"The Navel of the Earth"- A workshop on inclusion
Maria Frangi
University of Patras Department of Theatre Studies, Greece
WORKSHOP
At Athens 2025 International Conference "Theatre/Drama & Inclusive Education"
March 21-23, 2025
Hellenic Theatre/Drama & Education Network (TENet-Gr)
Language: Greek
Limited number of participants
Workshop Description:
The goal of the workshop "The Navel of the Earth" is to raise awareness, foster understanding, and enhance familiarity with issues of inclusion, as highlighted through traditional folk tales.
Tradition and culture are deeply interconnected, creatively passing down their traits from generation to generation. Throughout world history, folktales have been regarded as a multifaceted vessel of knowledge, art, healing, and cultivation.
However, modern societies have simplified this medium, emphasizing its form and reducing storytelling, to basic elements, often detaching it from its symbolic essence.
As a result, imagery has often overshadowed language, leading to a superficial reading of folktales. Our goal is to reexamine the value of traditional folk tales without prejudice or fear, recognizing their potential to promote inclusion, as advocated in the Salamanca Statement of 1994.
Thus, we draw upon the principles that emerge from traditional folk tales and formulate our own:
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Every child and every adult has the fundamental right to education and social integration, regardless of gender, race, language, religion, nationality, or mental and physical ability.
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Every child and every adult possesses unique characteristics, interests, abilities, particularities, and learning needs, making them a unique and irreplaceable part of the world, essential to it.
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In the educational process, work, and social engagement, these diverse characteristics and needs of individuals should be respected with no discrimination and with full acceptance.
Children and adults with special needs should have access to mainstream schools. The policy of social inclusion supports that a school for all is both the most representative and at the same time the most effective approach in addressing the marginalization and isolation of children with special needs from regular educational processes. Folk tales undermine "discrimination" and embrace "otherness," making them valuable channels for fostering a genuine inclusive and intercultural dialogue.
Note: The workshop will be experiential, utilizing drama pedagogy methods that focus on the body, improvisation, communication, and storytelling. It include exercises with possible physical contact.
Maria Frangi is a Theatre Director and Theatrologist and a member of the Special Teaching Staff at the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Patras Greece. She specializes in Education, Theatre Institutions, and Production - Theatre for Children and Adolescents. She graduated from the Drama School of the Piraeus Association Conservatoire and from the Faculty of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds a PhD in Letters and Humanities specializing in the Arts of the Spectacle – Theatre, from the University of Paris X-Nanterre (1996). She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne on Theatre for Children and Adolescents. Since 1997, she has been teaching at higher education institutions in Greece and abroad. She is the author of several articles and books on theatre (e.g. Theatre Education for Grades 5-6, The Performative Act at School) and has developed Curricula and Guides for Educators about Acting, Artistic Education, and Theatre in Education and Society. She teaches in the postgraduate programs (Master’s degree): 1. “Religious Education and Training” in the Department of Social Theology & Religious Studies at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens (course: Theatre and Performing Arts in Religious Education). 2. Department of Modern Greek Language and Literature, University of Cairo, (course: Literature-Theatre).
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