In February 2019, Káva launched a series of theatre workshops called Citizen's Theatre, for which it invited applications from people over 18 who would like to explore a central theme through their experiences and thoughts. 

The programme involved a community theatre performance with adult civilians. We aimed to involve participants as active participants in as many phases of the theatre-making as possible (they can have a say in developing specific scenes, staging, visuals and dramaturgical structure).

How is a Citizen's Theatre different from an adult theatre group?

Participants use a performativity tool, not a focus on stagecraft. Theatre is a tool to talk about issues that concern the group. It is not the artistic product that is important but the topic of focus: the performance comes from the participants ' thoughts.

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The new production is the third phase of Káva's 'Citizen Theatre' project was a pilot programme of an Erasmus+ International Strategic Partnership Programme KA2 in a collaborative strategic partnership with participatory-community theatre companies from Norway and Dresden. The aim of the research was to develop an evaluation framework, a guidline for community theatre projects dealing with social problems involving participatory and community theatre practitioners and sociologist researchers. 

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This new project involves primary and high school teachers as experts who are familiar with the school world and the problems faced by school users such as students, parents, and teachers. They can see systemic issues and reflect on them.

Our aim is to create and present a public semi-fiction (written from the collected stories) community theatre performance based on the personal stories of the target group. We aim to build the story from what the target group provides, ensuring it is as inclusive as possible. Our focus is to amplify the voices of teachers and share their common story on stage.

To achieve this, we conducted a workshop for prospective civil actors in September 2021, and rehearsals began on 3 October. The production premiere will take place in February 2022 at the MU Theatre in Budapest as part of the Káva Workshop.