Theatre, art help break silence, deal with sexual harassment

BENGALURU: Ananya (name changed), 32, a techie, chose to remain single after she was groped and assaulted by one of her male colleagues at her previous workplace, and had to silently put in her papers and walk out. She was in a state of shock, had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t find a job for three years. Finally, she got one two months ago.“I came across the #MeToo campaign on Facebook recently, and one of my colleagues suggested that I write down my experience as well. I had never been vocal about it before, so I was hesitant. It was then that she took me for a sensitizing workshop on Prevention Of Sexual Harassment (POSH) in office. After one session, I gathered the strength to be vocal about it and today I am back to normal life,” she said.Samrat, 29, a corporate employee, was asked to leave after being sexually harassed and humiliated by a senior female employee, a few years ago. Samrat slipped into depression, became suicidal and underwent counselling till he recovered from the shock and moved into a new job.He said: “When I learnt about sensitizing workshops at my new workplace, I registered immediately. The training helped me get rid of inhibitions, and made me vocal about sexual harassment at the workplace. It taught me that it wasn’t my fault but that of the perpetrator, and now I’ve gained my self-confidence to begin a new journey.”From bringing in experts to conduct awareness training to encouraging employees through innovative ways like theatre, creative writing and painting, to speak out about their harrowing experiences of harassment at the workplace, several city-based corporate companies have walked that extra mile to battle sexual harassment. Awareness was also raised by the #MeToo Hollywood campaign that went viral globally on social media.Explaining the innovative ways of sensitizing corporate employees on POSH, Sunil Vishnu K, co-founder and director at Training Sideways, a company that conducts training sessions for Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Metlife, Avtar Career Creators, Kelloggs, Reckitt Benckiser and more, said there is great power in theatre.“We use theatre-based intervention, gamification and live experiences to create awareness on prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace. Theatre-based intervention uses plays, activities from real life, and scenario playing which helps connect with the audience. Training Sideways employs interactive format play-shop – combining theatre and workshop to do more than 50 shows for various corporates in the past two years,” he said.“Conventional methods are posters, pamphlets, talks, handouts and emails. Theatre play-shops, interactive theatre, visual art platforms, artbased workshops, corporate clowns are some of the innovative new methods which are emerging as tools to communicate. We often use playshops, corporate clowns, interactive storytelling, slam poetry and digital videos to push people to speak up about their experience and shed the stigma,” he added.Highlighting how these sensitizing sessions have an impact on employees, Saundarya Rajesh, founder-president at Avtar Career Creators, said: “While there are many forms of training, a theatrebased session is among the most effective. The process of transfer of learning happens in a non-threatening, cognitively lighter manner, that allows employees to absorb key pointers in a natural way. This training has to be augmented with continuous and consistent training through in-person sessions, e-learning modules and recurrent sensitization of all employees.”“A topic as sensitive as sexual harassment needs to be dealt with a lot of sensitivity, and theatre techniques serve the purpose. This method is very flexible, and suitable for cases in factories as well as corporate offices,” said Neha Saxena, human resource head at Reckitt Benckiser.She added: “Apart from expert training sessions, we have branded our sexual harassment policy, refreshed our ICC (Internal Companies Committee) and put in a lot of effort into making sure that people at all locations across India, be it a plant or a regional office, know that it is time for them to speak up and be aware about POSH.”