Augusto Boal Research
Augusto Boal was a Brazilian writer, politician and theatre practitioner and director. He founded the form of theatre called "Theatre of the Oppressed", theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements. Boal served one term as a Vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997. He studied in America and staged productions of two of his own plays. While working at the Arena Theatre in São Paulo, Boal directed a number of classical dramas, which he transformed to make them more pertinent to Brazilian society and its economy. A new military regime started in Brazil in 1964 with a coup d'état supported by the Brazilian elite, the industrialists, the military, as well as by the United States, Boal’s teachings were controversial, and as a cultural activist he was seen as a threat by the Brazilian military regime. In 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, arrested, tortured, and eventually exiled to Argentina, where he stayed for five years. During those five years, he wrote two books, one of which is about the Brazilian military regime's systematic use of torture in prison. He wrote books about games to play with groups of people and used theatre as an art form to bring communities together.
Sometimes at his shows, audiences were invited to discuss a play at the end of the performance. In doing so, according to Boal, they remained viewers and “reactors” to the action before them. In the 1960’s Boal developed a process whereby audience members could stop a performance and suggest different actions for the character experiencing oppression, and the actor playing that character would then carry out the audience suggestions. But in a now legendary development, a woman in the audience once was so outraged the actor could not understand her suggestion that she came onto the stage and showed what she meant. For Boal this was the birth of the spect-actor (not spectator) and his theatre was transformed. He began inviting audience members with suggestions for change onto the stage to demonstrate their ideas. In so doing, he discovered that through this participation the audience members became empowered not only to imagine change but to actually practice that change, reflect collectively on the suggestion, and thereby become empowered to generate social action. Theatre became a practical vehicle for grass-roots activism.
Following the removal of the military junta in Brazil, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1986. He has established a major Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed there and has formed over a dozen companies which develop community-based performances. The vehicles for these presentations are primarily Forum Theatre and Image Theatre.
The summer of 1997 found Boal in England where he worked with the world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC asked Boal to employ his Rainbow of Desire techniques in working with them on a production of Hamlet. Typical of Boal, he is not interested in the central story but in the characters who are usually cut from the play, and thus imagined a text of the marginal characters, the ones without much power. He says it might be similar to the national dish of Brazil which is based on a stew made by slaves of the leavings from the masters table.
We did an exercise one week where we used chairs to create a situation/scene and had to interpret where the power lay within that situation. One by one went in the middle and rearranged the chairs so that one chair or group of chairs is deemed to have the most power. This is a good exercise to show the non-verbal aspect of power. Once everyone had moved the chairs, we then had to go in to the situation one by one, and assert ourselves somewhere so that it looks like we have the most power. This shows how different people find power in certain situations.
We also played another where we got into pairs and had to sculpt our partner into different figures of authority. I had to sculpt someone into a politician. Everyone's sculpture had many similarities such as posture and hand gestures. We then had to do one into a head teacher.There was a huge similarity between some of the sculptures and this is interesting and shows a definite similarity in the way some authority figures use their authority and hierarchy.
"Theatre is a weapon, for that reason, it must be fought for" - Augusto Boal
Sometimes at his shows, audiences were invited to discuss a play at the end of the performance. In doing so, according to Boal, they remained viewers and “reactors” to the action before them. In the 1960’s Boal developed a process whereby audience members could stop a performance and suggest different actions for the character experiencing oppression, and the actor playing that character would then carry out the audience suggestions. But in a now legendary development, a woman in the audience once was so outraged the actor could not understand her suggestion that she came onto the stage and showed what she meant. For Boal this was the birth of the spect-actor (not spectator) and his theatre was transformed. He began inviting audience members with suggestions for change onto the stage to demonstrate their ideas. In so doing, he discovered that through this participation the audience members became empowered not only to imagine change but to actually practice that change, reflect collectively on the suggestion, and thereby become empowered to generate social action. Theatre became a practical vehicle for grass-roots activism.
"Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion." - Augusto Boal
Following the removal of the military junta in Brazil, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1986. He has established a major Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed there and has formed over a dozen companies which develop community-based performances. The vehicles for these presentations are primarily Forum Theatre and Image Theatre.
The summer of 1997 found Boal in England where he worked with the world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC asked Boal to employ his Rainbow of Desire techniques in working with them on a production of Hamlet. Typical of Boal, he is not interested in the central story but in the characters who are usually cut from the play, and thus imagined a text of the marginal characters, the ones without much power. He says it might be similar to the national dish of Brazil which is based on a stew made by slaves of the leavings from the masters table.
We did an exercise one week where we used chairs to create a situation/scene and had to interpret where the power lay within that situation. One by one went in the middle and rearranged the chairs so that one chair or group of chairs is deemed to have the most power. This is a good exercise to show the non-verbal aspect of power. Once everyone had moved the chairs, we then had to go in to the situation one by one, and assert ourselves somewhere so that it looks like we have the most power. This shows how different people find power in certain situations.
We also played another where we got into pairs and had to sculpt our partner into different figures of authority. I had to sculpt someone into a politician. Everyone's sculpture had many similarities such as posture and hand gestures. We then had to do one into a head teacher.There was a huge similarity between some of the sculptures and this is interesting and shows a definite similarity in the way some authority figures use their authority and hierarchy.
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