A collaborative storytelling workshop by SPACE

  • Rehearsing the Revolution 

  • Be Sociable, Share:

    < Back to events

    A collaborative storytelling workshop for radical change

    Tickets available on Eventbrite


    “The spectator assumes the protagonist role, changes the dramatic action, tries out solutions, discusses plans for change – in short trains themselves for real action. In this case, perhaps the theatre is not revolutionary in itself, but it is surely a rehearsal for the revolution.” Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 1974

    The revolution starts in the imagination not on the barricades. Rehearsing the Revolution shows us how stories make the world, what our possibilities and responsibilities are in relation to the narratives around us and how we can appropriate them.

    Rehearsing the Revolution is a collaborative storytelling game, in which we can experience reality from different perspectives and truths and discover what connects us. The game is sensory and artivistic, personal and universal. The Rehearsing the Revolution game is an immersive experience working with the elements of theatre, spoken word, movement, experience design and visual arts.

    Tickets are available on Eventbrite | (€15 / €10 student price)

    Imagine Earth without us, humans. What does the planet look like? How do nature, organic and synthetic entities develop and regenerate without us? What happens to the traces and the memory of mankind? What if after a few million years the conditions become optimal and a new species in the lineage of humans occur? How does this offspring relate to other sentient beings and the surrounding? Can Earth teach the descendent to become kin?

    We believe that changes start from the inside and are convinced that co-creative art experiences can cultivate cultural shifts, make fundamental changes and collaborations possible even under circumstances when nothing else seems to work anymore.

    In Rehearsing the Revolution we want to learn to listen to the voice of the other, to people but also to other forms of life such as the animals and landscapes around us. We want to develop a new way of dialogue that helps us to dare to think in terms of connectedness rather than separation. We no longer want to avoid conflicts, but rather enter into them through the imagination, thus creating a fertile soil for resilient future stories that guarantee the growth of the quality of life. From the awareness that the narratives we create now will soon determine the reality of our (great) (grand)children, we want to take responsibility for the future.
    Mechanisms such as long-term thinking, fighting polarization, not avoiding conflict, empathizing with others, discovering what binds us together and balancing individual and collective interests are the pillars of the cultural shift that you can experience during the performance/game.

    About SPACE
    Petra Ardai is a theatre-director, lecturer and scenario writer. She is the artistic director of the Amsterdam and Budapest based art collective SPACE. The project Rehearsing the Revolution was launched in 2020 in collaboration with partners from Hungary, Cyprus, and the Netherlands.

    SPACE creates interactive documentary performances and immersive storytelling in diverse media. The storytelling balances on the border of fiction and reality and dissects complex social issues like migration, polarisation, inequality, ownership, and colonisation through the politics of the personal. What if that would happen to you? What would you do in that situation? SPACE proposes that in the safe space of the imagination we can learn to express our fears and dreams and (re)connect to ourselves and each other. We can get a grip on reality by playing with fiction.

    < Back to events