courage to dream again. You scan and divide
them into parts. I allow them to act their conflicts
of roles and help join the pieces together again.
The central questioning of Moreno focused
towards a society that tends to restrain instead of
encouraging spontaneity and creativity, a culture
that privileges the product on the detriment of
the creative act, a community that restricts every
human instead of being the space he or she needs
to grow.
The main antecedent of Forwar d Theater
is improvisation theater lately worked as
psychodrama.
As an educative modality, psychodrama had its
origins in 1911 in Viena. Since 1908, Moreno used
to watch children playing in gardens and parks of
Viena. He noticed that they rehearsed familiar and
cultural roles such as mom, dad, king or queen,
police, etc. Moreno also realized that children used
fantasy representing myth or fables roles which
corresponded more to their needs or frustrations.
He began to use the role-playing technique
with them as means of enlarging or correct his
perception. The children played the role of their
parents or teachers, and then they saw everything
from another point of view.
As a matter of personal progress and
growing, Moreno used psychodramatic
methods in its Spontaneity Theater, developed
between1921-1923. Groups of actors and
actresses who worked along him represented
with spontaneity and without rehearsal, suggested
topics from the public. Some persons of the
audience went to stage to exemplify some roles of
characters involved on that topic.
He defined psychodrama as a “method” to sound
out the truth of the soul through action.
FORWARD THEATER AS THE MAIN TOOL OF
PSICOPROSPECTIVE from another form of misery, psychic misery,
social, economic, political, racial or religious. There
are poor and wealth emotionally, isolated social
groups, disdainful or marginalized (Moreno, 1979,
p. 22).
Bachelors in Psychology Martha Jaramillo
(Colombia) and Alethia Berenice Montero (Mexico)
are building a new brand of Psychology called
Anticipatory Psychology or Psicoprospective.
The authors speak about this is a fusion between
Psychology and Prospective. Under the motto
“Future starts on the mind” Psychology as
the science which studies the human mental
processes and the human behavior seems to be
the most proper discipline to study how people
think and act about future. It is therapeutic to move forward in time and space
since every therapy should consist of an inventory
of possible alternatives. While the primary function
of psychodrama and sociodrama is therapeutic,
on Forward Theater the main purpose is to build
futures and live them. The study of the future tends
to be an abstract and unconvincing argument.
Through the entertainment, we write family stories
that attract and earn attention. It can be based
on research and extrapolation of data available on
global trends.
Departing from Theater as a dramatic art in which
stories are represented in front of an audience that
operates as a mirror where people can look at the
reflection of a diversity of situations thus people
can look at the future through Theater. Combining
roles, feelings, emotions, reasoning of both,
audience and performers, Theater can impact on
the people’s knowledge and perspective about
future. Becoming Theatre has a profound political
potential, it is critical, the strength of the drama
gives us a representation of reality with audiences
judging events on their own because they pass in
front of them.
Stories are the focus of Theater and have a direct
relationship with Futures Studies.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STORIES AND FUTURES
STUDIES
Moreno reprimands us and tells that the economy
proletariat is a minority, which the oldest and
voluminous is the therapeutic proletariat. They
are victims of intolerable world order; they suffer
M AY 2 0 1 8
In Futures Studies, there are quantitative methods
and qualitative methods. Regardless the variety
of classifications we can find on FS, Prospective
scenarios are situated within the qualitative ways
and are the archetype of FS (Bishop, 2007).
Moreover, stories form part of the prospective
scenarios. This is where Forward Theatre begins
its journey.
Regarding FS, stories as part of the prospective
scenarios are divided in:
• Eutopia: is described as “the good place” but
in contrast to utopia, its existence is real. It is an
approximation of the human fulfillment.
HUMAN FUTURES
• Utopia: an idealized world alternative to the
existent world.
• Dystopia: is the anti-utopia. A malign paradise
in which reality occurs opposite to an ideal society.
Why use stories for learning about futures? Stories
are powerful devices which explore many aspects
of human prospects, in ways not accessible to
reason, analysis or futures research techniques.
They permit regeneration, ideas, and possibilities.
They also can use FS techniques such as
backcasting, in casting, visioning and many others
which is relevant to FS. Besides, they explore
social, technological, environmental aspects in
the influences of change and they can base on
research, extrapolation of available data about
global trends, too.
At this point, which process is it?
Alethia MONTERO - The Forward Theater