Jacqueline Roumeau, professor of theatre pedagogy at the Catholic University of Chile, is an actress, playwright and theatre director. She worked as teacher and organised cultural management activities and exhibitions in Chile and internationally. She was part of the first Advisory Committee of the National Council for Culture and Arts after the restoration of democracy in Chile.
In 2001 she founded CoArtRe (Guild of Artists for Rehabilitation), a non-profit association dedicated to prison theatre in Chile. It was established with the aim of developing an artistic methodology focusing on inclusion, rehabilitation and social reintegration through workshops and plays, inside and outside prisons. This pioneering experience allowed her to stage plays based on her own specific model of intervention called "Testimonial Prison Theatre", which she translated into a methodology ("Tecate" - Teatro Carcelario Testimonial) widespread in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, France and Spain.
She was the promoter of the first "International Symposium for Theatre and Prison, a meeting between Latin America and Europe" held in Chile in 2010. In the following years she participated in several international theatre festivals in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. Her most recent prison theatre productions are: "The Threepenny Opera" by B. Brecht, "Torre 5" - the families of the prisoners who died in a fatal fire in a prison in Santiago de Chile are the protagonists of this play -, and "Richard III" by W. Shakespeare, represented at GAM, the most important cultural center in Chile.
