Image Theatre

In preparation for the service learning trip to Cambodia, we held an unusual training session on “image theatre”. Professor C taught our students to think of a situation, say a Hong Kong taboo, and put their bodies in such a way to present the situation. The audience is not told what it is supposed to be, and have to guess from the pose. At first, I was not so sure how our students would respond to such a task. It turned out our students enjoyed it very much, and demonstrated much creativity. They came up with very interesting poses for topics such as homosexuality, (lack of) punctuality, idol worship, drug addictions, computer game obsessions, ...

We all had a lot of fun. More importantly, we learned a lot about ways of expressing ourselves and ideas, and how to teach others doing so. This is very useful for our trip to Cambodia. Because our theme for this project is to teach the Cambodian children how to tell stories, enhanced by digital media such as photographs and videos. Hence techniques in expressing ourselves through poses and images would be very useful.

There is much more to image theatre, of course. It also involves creating movements to change the pose, or image. These images are linked to social situations and problems, and the movements are linked to solutions to social problems. And they are all part of the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, ... It is all very exciting. And all thanks to Professor C - which is another story.