The aim of the July 2023 workshop at the IFB is to test the method of citizens’ tribunals on the model of the Russell Tribunal. This model was held in Stockholm in 1967 on the initiative of Bertrand Russell and under the direction of Jean-Paul Sartre to judge the United States for its involvement in the Vietnam War.

Our workshop will be based on a series of lectures on the themes of theatre and justice: Theatre and Justice; The performance-trial as a symbolic act of citizenship; The representation of post-war trials in documentary theatre, etc. It will also draw on the methods of the Theatre of the Oppressed theorised by Augusto Boal in staging plays for actors and non-actors.

The central theme of the Berlin workshop will be the organisation and holding of a citizens’ trial based on an emblematic German case. The week will include various workshops to prepare for the trial, which will take place at the end of the course. The German case chosen touches on the issue of the separation and reunification of the two Germanies, and consequently on the question of the common good and how it is ‘made’, in particular through a judicial system. It also examines justice in its role as a ‘factory of the common’.