Righteous Ridiculousness: A collective exploration of how to combine Theatre of the Oppressed and absurdist performance techniques

Throughout 2024 Huge Sillytoe worked on an Arts Council England funded project to investigate innovative combinations of Theatre of the Oppressed techniques and queer-dadaist-absurdist performance practices whilst forging new connections between socially engaged arts communities working in the UK and across Latin America. A major part of this project was undertaking an investigation at CTO Rio: The Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro into how the traditionally rigidly structured and rational practice of Theatre of the Oppressed might combine with the more often wildly unordered and proudly illogical practice of dadaist and queer performance lineages. As a product of this process and part of their (auto)ethnographic artistic research methodology, Huge Sillytoe created a series of workshops at CTO Rio animating questions of how oppressive sociopolitical realities of violence, inequality and xenophobia may be combatted with humour, play, silliness, and fabulous nonsense. These sessions of facilitated improvised play have since been repeated in numerous locations across Brazil, Colombia, and the UK.

Photos: Gabriel Horsth.