A Reconciliation Laboratory?

Abstract

How to transcend the conceptual walls of war? How to bring together former enemies? This paper looks at Victus, a theatre group in which victims and former combatants of different armed groups in Colombia (guerrilla, paramilitary, army) united in and off the stage, in a reconciliation process mediated through art. It will sustain that this configures a sort of micro-“laboratory” of reconciliation: a common space of interaction that has allowed different actors to transcend the borders of armed conflict, to humanize the “other”, and to generate multiple processes of transformation and peacebuilding, which, despite being imperfect, are meaningful.