Forum theatre by ex-gambling addicts – the Chinese family

Abstract

This paper outlines a forum theatre project with recovering gambling addicts and their family members who were themselves the actors and actresses, devising and rehearsals facilitated by artists from an educational and theatre organisation. The addicts and family members came from a local counselling service centre. The researcher in this project was interested in how empowering theatre with forum sessions could be on the recovering addicts, family and student audiences from secondary schools. During the search, the devising and performance sessions were observed, and actors and audience members were interviewed. We found that both actors and audience expressed strong feelings that reflected their understanding and formation of personal and social identities, which were very much influenced by Chinese family values.

Keywords:

• Forum theatre
• community theatre
• drama education
• applied theatre
• problem gamblers

Notes

1. The first mahjong parlour in Hong Kong was opened in 1930. In the 1950s, the colonial government banned private gambling but conceded to licence 144 mahjong ‘schools’, thus named as a way to white lie the presence of private mahjong gambling. The concession was made because mahjong was too popular an entertainment, and the magic number of 144 equals the number of tiles in a mahjong set! (Tam 2013).

2. The use of two different roles here was subject to availability, matching and accommodation of actors and actresses. When the older actress was available together with the younger actor, it became the mother; if both younger actress and actor were available, it became the wife. On some occasions the hired actor played the son or the uncle; on other occasions, the director tried to increase participation by letting a female family member play the daughter, and when she’s not available, Grace played it herself.

3. The second story addressed the trust issue of a couple in which the husband was an addict. This story was not followed up in this paper, but later was re-worked to become a longer Ethnodrama in another research project.

4. From The Analects of Confucius.