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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents how I collaborate with young afghan refugees in Denmark in forum theatre workshops. Within the potentiality of the theatre space the participants can express longings for change and self-determination and act out glimpses of alternative futures for themselves and society.

Paper long abstract:

Since refugees are constantly at the center of public discussion, performative workshops can offer Afghan refugees a platform to experiment and challenge the stereotypes they are faced with. In this paper I present how I work with participatory theatre with young Afghans in Denmark and discuss how anthropologists in collaboration with interlocutors can challenge homogenous representations of refugees and venture beyond the boundaries of realism thus questioning the given. The principal method used in these workshops is forum theater. Forum theater was developed by the Brazilian theater practitioner and activist Augusto Boal (1979). As an ethnographic method, forum theater aims to engage participants in sharing stories of conflict and oppression through performance. I argue that participatory theater enables boldness of ethnographic voice for disenfranchised interlocutors. Within the potentiality of the theatre space afghan refugees can challenge existing structures of power and act out glimpses of alternative futures. By questioning dominant discourses pertaining to the Danish majority as well as to the fragmented Afghan diaspora (Khosravi 2018) the participants express and negotiate longings for change, inclusion and self-determination. When the participants act out important moral values on stage, they not only manifest themselves in new ways but try to show other afghans that change is possible. Experimenting with different societal roles in the potentiality of the theatre space illuminates how future-making is happening in a temporal friction shaped by ideas of self-determination and obligations towards the family and the Danish welfare state.