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Prevention of bullying among teenagers by methods of social theater // Pedagogical Review. 2024. Issue 1 (53). P. 123-132

In recent years, we have seen an increase in bullying situations among teenagers. According to the World Report on Violence against Children, one in ten schoolchildren in the world is exposed to violence in an educational environment, and this figure is increasing every year. Bullying negatively affects the emotional state of children, personality development, and can lead to tragic cases. The task of the teaching staff of educational institutions is to prevent precedents of cruelty among adolescents, to prevent bullying. Effective methods of bullying prevention at school include social theater. Social theater involves a group form and step-by-step work: preparing a performance on the topic of bullying and showing it to the audience with subsequent discussion. Through social theater, it is possible to simulate various situations that reproduce the conflict situation of adolescents with the search for a way out of it. The peculiarity of the social theater is the involvement of the audience in the ongoing process, their participation in the discussion, the opportunity to switch places with the performers of the roles, in practice to demonstrate the proposed solutions to the problem. Theatrical practices contribute to the social activation of adolescents, the acquisition of communication skills, and the testing of social roles through dramatization and improvisation. Social theater is an effective and gentle method when dealing with bullying, age and existential crises, interpersonal and intrapersonal problems. Social theater performs a wide range of functions in relation to participants and viewers: informational, educational, cognitive, developmental, social and communicative. Bullying prevention through social theater is aimed at understanding the topic of bullying, developing a negative attitude towards it, realizing the extent of the problem and ways to solve it.

Keywords: bullying, social theater, forum theater, teenagers, prevention, personality, school