Past projects

STAGING HUMAN RIGHTS 2000-2005

Staging Human Rights I
Staging Human Rights II
Staging Human Rights III
Staging Human Rights IV
Staging Human Rights V

Staging Human Rights I, May 2000-Dec 2001
This project, created in partnership with People's Palace Projects, FUNAP, Ilanud, the Centre for the Theatre of the Opressed and the Secretariats of Prison Administrations and Justice of São Paulo took place in 2001 in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The project arose in response to insufficient implementation and serious violation of human rights of both prison guards and prisoners within state prisons. The project consisted of a series of activities and events that gradually established spaces for dialogue between the prison and civil society. These were human rights workshops, human rights dialogues, Public Forums, Regional Forums and State-wide Legislative Theatre Forum - Staging Human Rights.

In total, 52 Education Monitors of the prison system, employed by FUNAP undertook a 40-hour course to implement the workshops. These workshops took the form of mini-projects and were initiated in 37 prisons in which 400 female and 2,000 male prisoners participated. In the workshops, applied theatre, in particular the methodology developed by Augusto Boal's Forum Theatre was used to stage situations where human rights are violated. Scenes were developed and rehearsed which, through the language of theatre were discussed in order to seek viable means of solving the problems staged.

The Public Forums provided a platform for the scenes in the presence of the local community where, stimulated by the workshop leader, they were invited to suggest theatrical solutions to the situations presented.

Four Regional Forums took place in different towns of the State of São Paulo: Presidente Prudente, Marilia, Taubaté and Santos. The capital city was reserved for the State Forum that took place on 12th December 2001 in the Latin American Parliament.

In these pages, you will find further detailed information on all aspects of the project taken from the interim report. There exist both impressionistic and analytical assessments from prisoners, guards, education monitors, project managers and theatre practitioners together with a scientific analysis by a UN agency with expertise on Latin American prisons.

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Staging Human Rights II
Staging human rights II was the extension of the project into a further six States of the Federation: Distrito federal, Rondonia, Pernambuco, Minas Gerais, Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo. This extension allowed further dialogue on human rights both inside the prison establishment and with civil society.

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Staging Human Rights III
Staging Human Rights III was an educational theatre programme in prison that explored how human rights could be addressed and realised with the people who live and work there. During Staging Human Rights III the project entered its third phase reaching six more Brazilian states: Pará,Ceará, Alagoas, Sergipe, Goiás, and Santa Catarina.

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Staging Human Rights IV
Staging Human Rights IV took place in 2003 with female prisoners in Nelson Hungria and Talavera Bruce in Brazil and HMP Highpoint and Bullwood Hall in England. The project was undertaken by Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw and Caoimhe McAvinchey.

The workshops consisted of techniques developed over the past twenty - five years by Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw in their work with Split Britches as well as in communities of women wanting to use performance as a means of transformation. The workshops focused on self-identity, fantasy and imagination. The aim was to improve the self-esteem of the women and to help them realise another future, not necessarily a life of crime. The main philosophy behind the workshops was that if you can imagine a different way of life, you are one step closer to living it.

The project culminated in a sharing entitled 'In The House' on 23rd June 2003. Politicians, Brazilian soap stars, students, artists, community workers and the curious attended. The event was a combination of performance, installation and open dialogue on the issues of human rights, the criminal justice system and performance.

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Staging Human Rights V
Staging Human Rights V consisted of CARANDIRU, a radio play commissioned by BBC that was broadcast on Radio 3 on Sunday May 19th 2002. It was based on Estação Carandiru by Drauzio Varella, translated by Paul Heritage and adapted by Jeff Young. Directed by Kate Rowland. Associate Producer, Paul Heritage.

Estação Carandiru tells the story of a doctor in the largest prison in Brazil. In 1989, Dr Drauzio Varella began working voluntarily in the House of Detention in São Paulo. Ten minutes from the centre of the city, Carandiru takes its name from the metro stop in the centre of this neighbourhood. The name comes originally from the Indians, but Carandiru summons up only one image now: a prison in which nearly 9,000 men are held captive.

Constructed in the 1920s, Carandiru is made up of 7 pavilions, each one with five floors. Each corridor stretches for over 100 metres. In Pavilion Five alone there are over 2,000 prisoners, seven times as many as were held in Alcatraz. The prisoners pass their day in the open air of the prison yard, only locked up in their cells at night. To know what happens behind the massive cell doors, you have to open them. And that is what Dr Varella does in his account of ten years working in AIDS treatment and prevention with the prisoners of Carandiru.

Shown on British television screens in February 2001 when inmates from nine prisons in São Paulo prisoners took five thousand hostages in one day, Carandiru is most infamous for the day in 1994 when guards killed 111 prisoners in two hours. But Estação Carandiru is not a denunciation of an antiquated and abusive system. It is an account of the personal relationships that Drauzio Varella formed with prisoners and guards over a decade of work. Through Varella we meet the fathers, sons, lovers, murderers, travestis, prostitutes, guards, and people with AIDS who inhabit the city in miniature that Carandiru has become. It doesn't matter what crime they have committed or the length of their sentence. They are all subject to the rule of law that operates in the prison. Estação Carandiru tells the stories of these people. It is a chronicle about ways of life and death.

CARANDIRU, the radio play, was recorded on location in Carandiru in March of 2002.

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