Unregulated and Underpaid
Forum Theatre as central element of a series of European meetings on unregulated and underpaid labour

by Margarethe Meixner, director of S.O.G. Theatre and Board Member of the Austrian Association of Forum Theatre

They are called “a-typical” but they are not. Already one out of three labour contracts is not according to the norm. For some these labour contracts are convenient, for many, especially women, it means bad payment and no social insurance. The expansion of these types of labour goes hand in hand with the globalisation of the economy.

The Austrian Trade Union and the Labour Chamber, supported by the European Commission, initiated a series of meetings to sensitize employees council members to this matter. Apart from lectures and discussions I was invited to support this European process with the techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed.

With people affected by these developments and with the employees council members I worked out a Forum, always one day before the actual conference, where the Forum would be performed the following day. In this article I will describe in more detail the conference meeting of April 2002 in Vienna, which was attended by approx. 80 employees council members and workers representatives.

After an introduction and warm-up exercises, the audience was invited to make their own images of the issue ‘a-typical labourers’. Two men showed us very expressive images: in the first image we saw a person sitting between two chairs. The other image showed a woman waiting at home for a call, summoning her to her job.

Next, the audience could watch a scene that had been made by employees council members from Germany, France, Morocco, Rumania and Austria the day before. The language problem was solved by miming the play.

The Scene: “The chair race“
The stage is split in two: to the right the chairs of the employees of an international firm, arranged in a clear hierarchical way. Separated by a row of tables, the other side of the stage shows a number of chairs in no particular order – a symbol for unregulated labour. The mime scene starts on the side of the firm. An organisation councillor arranges the chairs and assigns the employees to their respective chairs. The working situation in the office: women sit at computers, a high working tempo is demanded. A woman goes into maternity leave, her chair is moved to the left side. A woman from middle management is fired, because the firm will ‘slim down’ from now on.

The eye shifts to the ‘a-typical’. The characters are, everyone on their own, without any communication with the others, permanently moving about. They change chairs fast. One man, his eyes stuck to the ground, changes between only two jobs during the entire play.

Two women from the ‘a-typical’ zone apply for a position in the firm. The female boss decides by flipping a coin. The woman coming out of maternity leave gives her baby into care in the ‘a-typical’ zone and returns to her working life. She has no chair of her own, though, and has to share one with a colleague of hers.

The working space gets smaller and smaller, the work rhythm gets faster all the time. More and more people from the ‘a-typical’ zone look for a job, people throng together. The boss intervenes, pushed by the organisation councillor, and sends all but three employees to the ‘a-typical’ side of the stage. With this image the scene ends. “What ideas do you have to change this situation? Anything is possible, except for physical violence.” The audience was now to move. It was invited to show its ideas for change in the second part of the performance.

Reflections and feedback
This was my first experience with joking a mimed Forum. It taught me that it can be helpful to cross language borders and ‘compels’ the actors/actresses to bring the inner part of their role even stronger to the fore.

The explosive nature of the labour market situation was expressed in a very clear manner and caused great perplexity among the spect-actors. A number of solutions were tested and discussed together. It was striking that all but one proposal for change were directed at the situation in the firm: the struggle for jobs an the effort to find mutual solidarity. “It is a mirror image of the work of employee council members” said one of the trade unionists.

The participants gave their feedback in writing: “It was comforting to see that people who don’t know each other and in part don’t even share a common language, treat each other so compassionately and dignifying, doing a professional performance.”

A female participant from Paris wrote: ”The workshop was innovative, interactive and involving, as we were invited to not only propose alternative solutions collectively, but also act them out physically (e.g. in situations that confer power/stress). The experiment turned out to be more interactive. As a representative of the European University for Labour Relations, a European network which provokes a social dialogue beyond traditional social and cultural boundaries, I was very much pleased by the innovative aspect of this seminar. In my opinion Forum Theatre can surely be a tool to overcome national barriers and enhance the dialogue about common themes, especially in the field of ‘a-typical’ labour contracts.”

Contact: sog.theater@gmx.at

translation: Ronald Matthijssen

Under Pressure 11 - August 2002