Community Forum Theater was launched on June 25th at the Armand Bayou Nature Center. Citizens from neighboring communities, members of local environmental groups, and students (grades 4th – 12th) from Clear Creek Independent School District spent an intense, eighteen hour weekend learning the basics of Augusto Boal’s Forum Theater and making human sculptural images of environmental toxicology concepts such as: exposure pathways, acute vs. chronic exposures, differences in genetic susceptibilities to the adverse health effects of exposures, and body burdens. Workshop participants also created images of basic attitudes toward environmental issues in their communities, and sculpted “snapshots” of their greatest environmental fears. These sculptural images helped the group explore the social, political and economic dynamic behind the complex environmental issues they live and breathe daily.

The workshop participants also crafted 3 scenes that translated environmental health into everyday realities. One scene showed how difficult it was for citizens to get a rapid response from TCEQ or Harris County regulatory personnel immediately after an upset or when petrochemical flares produced a dirty flame. The second scene focused on land use and loss of habitat and drainage to unplanned development. The last scene retold the story of a fire in an organophosphate poison warehouse that exposed numerous families to toxic combustion products that caused a series of severe health effects and exposed a number of gaps in the area’s plans for handling hazardous chemical releases.

The production played to a packed house and the gallery of live images and “toxic” scenes provoked a strong response from the audience. The audience chose to “forum” the scene about the chemical fire, and as the players ran the scene again and again, numerous spectators bravely stepped onto the stage, replaced the main character (protagonist) and attempted to find a better resolution through bold, sometimes forceful, action. Some of these surrogate protagonists appealed to the medical community for help; one resourceful actor fairly leaped from the audience to create a new scene in which he demanded that his state representative be more proactive, calling non-compliant petrochemical manufacturers with unsafe equipment on the carpet before a catastrophic incident. As each audience member finished their intervention, the facilitator, John Sullivan, Co-Director of the Public Forum and Toxics Assistance wing, led the whole group through a formal inventory of feelings, thoughts and ideas related to the actions on stage. To give the performance closure, Dr. Jonathan Ward, the NIEHS Center Deputy Director, and head toxicologist gave the interventions a scientific context with information on risk factors associated with various types of chemical exposures.