Care: A Theatre of the Oppressed Festival Back to events list
Date: Thursday December 3rd, 2026 at 17:00 to Sunday December 6th, 2026 at 14:00
Price:Discounted Ticket €100.0
Price:Standard €150.0
Venue: ILAS Building, University of Galway, Ireland
CARE: A Theatre of the Oppressed Festival
Four Days of Workshops, Performances and Community engagement in Galway
The theme for this year’s Theatre of the Oppressed conference is “Care”.
What gets lost when our society values money and productivity over people and the planet? Who and what slips through the cracks?
This year's Theatre of the Oppressed Festival brings together artists, activists, educators, and communities in Galway for four days of participation to explore what it means to care; For one another, for our communities, and for the planet we share.
The festival includes Deep dive workshops, Short workshops and performances that examine our broken care system while we explore the pathways to building something better.
The Programme
Deep Dive Workshops Choose to spend extended time in practice with either Sabrina Speranza (Newspaper/Journalistic theatre) or David Grant (Rainbow of desire), exploring their specific approaches to Theatre of the Oppressed and how we can interrogate our “Care” systems.
Sabrina Speranza Deep Dive: 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.
David Grant Deep Dive: Augusto Boal developed Forum Theatre to address External Oppressions; in the workplace, at home or in the street. His Rainbow of Desire technique emerged as a response to Internal Oppressions - those that happen in our heads. When we have to make a decision, when we're feeling under pressure, when there are many options in our head, how do we find the balance between them? Augusto Boal's Rainbow of Desire technique provides a way of organising the array of ideas that can live together within us. In this workshop, participants will use Image Theatre to identify situations to explore together.
Three Nights of performance: One performance each evening, each grappling with a different dimension of care; interpersonal, communal, and environmental. Come prepared to watch, question, and, if you're moved to, step in and change the story.
Taster Workshops Shorter, accessible sessions led by our community sharing what we have learned and have to teach about TO.
Festival Schedule:
Thursday, December 3rd:
Pre-festival activities start from noon. Join us for a talk about Journalistic theatre with Sabrina Speranza, followed by an interactive experience with Bluedrum.
Registration begins at 4:00pm
Evening performance
Friday, December 4th:
Workshops, Deep dives and performance in the evening
Saturday, December 5th:
Deep dives, Outdoor, site-specific experience and performance in the evening
Sunday, December 6th:
Showcase of our learning
Closing reflection
Good-by after lunch
Our Facilitators
David Grant
Since working in Derry with Augusto Boal in 1992 — and again at a workshop in London organised by Cardboard Citizens in the early 2000s — Theatre of the Oppressed techniques have informed every aspect of David's subsequent work as a theatre director, community artist, teacher, and researcher.
As explored in his article "Feeling for Meaning," published in the leading Applied Drama journal Research in Drama and Education, David has a special interest in the ability of Image Theatre to transcend the limitations of verbal language, which he has used to powerful effect in workshops fostering cross-community dialogue from Sarajevo to Jerusalem, as well as in his native Northern Ireland.
He also works extensively with Boal's Rainbow of Desire technique, using it with students and actors to explore the complex range of emotions that inform pivotal moments in established theatre texts, as well as issues arising rom everyday life. As Artistic Director of Belfast's Lyric Theatre, David found it an excellent way to help school groups engage in post-performance discussion — including one particularly memorable use of a "Double Rainbow" to explore the inner lives of the two central characters in Owen McCafferty's Mojo Mickeybo, a play about a friendship between a Catholic and a Protestant boy at the outbreak of the Troubles in Belfast.
For this year's festival, David will lead a session drawing on these experiences and applying them to themes chosen by workshop participants.
Sabrina Speranza
Sabrina Speranza is an Uruguayan actress, educator, and social activist who has practised Theatre of the Oppressed since 2005. She studied with Augusto Boal at the Centro do Teatro do Oprimido in Rio de Janeiro and has trained with Jana Sanskriti in India. Her experience spans Theatre of the Oppressed work with children and teenagers in vulnerable settings, as well as facilitating TO training for educators.
Sabrina's particular focus is Newspaper Theatre, which she has renamed “Journalistic theatre” to incorporate new forms of media, including social media. She has toured an original play built on this technique for over five years across Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Portugal, bringing pressing social and political issues to life through embodied, participatory performance.
She has published a chapter in The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed and presented her work at conferences internationally. Her PhD research at the University of Birmingham explores adapting Newspaper Theatre for the digital era. Sabrina also teaches Drama Analysis and Theatre in context of deprivation of freedom, and Theatre in Prisons, at Uruguay's Drama School of Montevideo.
Sabrina is the artistic director at Descentrada Escena; An Uruguayan based theatre company aimed to build bridges, grounded in the belief that although the performing arts are a human right, access to them is not equally distributed. She has trained largely with Julian Boal.
Blue Drum is an equality-focused, community arts platform, founded in 2002 through the Combat Poverty Agency. It supports sustainable, quality, community-led arts practice in areas of high disadvantage, ensuring arts remain vital and intrinsic to community culture and development. In 2025, its international partnerships reflect institutional and international reach and quality e.g. EU Erasmus+, the European Anti-Poverty Network and the Council of Europe Faro Convention Network, demonstrating sustained capacity to operate internationally. Most recently, Blue Drum initiated Beir Bua, opening a vibrant cultural corridor between Ireland and India building a sustainable, reciprocal framework between Irish Indian communities. www.communityartmatters.ie
Blue Drum will facilitate its Soundings convening: a respectful re-connection with the lived experience of artists, arts practitioners and community leaders who were part of pioneering the pathways critical to forming creative and sustained relationships to, with and of community.
Join Us
Whether you're an experienced TO practitioner, an activist, a theatre artist, or simply someone who’s curious about how theatre can help us think in new ways about how we care for one another and the planet, then this festival is for you.
Ticket price includes meals on Thursday evening, Friday lunch and dinner, Saturday lunch and dinner, and Sunday lunch.
Accommodation is arranged separately. We will provide participants with a discount code for Dawson's hostel in Galway.
Website for more information: https://sites.google.com/view/speak-out-theatre-for-transfor/care-a-to-festival