Psychology or Personality?
The Importance of Being a Joker

by Ronald Matthijssen

Schijndel, the Netherlands, November 2000. At some point I thought: we should have brought a camera and left it there for the whole week. There being this enormous school in the Southeast part of the country, where we saw the entire 7th grade population in eight performances of Pecking, a Forum about bullying. Fivehundred odd 12- and 13-year olds, displaying the kaleidoscope of desires presumably shared by most of their peers.

The Joker Question
Luc Opdebeeck and me joked four performances each and were fascinated once again by the difference in contents, energy and intensity of the spect-actor participation. We sat together for a long time after this tour-within-one-school was over, contemplating what had occurred. It all came down to the ultimate question: does Joker performance account for the difference between Forums and if so, how?
There are as many attitudes as there are jokers, and there is little specific material to resort to. Most of the jokers of Forum theatre perform in Asia, South America and Africa and hardly publish about their experiences. Maybe North American and European jokers make too much of a point of their work. We are relatively few and how many Forums do we do on a yearly basis?

The Joker Types
On the other hand: everyone who has ever been on that stage and has felt the emerging synthesis of the audience and actor spaces knows: something is happening here. But what? Some say it's charsima, either you have it or not. Others say it's an attitude, you can develop it. Also some say it's a technique, anyone can learn it. But where is the next charisma workshop?

Let's look at the way some long-time jokers have described their work. Mady Schutzman describes the joker as "director, master of ceremonies, or exegete" whereas David Diamond says: "The joker does not have to be an expert on the issues but can draw on the expertise in the room". Tim Wheeler of Mind the .... Gap adheres to the charisma theory, Iwan Brioc (Theatr Fforwm Cymru) sees it as a psychological skill. Dani Lyndersay of Arts in Action Trinidad sees herself as a facilitator without the "wild card" role, as do most of the people who use Forum Theatre in TIE (Theatre in Education).

Empowerment
But what is a facilitator? Is it a teacher? But hang on, a joker isn't supposed to teach, is she? Spect-actors should act for themselves. Still there are rules and limits. Should you stay within the boundary of the topic of the play or follow the flow of the spect-actors wherever they lead you? In Schijndel the pupils tore themselves away from our track and started working on a topic they apparently found much more interesting: sex and relationships. The actors were confused, the joker fascinated and the children concentrated. It was empowering alright, but it was not what we had intended. Or is that irrelevant?

A bonfire of desire
How does a joker deal with resistance and heckling? We've tried a whole range of solutions: let the hecklers leave the room, deal with them on stage, discussing the topic with a resistent audience, just repeat the performance because no-one will call "stop". Should a joker then try to induce analogy or should he sweep aside the model and start from scratch, introducing image theatre to find the real image he or she is faced with? Some say you are forced to do so, when the anti-model is irrelevant to the spect-actors. Augusto Boal has expressed that the primary goal of Forum Theatre is to go looking for a shared interest of an audience, a social desire of any kind.

This implies that a joker must be well aware of the possible desires that could exist within any kind of audience. He or she should also be conscious of things like group dynamics, leadership, and other aspects of thet process of decision making. This means that jokers act as interpreters of this collective process. They are like parliament chairpersons, but they can't rely on the vote to check if the direction of the discussion is the right one. They have to rely on a supposed consensus (i.e. the social desire) of the audience.

The audience is always right?
Woody Allen said: the director is always right. In this case can we say: the audience is always right, or does the joker know more than the audience, distilling the social desire and subsequently leading the way, like a Pied Piper who was handed out the flute by consensus?
All of these intricate processes have never been described or researched in full detail. I have tried to add something to the debate in my thesis (available in German on the Formaat website), but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Jokers of all countries...
I therefore challenge jokers of all countries and cultures to help gather as many views and opinions as possible. Under Pressure will contact jokers personally to get statements. The idea is to devote a special issue of Under Pressure to the Art of Joking. It could be the beginning of an interesting and necessary publication on this puzzling phenomenon.

Under Pressure 5, January 2001