Abstract
The chapter focuses on the theatrical, transrational, transpersonal and elicitive approach to Conflict Transformation and its interwovenness with Wolfgang Dietrich’s and the author’s (Armin Staffler’s) stories. It tells about obvious and hidden resonances of interaction on a stage that is called a chair – UNESCO Chair for Peaces Studies – and beyond (backstage, as the author might say). The text reflects on the history of theatrical moments since the first semester of the MA Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation when a few games and exercises of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed were facultative during a hike into the Tyrolean mountains and the time when David Diamond’s Theatre for Living became an integrative part of the program until Wolfgang Dietrich came to re-write William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the last volume of the Many Peaces Trilogy.
“Theatre shows that every story from somebody else is also my story. So nothing is foreign to me anymore, nobody is an alien.” Jeanette Yaman-Rehm after Wir und die Anderen (Us and Them – 16 May 2014, Vorarlberg, Austria)
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Notes
- 1.
Eng. Theatre of the Oppressed as Contribution to the Cultures of Peace on the Example of Forum Theatre in the Field of Prevention of Addictions (unpublished thesis).
- 2.
- 3.
He used to write this at the end of all his emails.
- 4.
The year 2000 was designated to be the International Year for the Culture of Peace. The plural is a reference to Wolfgang Dietrich’s “Call for Many Peaces” (Dietrich and Sützl 1997) that also resonates with the title of my thesis – there cannot be just one Culture of Peace.
- 5.
I’m not there (2007), directed by Todd Haynes, USA. Six actors play Bob Dylan: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw.
- 6.
Das Fest des Huhnes (1992) (Eng. The Chicken Feast), directed by Walter Wippersberg, Austria.
- 7.
David Diamond is the Artistic Director of Theatre for Living based in Vancouver/Canada. Theatre for Living is a descendent of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. See also David Diamond’s (Chap. 17) in this book. Augusto Boal gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the MA Program for Peace Studies in Innsbruck in 2005 and David Diamond taught there for the first time in 2012 at the tenth anniversary of the Peace Studies Program.
- 8.
Writing this now sounds quite banal but at the time it was really revolutionary for me.
- 9.
Eng. Research on Developing Countries: Conflict Region East Africa.
- 10.
Eng. Fiesta – Beyond Development, Aid and Politics.
- 11.
Between 1995 until 1998 Dietrich was the director of the European Peace University in Stadtschlaining.
- 12.
In order to get to know more about Theatre for Living see also David Diamond’s (Chap. 17) in this book.
- 13.
“Gespräche, bei denen es nach echter akademischer Tradition weniger um die Verteidigung von Positionen geht als um die Suche nach neuen Annährerungen an die Wahrheit (oder Wahrheiten, note of the author) und um die Entdeckung unbekannter Kontinente jenseit des Horizonts” (Original in German, Kohr 1993, 296).
- 14.
“Das Ziel menschlichen Daseins sei es, seinen Ort in der Welt zu finden” (Original in German, Dietrich 2008, 10).
- 15.
“(…), dass das trennende Andere nur in der Vorstellung existiert” (Original in German, Dietrich 2011, 257). Dietrich refers to a theorem in Gestalt Therapy.
- 16.
Ger. Das Theater gibt eine Vorstellung.
- 17.
Ger. Das Publikum bekommt eine Vorstellung.
- 18.
Rainbow of Desires is the title of a book by Augusto Boal (1995) and the umbrella term for a range of exercises, games and techniques on how to use theatre to analyze and respond to conflicts within ‘non-oppressive’ relationships and/or ‘internalized oppression’ and to seek better understanding of the on-going dynamics. It is also the name for a more specific technique that I refer to in the following section.
- 19.
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Staffler, A. (2018). Could You Do What You Are Writing About?. In: Echavarría Alvarez, J., Ingruber, D., Koppensteiner, N. (eds) Transrational Resonances . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70616-0_2
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