Opportunity to directly support our new campaign!

Join us in sparking up TO programs throughout the Bay Area

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is a collective practice for understanding power, strengthening community, and rehearsing change. It brings people most directly impacted by injustice into shared spaces of inquiry and action—where lived experience becomes analysis, and imagination becomes a tool for strategy. In a moment shaped by overlapping crises—genocide, climate disruption, displacement, state violence, environmental harm, and widening inequality—we need approaches that help people think, feel, and act together across difference.

TO was developed by Augusto Boal during the Brazilian military dictatorship as a way for people to think collectively about power, dignity, and agency at a time when public dialogue was deeply constrained. As democratic norms feel increasingly fragile in the United States, these participatory practices offer timely tools for reflection, connection, and shared problem-solving rooted in community experience.

At Partners for Collaborative Change, Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) aligns deeply with how we work. Everything we do seeks to create the conditions for those most affected by an issue to generate their own strategies and actions. Methods such as Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, and Rainbow of Desire (with links)—have informed, and been woven into our workshops, trainings, and community practice for many years. These tools allow groups to surface hidden dynamics, test responses to real-world challenges, and build shared understanding that can inform organizing and advocacy.

Years ago, PFCC hosted a Theatre of the Oppressed troupe and a more robust program of continuous community workshops. As communities across the Bay Area confront ICE raids and detention, climate impacts, environmental health crises, and deep uncertainty about the future, there is renewed interest in this work. These funds will support community-based TO devising, facilitation skill-building for a cohort of organizers, and exploration of what it would take to re-establish a strong, accessible Theatre of the Oppressed program across the Bay Area. We also plan to offer online opportunities that allow people beyond the region to participate and learn.

Theatre of the Oppressed was originally practiced in streets, community centers, and movements. In the U.S., it has too often been confined to universities or costly workshops. Your donation helps us make this work widely accessible again—supporting participatory, embodied, and strategic spaces where people can think together, practice solidarity, and respond to the crises of our time.

Why Theatre of the Oppressed?
Because it turns lived experience into collective analysis and action. TO helps communities surface power dynamics, rehearse responses to real challenges, and build shared strategies rooted in what people are actually living. In an increasingly virtual and fragmented world, many people are isolated—from one another, from collective processes, and from their own embodied knowledge. Through structured, participatory, and somatic practices, participants devise collective action, grounded in real connections with one another.

Partners for Collaborative Change (PFCC) is a fiscally sponsored project of Social Good Fund,

a California nonprofit corporation and registered 501(c)(3) organization, Tax ID (EIN) 46-1323531.