Liquid Youth: From Street Kids to Theater Actors. An Account of a Reaffiliation Process

Milton N. Campos, Ana Paula Burg, Mayara Moraes, Adriana Guerra Abreu Lemos, Daniel Goncalves Alves, Ligia C. Leite

Abstract


We report an action research investigating ways of using communication strategies to help abandoned adolescents living in a shelter in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to be reaffiliated with society. A team of researchers, psychiatry in-training students, and municipal caretakers worked with teens who decided to engaged in theater production. Adolescent mothers and fathers, pregnant girls, and boys participated in the collaborative writing of a theater play, its performances, and collective debates. Data were analyzed, during the process, around the notions of affiliation, disaffiliation, and reaffiliation to feed the action research. The article discusses how vulnerable Afro-Brazilian adolescents are affected by negative globalization, suggesting that the theater process can lead them to resignify their lives and to reaffiliate with society.


Keywords


street kids, youths, adolescents, collaboration, communication, theater, re-affiliation, liquid, empowerment, action-research.

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