Each night David Diamond introduces Headline Theatre's latest participatory theatrical performance, Us and Them (The Inquiry), he says the same thing.

"I say I think that the global warming issue has the potential to be a great teacher for humanity... On this little blue speck hanging out in the middle of nowhere... who are 'they' and when do we figure out that there's only us here?"

If only people could understand that we're all part of "us," he believes the world would be a different place.

It's a realization Diamond, artistic director and founding member of Headlines Theatre, hopes to foster in others, but one that didn't come easily to him.

The local company that produces community-specific, issue-oriented theatre draws on the work of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and Paolo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, producing plays where audience members become part of the act in an effort to explore how they can transform their realities.

When organizations across the country invited Headlines to their communities in the early 1990s and wanted the theatre company to move away from polarizing language about the oppressor and the oppressed, the passionate, politically active Diamond didn't want to acquiesce.

"It was challenging because at that point in my life I was very attached to having clearly identifiable enemies," he said. "It made my political organizing easier. It made my life simpler. But they were right."

Now Headlines Theatre is using Us and Them (The Inquiry) to gain new insights into this pattern of constructing the "other," in preparation for its 30th anniversary main stage production of Us and Them (The Play) next fall.

Headlines has been partnering with various community associations since Oct. 22 to present a series of Us and Them events. Ideas and players from each performance may be employed in the main stage play next year.

Each night, three people in the audience share their own personal stories of being "othered" or "othering," and the audience chooses the story it wants to see explored. The storyteller acts as his or herself and a member of the audience, who believes he or she understands something about the other character, helps to portray that moment in time. As the incident is deconstructed, other people from the audience animate specific fears or desires of each character.

It's not psychoanalysis for the storyteller, Diamond says.

"Funny things happen because it's improvisation work, really profound things happen because it's about us at a very personal level," he said. "Very quickly the story gets owned by the room, it turns into a symbol, and people learn lots of things about themselves and the world around them."

A Mexican farm worker at an Oct. 29 performance in Langley shared his conflict with a farm owner about the use of toxic chemicals without proper safety protections on a blueberry farm. The whole evening was translated to and from Spanish.

At the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House last weekend, an Olympic protester shared her tale of plans for a peaceful protest that ended with her arrest.

"The police officer in the story ended up being played by a man who had been a police officer in South Africa under Apartheid," Diamond said. "A number of the activists in the room who had been involved in the anti-Olympic demonstrations started talking about how valuable it was to investigate the fears and the desires of the police because nobody ever does that, they're just the 'dirty pigs.'"

He believes such insights inform effective tactics.

Diamond's been receiving feedback from audience members. He reports one woman in Mission wrote: "I learned a lot, was highly entertained and did some soul searching of my own regarding how I make 'them' and how I could more often make them 'us.' I also gave thought to my fears and desires and how they rule me, and how I would prefer to rule them more often."

Us and Them (The Inquiry) runs until Nov. 28 with a performance co-organized by PHS Community Services at the Heart of the City Festival Nov. 13, another at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Nov. 18 and two at the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House Nov. 26 and 27, among others.

Diamond will then collaborate with Kevin Finnan, artistic director of Motionhouse Dance Theatre, one of the foremost dance theatre companies in the United Kingdom, to create an interactive, metaphorical Us and Them (The Play) next fall.

In 1994, Headlines and Motionhouse collaborated on Mamu, a critically acclaimed multidisciplinary play on species and habitat protection, and Diamond wants to continue pushing artistic boundaries as Headlines embarks on its fourth decade.

For more information, see headlinestheatre.com. For reservations, phone 604-871-0508.

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Local library assistants Elektra Harris and Jacob Breen won best actress and best actor at the Fetisch Film Festival for their roles in Mistress Superior, which headlined the festival in Germany last month. The amateur film focused on a Vancouver dominatrix, her slave and a wannabe cult leader.

crossi@vancourier.com