Transgressive local act: tackling domestic violence with forum and popular theatre in Sisterhood Bound as Yuan Ze Flowers.

This paper examines a community theatre project in Kaohsiung County, Taiwan that aimed to tackle domestic violence through a collaboration between local community female elders and the facilitator. The paper investigates how an outside facilitator could unfix the assumed community identities which tend to exclude outsiders or sub-groups, in this case the outsiders were Vietnamese brides. It also explores how the Boalian techniques such as the joker, forum theatre and 'hot-seating' were adapted and changed in the Taiwanese cultural and social context in order to engage the local audience and encourage them to suggest alternative ways to solve the domestic conflict presented in a devised performance. The paper also demonstrates how these local community female elders employed the popular theatre strategies in the performance to tackle domestic violence. With subversive laughter, their performance stimulated the audience to defy the secrecy and horror of domestic violence in the community by their bold transgression of gender, ethnicity, age and profession. Their performance also demonstrates the possibility of extending an ethic of care to the Vietnamese brides in their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]