“Breaking barrier through theater” project aims to empower rightsholders group by increasing their confidence and self-awareness to share their challenges and voices through innovative forum theatre. It’s expected to accomplish change for women facing exploitation and abuse, LGBTQI, and people with disability as individuals and in groups, social and organization development.  Moreover, this project intends to establish three self-sustaining support groups (key actors support group) of women facing violence, LGBTQI and people with disability to replace the isolation, promote positive interpersonal relationships within the groups, feel safe to share and willing to listen, provide mutual support and encouragement.     LKO has proposed a 20-month project duration with intervention approaches as below:    Goal: To create opportunity, promote inclusion and raise voices and visibility for positive behavior change towards women facing violence, LGBTQI and people with disability using community theatre workshop and performance in Battambang.    Expected result 1: Theatre for all, Using theatre workshops to build relationships, confidence, knowledge and theatre performance skills for women, LGBTQI and people with disability groups. They can create a show based on their stories to express their life experiences, discrimination and challenges with their performance in the community and other public spaces.   Expected result 2: Key Actor Focus-Led Support group, to create their own safe space, building trust and relationship and be able to express their needs and issues with strong voices through art and theatre performance. Each group will receive more capacity strengthening and working together using art and theatre performance activities to raise their common voices, building trust and confidence within the group. The empowerment process of each group will be captured and documented for future learning and reflection.    Expected result 3: Seeding Support Groups_ 3 Key actor support groups (Women, LGBTQI, PwDs) have inspired and engaged more members to join their support groups using art and theatre to express their issues to make their voices heard. LKO to provide backstopping support to each group to define their own goals and design their continuation plan to tackle discrimination and social exclusion in the long-term outcome.        

About Lakhon Komnit [Thinking Theatre] Organization (LKO)

Lakhon Komnit Organization (LKO) is a grassroots Cambodian theatre group, dedicated to the inclusion of marginalised people and unheard voices in the development of Lakhon Niyeay (Cambodian Spoken Theatre). LKO is Cambodia’s leading specialist in Forum Theatre, a powerful form for exploring experiences and calling for change.  

Putting unheard voices centre stage 

Breaking Barriers Through Theatre aimed to amplify the voices of rightsholders in Battambang, Cambodia. Working in collaboration with LKO, women facing violence, persons with disabilities and LGBTQ+ community members created theatre plays based on their own experiences, performed them in community settings, and used Forum Theatre to engage diverse and inclusive audiences in collective problem solving. 

The project process 

In Season One of Breaking Barriers, 32 rightsholders gathered at LKO for theatre training sessions which broke down isolation and connected them with fellow community members facing similar challenges. Rights training sessions ran alongside experience sharing and theatre skills training, giving the participants knowledge and information necessary to understand their right to live without violence, discrimination and exclusion. The project activities provided space and skills to examine and express past experiences through theatre. Many participants had faced such severe marginalisation that they had never taken part in a group activity before, and all visibly grew in confidence as the project progressed.  

LKO worked with the rightsholders to create performances based on their self-identified issues of concern, which they performed to inclusive audiences in community settings: 

• Silent Night demanded bystander intervention in domestic abuse cases, and for authorities to apply the law in GBV interventions. 

• “Silent Night” trailer 

• Police + Government representatives respond to a theatre performance by survivors of GBV in Battambang 

• White Dress asked families to accept their children’s sexual and gender identity, and for wider society to address widespread discrimination which puts LGBTQ+ people in situations of heightened risk.  

• “White Dress” trailer 

• Members of the LGBTQ+ community in Battambang create ‘White Dress’ Forum Theatre performance

• Our Roads called for changes in physical infrastructure and attitudes in order to enable persons with disabilities to access their rights to social and political participation.  

• “Our Roads” trailer 

• Disabled people in Battambang creating and performing a Forum Theatre play, “Our Roads.”  

Community Voices: Behind the Door combined all three performances into one, and the rightsholders performed to an inclusive audience of fellow rightsholders, community members, students, NGO staff, police, local and provincial government representatives. A huge achievement of the day was the successful engagement of a variety of stakeholders – including grassroots community members and provincial authorities – in interactive discussion via Forum Theatre. This was LKO’s first time hosting a formal event, and its success led to endorsements of our work by local and provincial authorities. Press coverage celebrated the project’s methodology and the rightsholders’ voices via features in The Guardian and Phnom Penh Post.  

In Season Two, 11 Key Actors completed in-depth theatre facilitation training, rights awareness sessions, and problem tree analysis, culminating in the formation of three informal Support Groups, each with a defined vision and mission. The Support Groups are now facilitating peer-to-peer sessions to share their learning with the wider community.  

Video:  Survivors of GBV use theatre techniques to teach others their rights: Battambang, Cambodia  

Impact and transformation 

Observing significant changes in participants’ self-esteem and agency. Many were visibly shaking, unable to make eye contact and had unkempt appearances in the first sessions. Project activities nurtured trusting relationships among the groups, and over time people gained confidence to perform their stories in front of public audiences. Several Key Actors are now empowered agents of change who are running self-initiated workshops in their communities. 

Witnessing participants accessing political participation and advocating for themselves and their communities. Several members attended network events and conferences, as well as contributing their thoughts at government meetings. Disabled rightsholders successfully advocated for the installation of ramped access at the Sangkat Chamkar Samroang building.
Stories of Change: Dim Sophea, a disabled community Key Actor in the Breaking Barriers project 

Key Actors leading effective workshops in their communities, growing as facilitators and taking pride in their transformation from victim of a situation, to an empowered person who has the ability to share information which makes fellow community members safer.  

Video: Becoming Facilitators: marginalised community members participate in training at LKO, Battambang 

Lessons learnt 

Sustainable peer-to-peer support  

In LKO’s previous work with marginalised rightsholders, strong relationships and group support formed during projects quickly disappeared when activities ended. Breaking Barriers trialled the formation of Peer Support Groups as a solution to this, training rightsholders to become Key Actors responsible for maintaining the momentum of the group structure after the project ended. This has been effective: women facing violence are now regularly meeting, supporting one another, and running their own workshops; and disabled rightsholders are running their own community engagement project using theatrical approaches, hosted at LKO.  

Authority engagement is long-term work
Breaking Barriers engaged authorities throughout, from referral of at-risk community members, to attending performances and participating in Forum Theatre discussion. Despite improvements in communication, many authorities remain reluctant to apply legal responses to LGBTQ+ discrimination, disabled exclusion and domestic violence incidents. LKO’s next step to extend Breaking Barriers would be to work with authorities themselves as a target demographic, in order to better understand – from their perspective – the barriers they face when supporting rightsholders.  

Call to action 

Community outreach led by survivors of GBV
Women facing violence created the play Silent Night, which shows the impact of bystander and authority inaction on domestic violence incidents. They developed an accompanying workshop, which guides participants to be able to identify types of violence, understand their rights, and explains the steps involved in the legal intervention process. Silent Night and the women’s workshop is available to tour to community settings now. Please get in touch if you would like to support this program with a donation or grant funding.  

Help LKO engage men in GBV prevention
Since 2017, LKO has been engaging women in projects which address male violence. Our grassroots team includes men with direct personal experience of drug and alcohol addiction, poverty and underemployment – compounding factors which place women and children at heightened risk of physical and emotional abuse. These shared experiences, coupled with our expertise in participatory theatre methodologies for exploring change, make LKO well placed to engage men in the fight against GBV. To tackle the root causes of GBV, LKO is seeking support to enable us to target men with violence prevention programs.