Theatre and retraining

For two years, The Hippodrome, the national theatre of Douai, has been committed to a project of job retraining for people on minimum benefit payments and those in great difficulty. The challenge was to bring these social misfits quite literally into the spotlight. The results were astonishing: Even if they did not actually get jobs or degrees in the end, they regained their confidence by talking about themselves on stage. They re-discovered the discipline of work and the satisfaction of achieving something, and they started to enjoy being back in society. It is an undeniable success, but it is only visible at close quarters. Seen from a distance, in particular by State institutions which finance this activity, the success of the training is measured by the number of people ultimately employed. The talk retraces the dynamics of this experience and shows, more generally, how the artists create a much more open approach towards retraining.