joker (or Facilitator, Moderator, Difficultator, etc.) is usually responsible for the direct management of the process of the public (including the interaction between public and actors).

The reason for naming this role the Joker is probably inspired from 2 possible sources:

• From deck cards, where the Joker is the neutral card, it doesn’t have any value in itself;
• From Tarot, where the Joker is represented by the Fool card. This card is seen to represent new beginnings, the start of a journey or new phase in life, enthusiasm, awe, wonder, bravery, optimism, self-confidence and occasionally as throwing caution to the wind.

These interpretations do in fact illustrate how the Joker role is reflected in this methodology. The Joker strives to be neutral and opens new beginnings, new roads for exploring new solutions for various problem.

The Joker has a neutral role in the process (at least as much as possible). This neutrality is reflected mainly through the fact that he/she is asking questions not stating opinions. Questions about what the public sees, what they think, if it is real or not, whether to change something or not, if the change should be kept or not, how they will use the learning and so on. The Joker certainly has an opinion about all the things discussed with the public (and also about what the public is proposing) but this opinion is not shared in order to not influence the public (or even to manipulate it). The process of finding solutions and assessing them in connection with a certain reality belongs to the public – the Joker is just a manager.

What is the Joker’s role in the process of designing a Forum Theatre Play? Usually the Joker is the facilitator of the process and provides comments and opinions in the process in equal manner to all the other team members. The Joker doesn’t have any role in the performance as the Joker is responsible for guiding both the public and the actors in the process and cannot simultaneously be one of the actors.