Journalistic Theatre with Sabrina Speranza Back to events list
Date: Thursday March 26th, 2026 from 18:30 to 21:30
Price:Standard €15.0
Price:Discounted €12.0
Venue: Cork School of Music
Newspaper Theatre has been used as a political and pedagogical tool to critically examine current events, exposing bias, power, and ideology embedded in the production of news—most notably through the work of Augusto Boal.
This workshop explores how we can use the tools of newspaper theatre within the new context of social media. It explores how this highly effective form of political theatre can be reimagined to respond to the evolving practices of digital communication and social media.
At a time when the consumption of news through printed newspapers has declined in favour of digital platforms, this workshop broadens “Newspaper theatre” to Journalistic Theatre as a term that better encompasses the expanded range of meanings and practices involved in the political act of staging the news today.
Through theatrical games and practical exercises, participants are invited to reflect on the key characteristics of digital communication and social media in the production and circulation of news, and on how these characteristics have shaped the ways people receive, interpret, and disseminate information. Alongside this, the facilitator will offer an overview of earlier theatrical approaches to staging news, outlining their creative processes and key performance elements.
Finally, the workshop presents a dramaturgical model for the collective creation of Journalistic Theatre performances. It highlights the potential of critically staging the news to develop media and political literacy, stimulate critical thinking, and affirm the power of these aesthetic and political practices to foster social justice.
About the facilitator:
Sabrina Speranza is a Uruguayan theatre maker, educator, feminist and social
activist. Since 2005, she has been working as an actress, director, and researcher at the
intersection of theatre and politics, especially in relation to Theatre of the Oppressed.
In 2007, thanks to a grant from the Culture and Education Ministry, she was able to
participate in an exchange program at the CTO (Centre of Theatre of the Oppressed)
in Rio de Janeiro, where she studied with Augusto Boal and his group. After that, she
continued developing practices with children and teenagers in contexts of social
vulnerability (street situations, imprisonment, etc.) and teaching/facilitating TO for
women and professionals involved in education. She was supported again by the
MEC to attend Muktadhara IV, organized by Jana Sanskriti in Kolkata, where she
deepened her training. Since then, she has been studying with Julian Boal about
Forum Theatre dramaturgy.
As an actress and political activist, she also created a Newspaper Theatre play that
was staged frequently for over five years, in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and
Portugal. Through these experiences, she moved toward focusing intensely on
Newspaper Theatre, authoring articles (Including two in The Routledge Companion
to Theatre of the Oppressed), participating in international and national conferences,
and developing workshops and practical research.
She is currently the Artistic Director of Descentrada Escena, a small Uruguayan
theatre company focused on the creation of theatre that challenges the dominance of
the city’s central circuit by working in decentralized spaces and alongside
communities historically excluded from cultural production. Their projects confront
urgent social issues while engaging people and audiences often left out of traditional
theatre. She is also a professor in the higher institution Drama School of Montevideo.
Where she teaches in two courses: Drama Analysis and Theatre in Prisons. She is
an active member at the Gender Commission in the Actor´s Union
The workshop proposal synthesises her research PhD in Drama and Theatre
Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her thesis title is:
‘Journalistic Theatre: a Political Approach to Staging the News in the Current Times’.
