This article examines Forum Theatre as a form of participatory communication for social change. Based on an ethnographic study of Jana Sanskriti ( JS), a Forum Theatre group working for over three decades in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, this article seeks to show how this form of theatre, developed by the Brazilian activist Augusto Boal, subverts the passivity inherent in the communicator–receiver model of the dominant paradigm by activating the critical consciousness of the spectator and triggering a process of social change through dialogue and discussion. JS has been using Forum Theatre to address some of the deeply entrenched social norms in rural West Bengal, including those related to patriarchy, child marriage, domestic violence, and maternal and child health related issues, by extending Boal’s notion of the ‘spect-actor’ to encourage the spectators to become ‘spect-activists’, who then are engaged in community-level work on social change. We suggest that this form of communication is clearly bottom-up, radically participatory, community-based and led by the oppressed, as has been advocated by several scholars working on communication for social change.

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通过论坛剧院推动社会变革：印度西孟加拉邦的Jana Sanskriti研究

本文将论坛剧院作为一种参与式交流来促进社会变革。基于对在印度东部西孟加拉邦工作了三十多年的论坛剧院组织Jana Sanskriti（JS）的人种学研究，本文旨在展示由巴西激进主义者Augusto Boal开发的这种形式的剧院如何颠覆通过激活旁观者的批判意识并通过对话和讨论触发社会变革的过程，主导范式的传播者-接收者模型固有的被动性。JS一直在使用Forum Theater解决西孟加拉邦农村地区一些根深蒂固的社会规范，包括与父权制，童婚，家庭暴力以及与母婴健康相关的问题有关的规范，通过扩展Boal的“尊重行动者”概念，鼓励观众成为“尊重行动者”，然后让他们从事社区级的社会变革工作。我们建议这种交流形式显然是自下而上的，从根本上参与的，基于社区的，并且由被压迫者领导，正如致力于社会变革的交流的一些学者所主张的那样。