Outreach Theater Eugene is a new applied local theater group focused on activism and social change. It hosts training workshops and offers interactive performances that support “deep empowerment, learning and dialogue,” according to Cyndi Fields, the group’s catalyst. Outreach’s first workshop will be hosted by Marc Weinblatt, who Outreach says developed and perfected Theatre of Liberation, the style of theater that Outreach embraces in its workshops and performances. Through interactive theater, the three-day workshop will feature storytelling, community building, empowerment and more. All of these will be applied to strengthen community dialogue, individual/group healing and social justice. At Outreach Theater, players and spectators share the role as an active audience. All involved are allowed to explore, analyze and transform the reality of the scene, and thus, the reality that they are living in. “Interactive theater has a way of bringing people together in a way that nothing else can, and opening up conversations that might be otherwise difficult,” Fields says. Theater experience is not a requirement, as Fields says this workshop is applicable to “anyone working toward social justice and healing for our community; activists, therapists and those already in healing professions.”
