Playing with Fire: Using Forum Theatre to Research Social Conflict in the Aftermath of 2019 Bolivian Wildland Fires

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In 2019, Brazil experienced more than 72,000 wildland fires, which represents a staggering 84 percent increase from the previous year. The burning of the Brazilian Amazon continues to be the subject of much international attention. Less visible, however, has been an equivalent environmental crisis unfolding in neighbouring countries in South America. In 2019, for example, NASA estimated that Bolivia had a burned area similar in size to Brazil, but in a country eight times smaller. The total burned area was over 5 million hectares, five times greater than the previous year and the largest area burned over the past 20 years. Wildland fires are having devastating socio-economic and environmental implications in rural Bolivia. The Chiquitania region, an area in the Eastern part of the country that hosts one of the largest and better preserved dry forests in South America, has been particularly affected by the recent fires. Here, the exceptional devastation of recent fires, especially on protected areas and indigenous territories, have exacerbated tensions among local communities (indigenous peoples, migrant peasants, ranchers, Mennonites) with different ways of living and using the land and natural resources. This project aims to advance local and international public debate on the complexity and urgency of wildland fire crisis through the creation of research-derived artistic work. We deploy a community theatre approach as a conflict mitigation tool to facilitate critical dialogue within and between different rural communities in Bolivia's Chiquitania region. We draw on a popular community theatre methodology called Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) (Boal 1974) to create a Forum Theatre play with members of different local groups animating their lived experiences of the wildland fire crisis. This play will then travel, to be performed in four fire-affected communities. Forum Theatre is a theatrical form in which spectators (reframed as spect-actors) can physically enter the theatrical 'fiction' to make an intervention that might lead to a different outcome. Our objective is to bring people from different social groups into (potentially tense) dialogue and to create an uneasy sense of incompleteness that seeks resolution through real action off stage.This project will document for the first time the application of TO methods to a wildland fire crisis. It will focus on complex situations of oppression stemming from inter-community conflicts involving multiple dimensions: cultural and ethnic stigmatisation, incompatible livelihood strategies, political competition, relationships to the natural environment. We will develop an innovative approach to understand the linkages between multiple dimensions of oppression and how these are reflected in a major socio-environmental crisis such as the one provoked by wildland fires. The research team will follow alongside the travels of the play to record audience interventions and to interview key actors in local communities to glean a fuller understanding of issues and experiences. The creation and performance of the play will be recorded and, drawing on the individual and collective journeys of the project participants, a documentary film and a photography exhibition will be created. Visual arts will become, in this context, powerful means to engage with national and international audiences in order to enhance public awareness and debate on the complexity of wildland fire emergency. A photo and video exhibit will tour several major Bolivian cities, international festivals and academic conferences and will also be available through the project website. These will thus encourage continued reflection on wildland fire crisis beyond the scope and duration of the project.