Moldova To reveal the inner resources of children

4 Nov 2007 |

Chisinau, Moldova – Since May 2007, Lilia Raileanu, is organising the psychosocial activities within FACT project in Moldova. As a participatory drama practitioner, she animated special workshops with two groups of children who were showing some deficit in expression. The first group was composed of children aged between 7 and 8, and the second group with teenagers, most of them in conflict with the law. With dynamism and passion, Lilia Raileanu explains how her team, composed of animators with theatre background, could play and work with the children… Interview.

Lilia Raileanu: In the first group, we had children with very rigid level of expression. They were children with low level of success at school, and so the level of expression was really very low. For instance, one child, at the beginning of a workshop, was always aside, would sit down, would not play, would not talk, would not answer the questions… By using various methods, as for instance puppets, masks, various role plays, so little by little the child started to express… At the end of the workshop, the child could walk spontaneously through the workshop place, and would imitate various animals, or playing some roles. That was a very good achievement and visible achievement!

And also about this child, teachers were saying: ‘you know, this child, it is really helpless to work with this child, because his parents were like that, and he is really helpless…’ But through games, this child once was able to memorize eleven items! That was a game which involved memorizing various vegetables and it was in relation with other children. Of course, this information was brought to the local councils for child protection and they were all very surprised, and I think they started to reflect on the fact that a child has resources, just that these resources should be identified… Through our workshops, we try to do that! To help the child to reveal and to valorise their resources, their inner resources…

And what about the second group?

Lilia Raileanu: In the second group, they were in conflict with the law… thirteen, fourteen years children… We were applying various theatre techniques… At the beginning, the roles children were choosing were very violent! Like they would choose Sylvester Stalone or Tarzan… so they were a lot of roles that had aggressive behaviour.

At the end, participatory drama is called participatory because children are very involved in it, they came with a suggestion for the topic of the drama, they suggested what they wanted to play and on what they want to express… After some workshops, we were very surprised that they decided, for the final scene, they choose a topic which was altruism versus egoism…

It was a fairy tail with two roles: one was a person that is helping all the time other people and another character was a person that was the egoist and was avoiding to help people… So we were very surprised they chose this topic to present and to work on it on a dramaturgical level of course… So there were no much violent or aggressive roles or characters…

In general, what is the objective of social theatre?

Lilia Raileanu: I think it is expression of the child, and also dialogue and debate… Because in participatory drama, also the spectators are very active. Usually in the classic theatre, spectators come to the performance and watch, and they go away with some reflections… But they just clap the hands and go away. But in this case, in social theatre, in participatory drama, spectators are invited to express their opinion on what is on the scene… So they can come on the stage and say or show what they think about this topic…

I think it is just for everyone, but especially for these vulnerable children, yes it helps them to express their negative feelings and to reduce the feeling of solitude. Because this is already a social environment, and this social environment is safe so it is reducing the feeling of solitude, of being alone… And it is increasing the feeling of solidarity, a lot of children understand that they are not alone! There are also other children with the same feelings or with the same situation… It is a method to help the child to develop, to reduce the negative feelings, to empower the social feeling…