Activity: Role Play Creation and PlayThis is a featured page


Purpose:To use role play creation and staging to increase participants' understanding of the personal dimension of conflict and change.
Participants:This activity works better with large groups (20-30 participants), but you can facilitate it with a minimum of 5-6 participants.

Time: For Part 1 ca. 90-120 minutes. The process for sharing situations of conflict in small groups could be accomplished in an hour, although you should not downplay the potential learning and effort to describe a conflictive situation and even the therapeutic aspect of sharing with others the elements of personal experience.

For the second part: Staging the conflict, analysis in groups, as well as the plenary discussions can take 90-120 min.

Materials:
  • Flip-chart papers;
  • Markers;
  • Paper and pens for participants.
Process:Part 1: Role play creation

1) Divide the plenary into small groups. Ask each person in the groups to think about and then describe to their group a conflictive situation that they have been aware of, have witnessed, or in which they were participants. Allow at least 30-40 minutes for sharing.

2) Ask each group to choose one of the cases to present back to the plenary. The criteria for choosing might include: situations that would be interesting for the rest of the group to work with in the sense that they include substance with regards to the personal and relational dimension of conflict; situations that represent typical patterns or problems; situations that lend themselves to dramatisation with clearly identified parts to be played.

3) Each group is asked to present a brief description of the situation chosen, giving it a name like "the land dispute". The plenary now selects the most interesting case by casting a vote. They can write the name of the role-play on a small piece of paper. Encourage participants to not vote for their own conflict story. Then count votes and assign task to the group selected and the remaining participants:
  • The selected group's task is it now to develop their case into a role play and prepare to stage it. The group can be asked to write down their role plays, but if you work with participants from predominantly oral cultures, this is not neccesary (and could take fuel out of the creative process). Allow at least 30-40 minutes for that.
  • The remaining participants are asked to repeat what they have learned about the personal and relational dimension so far and get prepared for their role as analysts of the staged conflict. What are the questions and aspects that you need to focus on when analysing the conflict that is staged? (see here questions for the personal and relational dimension). They can be noted on a sheet of paper that can be used when the conflict situation is staged.
Part 2: Staging and analysis

4) Let the staging group stage their conflict story in a fishbowl setting, i.e. the remaining participants sit around the "stage".

5) Now (if number of participants allows) divide the analysts in two groups, one will focus on discussing the personal dimension, the other on the relational dimension. The staging group stays available for questions from the analysts. Allow for some 30 min. for the groups to analyse and note their main findings on the flipchart.

6) Have the two groups present their findings to the plenary and facilitate a discussion among the whole group. Some interesting questions might be:
  • What can we learn about how the personal and relational dimension are interlinked?
  • What challenges did you face when trying to analyse the conflict stages?
  • What could ways be to transform the situation and bring about positive change?

Note:


Handout(s):
Source(s): Inspired by Lederach, Jean P., Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1995, pp. 102-104.



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