'Facing Fears' Inclusive Theater Workshop

Fear is an animal-like response that protects us as a species. There is a close relationship between fear and trauma and thus it is important to first become aware of any traumas and face them, so that they don’t become incapacitating. The workshop addresses fear through the use of theatrical and expressive techniques where our bodies, emotions, senses and imagination are brought into play. To start off on this journey, we take inspiration from the well-known Windmill chapter of Cervantes’ work Don Quixote. What would happen if one day we decided to leave behind everything known to us in order to start a new journey? Would we have the courage to face our own ‘windmills’? What tools would be ours? The important novelty to be found in this proposal is the invitation to share with us in this two hour workshop our daily experience of working in an inclusive theater company. It affords a magnificent opportunity to learn and discover as we come together with a diverse group of people, each one with different capacities and gifts, who here become our trainers, all of us brought together by the artistic process, in a safe, therapeutic and wholesome setting. The proposal originates in the actual trajectory of our company ‘Vertebradas Artes Escenicas’, as we bring our own fears to light and find ways to face and sublimate them. The workshop is participatory and aimed at empowering each person in their unique diversity, in turn contributing to the entire group or community. Both Marta Lage, member of Vertebradas, and Laura Suárez, the director, have wide experience in inclusive art and art therapy for social transformation. Laura has developed a form of the dramatic arts bringing together the main techniques of Social Theater enriched by diversity which then become a powerful tool in personal, group and social transformation.