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Theatre from the Passage

As children we learned how to live... through playing theatre. We learned to understand the world... through playing theatre.

Theatre introduces the most powerful language of expression with the greatest creativity, the simple reason being that it combines all artistic languages: theatre means words, movement, colour, music, reality and dreams, emotions and ideas… As children we learned how to live … through playing theatre. We learned to understand the world… through playing theatre.

“Theatre is something we watch, that’s right, but it is also something deep within us, inside each one of us: we are the theatre ourselves! It has been our language of expression since the moment we were born.”
Augusto Boal

Theatre from the Passage is a professional community theatre which, one of a kind in Slovakia, works with mentally handicapped people. Its activities combine the cultural, the artistic and the social. It has been working in the city of Banská Bystrica since 1995.

Theatre from the Passage is a community theatre which involves groups of people in need of real help. It is a theatre of the oppressed and was designed and created to help fight against oppression of the weak and the sensitive and to transform the society which has been responsible for this oppression.

The Theatre embraces members of various marginalised groups – mentally handicapped actors, refugees, Roma communities, and physically and sensorially handicapped people.

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In order for any community theatre to be founded, a group of people with common awareness of the world must surface – that is with common moral, social and, also to a certain extent, artistic awareness. Such a group can then form a functional community where all members believe in what they are creating together. Creating community art means walking around the country with your eyes open and meditating on it with an open heart. It means meeting people that we don’t even understand but because of which we must learn to overcome the ever new limitations of our resources and discover new ways, ideas and concepts.

Since its establishment, the Theatre has put on 14 performances, made a full-length film (From a Diary of a Carriage), made 4 television documentaries, for three years organised an international theatre festival of community art and participated in international festivals, theatrical exhibitions and workshops in Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Portugal, France, Slovenia and Austria. The Theatre helped to establish two nonprofit sister organisations – a Day unit and the sheltered housing DOM. The organisations are interlinked and not one of them could exist without the other two.

The Theatre’s actors come to work at eight every morning and rehearse a new performance or work on their own development – they develop their artistic and character gifts through an educational system which has been working along side the Theatre for 8 years. These educational activities are closely related to the rehearsal process, they build on each other thematically and affect one other. A creative team of professional artists, colleagues and friends of the theatre gets together for each new performance.

The Theatre has developed into a professional artistic company made up of special needs actors. Besides an artistic statement, the Theatre’s performances also carry powerful human messages.

Theatre from the Passage is a professional community theatre which, one of a kind in Slovakia, works with mentally handicapped people.

By Divadlo z pasáže
Photo: Divadlo z pasáže