This workshop is aimed at anyone who wants to explore historical memory through theatre. We work with archive material – photographs, witness statements and newspaper clippings – not as fixed objects of the past, but as living material from which we develop scenes together. In doing so, we explore how these documents can help us understand the present and develop forms of action, organisation and collective practice today.

In a three-hour workshop, we combine physical exercises and experiments with light and sound with collective creative processes based on working with documents and memory archives. The basis for this is the archive on the Cordones Industriales, which was created by the Tarea Urgente collective as part of its first theatre production. The documentary play builds a bridge to the transformative power of self-organisation. Based on the historical experiences of the Unidad Popular in Chile, the production tells of lived resistance and political emancipation. In this way, we share our working methods with the participants and relate them to their own experiences.