Women in Wildfire Crises: Exploring Lived Experiences of Conflict through Forum Theatre

Abstract

Wildfires of exceptional intensity have been on the rise across the globe because of climate change and human activities (UNEP, 2022). In the Amazon basin of South America, the devastating effects of wildfires on natural ecosystems and human lives periodically attract international attention. News portraits of crises, however, tend to be short-lived. The spotlight typically shifts once the emergency has passed and rarely is there an attempt to know more about the ordinary strategies and organising of women and men living in the aftermath of crisis. This creative intervention draws on our recent work investigating the lived experiences of poor rural communities in Bolivia’s Chiquitania, a region deeply affected by wildfires in recent years. We share learning and materials from our project, Playing with Fire,1 situated at the interface of and combining Boal’s (1979, 2002) model of Forum Theatre and social science research. The aim and hope of the project were to use Forum Theatre to open up space for dialogue on the complex and entangled gendered, social and cultural politics of wildfires