Table 1 Description of Forum Theater and Image Theater with examples from each university

Forum Theater

in the medical school of Lausanne

In the Forum Theater, the actors play a story that stages problematic situations in which characters are either targets, authors, or bystanders. The actors then replay the playlets and, invited and guided by a facilitator, the audience intervenes and changes the course of the story. When a participant intervenes, he or she can go on stage to replace a character and propose alternative scripts and solutions to respond to the oppression. Participants are considered “spect-actors.”[6]

In Lausanne, playlets were tailor-made based on the original testimonies collected by CLASH in order to be as close to reality as possible.

Lucie, a 4th-year medical student, is doing a hospital internship. The first scene shows that she experiences everyday sexism, for example, by a professor who considers her as a woman who is going to 1 day be a mother who will not be able to ensure that she is capable of handling a demanding position in the future. The second scene shows her being harassed by text messages from another professor. The last scene, in the operating room, shows the professor who was texting her and his female professor colleague; he harasses Lucie verbally and physically while his colleague supports him and laughs. The play emphasizes different forms of sexual harassment, the potential author(s) (hierarchy vs peers), the key role of bystanders, and how a hostile environment can be harmful for the target.

Image Theater

in the medical school of Fribourg

Image Theater invites the participants to re-create oppressive situations by impersonating those situations in the form of a life-sized sculpture. The participants in the sculpture are invited to express how they felt in this situation and can propose changes in the life-sized sculpture to improve the situation. This technique enables participants to show and reflect on how, starting from a concrete proposed situation, creating a different relationship with others, as a spect-actor and a bystander, can improve the well-being of all participants.

In a life-sized sculpture proposed by a student, a medical practitioner is touched on the thigh by a person. Next to her are the 3 monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Students would like to show in this life-sized sculpture that bystanders are important in oppression situations. They are allowed to support and help the target in many ways, no matter who the author of the oppression is.