Dramatic solutions

Laugh—and learn some manners

THE stage is a bus stop. The audience consists of bemused commuters. The actors are real theatre folk. The plot: a mother cradling a baby (played by a doll) boards a crowded imaginary bus. None of her fellow passengers gives up his seat. As the bus lurches, the baby slips from the mother’s grasp, bouncing from one inconsiderate passenger to the next. The lesson: be nice to mothers holding infants.

The impresario behind this pavement performance is the city of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, which is using street theatre to discourage bad behaviour on its over-taxed transport system. There is plenty of it. Some 70,000 people a day ride the buses without paying; eight fare-dodgers died in accidents last year. More than half of women report suffering sexual harassment on the network.

In January Bogotá’s transport office hired three troupes of actors to fan out across the city daily to educate, cajole and in some cases shame anti-social Bogotanos. People who barge onto buses before others get off might be met with intimidating stares from actors planted among the passengers. In...

from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1HeUpsM