The theatre educational activity titled 'Mobil' (Mobile) is a creative community game, developed for 16 to 18 year-olds students and realised in schools, which combines theatre education and awareness-raising in an innovative way.

The basic problem sketched by the game is the use of mobile phones by students in school, and through this it becomes an examination of school communication, hierarchical systems, and possibilities for the assertion of individual self-interest. The game took place in an imaginary school: a student makes a secret video recording of their teacher with their phone, and uploads it to a public video sharing site without her consent. The game examined the act’s consequences: what does all this mean for the culprit, the victim, the classmates, the teachers, and the school.

As MOBILE is an interactive theatrical game, actors and participants perform a story together in the course of the programme. The story is devised in advance, and consists of precisely circumscribed situations initiated by the actors: they step into their roles, and speak and behave according to the given situation and character. The students must deduce from the actors’ performance what opportunities the given situation offers for participitation. We found with MOBILE in almost every game and in every group that the initial uncertainty and reticience dissolves as the game progresses, as it offers any community the opportunity to join happenings at their own pace and rhythm.

The imaginary world offers protection to the students and also the teachers: participants of MOBILE dare to think much more freely and speak more openly about quotidian dilemmas under the aegis of fiction. MOBILE opens up a space and provides time for the discussion even of problems which are difficult to vocalise, or repressed for lack of time. In the game a wafer-thin veil separates reality from fiction (we are in a school, seated on benches, the blackboard before us, bells ring); but precisely this translucent veil helps us disclose how a school works today, and within it the human being.

CAST

Director: Árpád Schilling
Project Leader:  Edit Romankovics
Gamemasters: Edit Romankovics, Lilla Sárosdi, Sándor Terhes

Photo: Máté Tóth Ridovics

PRESS

• Tamás Jászay: A nézőtől a résztvevőig. Goethe-Institut Budapest, February 2014.
   
• Judit Csáki: "Az élet is derűs iskola lesz". Magyar Narancs, 09. 08. 2012

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