teatro-carcel en tiempo de peste

Teatro del Norte has been doing theatre in Oviedo prison for more than ten years. We are one of the few current experiences of this practice in Spain. Penalists, pedagogues, psychologists, certify the value and importance of this practice, but it is not possible to elevate it to a system and promote it both among criminalists and among spectators. If the confinement situation was already difficult to sustain for both inmates and prison staff, the COVID pandemic has made things worse. Cutting off all contact with the outside world has been like becoming a concentration camp. At the request of the educational body we have been able to break the isolation by taking all the precautions, and adapting the theatrical practice to the new situation. The previous experiences that we have successfully carried out with European projects have stimulated us to generate this project, with three objectives: to break isolation, to update our methodology with the appropriate training, to create the bases for a European network of prison theatre. We have followed with interest the work of the Italian partner and the German partner in relation to the use of cinematographic techniques and Internet dissemination.

We wanted to achieve a strong impact on society, using the expressive techniques available, to make it concerned about the problem of the penal system used in Europe, with regard to the tragic issue of relapse: around 70% of prisoners in many of our countries, as soon as his sentence ends, he commits a crime again and goes back to prison. Certainly, theater does not solve the problem but it can give a voice to those who do not have it, a cultural education to those who have not been able to obtain it, and not only to the prisoners but to their families, their children, who pay with social stigma. a crime they have not committed. On the other hand, at a time when the idea of ​​Europe has been widely denigrated from various strata of society, the fact that the inmates of European prisons, with a single voice embodied in the spectacle broadcast on social networks, will be shocking and social channels, assume the importance of a united Europe. Almost an evangelical idea, that the last become the first. And that all this happens at the time of the plague will give you a lot to think about. During this time everyone has been able to feel the meaning of the confinement.

Experimentation laboratories. There had been four, one in each of the penitentiary theaters that make up the Association. In these laboratories, each member will be able to learn the methodologies in use, problem solving, the impact obtained in the prison in which they are used, how to implement relationships with the management and educational structure of prisons. Also, how each partner has been able to transform their own practice in times of pandemic The production of the show: The association will produce a show on a common theme that each prison theatre will combine according to its own poetics, but following a common dramaturgy that will be elaborated during the first part of the project. It will be in the form of a musical, with texts reduced to the essentials and enriched with the literatures of the countries that are part of the association. The musical and vocal aspect will be fundamental. We don't know what it will be like, of course, but we already know that it will have a strong prologue and epilogue. The shows naturally involve intense didactic and pedagogical work, which are the axis of Erasmus +. You learn by doing, and you learn much more than you teach.

The realization, for the first time in Europe, of a theatrical opera created, produced and performed simultaneously by the participants of the theatrical workshops that each partner operates in the prisons. -the improvement of the capacities of theatre operators in prisons in carrying out their activities, through methodological confrontation at European level (in the case of many partners, lacking other experiences at national level, this is the only one possible) and the teaching/learning/training process that will lead them to the common spectacle, -the improvement of the social competences acquired by the participating interns directly as actors and indirectly as spectators in a project that will see them protagonists of spectacular action at European level, -the improvement of the operational capacity of the partner organisations. -influence the necessary paradigm shift of prisons in Europe, moving from the concept of "monitor and punish" described by Michel Foucault, to a European prison system worthy of the name focused on humanization, education and reintegration. In particular, we hope to achieve the following: - Share with the partners the modalities adopted to deal with the difficulties related to the implementation.