Using Theatre to Communicate Restorative Justice
Inafa’ Maolek Conciliation offers a variety of conflict resolution services in Guam including work place mediation, peer mediation, and restorative justice. It developed the Peace Theatre programme to teach the principles of conflict resolution in an easily understood fashion. In this article, Pat Wolff, executive director of Inafa’ Maolek, briefly describes the use of the restorative justice skit.
Guam’s Inafa’ Maolek
Conciliation, a 25 year old non-profit dedicated to mediation and
conflict resolution training, developed a PEACE THEATRE capacity to
depict conflicts and their resolution. These skits, which are mainly
performed in conjunction with training and awareness raising workshops,
provides a tool for connecting both cognitively and emotionally with
audiences. Inafa’ Maolek Peace Theatre has discovered that its skits
work cross-culturally and with audiences of all ages and educational
backgrounds. One such skit is entitled “Restorative Justice.”
Restorative justice is a difficult concept to explain in words. It
often takes many hours to get across the idea, and even then trainees
cannot appreciate what a restorative process looks like. Drama can
portray it in less than 15-minutes. First developed in 2003, the skit
depicts an actual situation relevant to workshop participants, such as
vandalism in a school, and a restorative response to the
behaviour. Trainees often describe the skit as helping them more
fully picture restorative justice.
In September 2008, the Inafa’ Maolek Peace Theatre performed its
“Restorative Justice” skit at the Prison Fellowship International
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE regional conference on Saipan. Attendee feedback
reinforced what has been said every where this skit has been performed:
“It helped me visualize what Restorative Justice is all about.”
The restorative justice skit is one of many used by the Inafa’ Maolek
Peace Theatre team since the late 1990s. These include bullying, drunk
driving/drag racing, hate crimes, family conflict, dating violence, and
sexual harassment. The team has performed in the continental U.S. (ACR
conferences in Philadelphia and Phoenix, NCPCR conference in Virginia),
and in other countries (Asia Pacific Mediation Forum in Kuala Lumpur
and in Micronesian districts like Chuuk and Northern Marianas).
See a brief YouTube video
describing Inafa’ Maolek’s work.
Patrick Wolff
December 2008
