Boal, Augusto (1931–)

As a theater director, literacy advocate, politician, and theorist, Augusto Boal is responsible for creating the Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical practice designed to raise literacy, critical thinking, and expression skills for disenfranchised populations. His body of work, from writing to community and activist theater practice, is aimed at countering the passivity-inducing effects of political and artistic practice. Born and raised in Brazil, his works stirred controversy in his homeland, and in 1971 he was exiled to Argentina, and later fled to Paris. Among his goals is helping to foster the capacity to be one's own political and community advocate. Boal's perspective resonates with Paulo Freire's Marxist reworking of educational philosophy, where even the most illiterate and impoverished person possesses a sophisticated ability to think and reason critically. Augusto Boal views all artistic expression, including theatrical practice, as intrinsically political. In the Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal critiques the Aristotelian tragedy as a form of theatrical practice that coercively encourages passivity in its audience. A key element [Page 253]in Boal's approach is the development of audience-actors, or spect-actors, who become empowered not merely to reflect on change, but to take action for themselves.

A significant part of a theater of the oppressed is an ability to work with symbols that are meaningful to the communities in which it is practiced. In the early 1970s, Boal worked in South America with indigenous rural populations to teach literacy. Believing that there are multiple ways to be literate, Boal developed such practices as newspaper theater, invisible theater, photo-romance theater, masks and rituals, to name just a few, to engage peasants and workers, many of whom had never heard of the theater. Boal's method consists of four stages: knowing the body, making the body expressive, theater as language, and theater as discourse, all of which lead to a rehearsal theater as opposed to the closed loop of Aristotelian bourgeois theater. For instance, in forum theater, part of developing the language of theater, participants may stage a situation in which a worker is being exploited by a boss who cruelly expects long hours of hard labor. Members of the community offer potential solutions for the situation that may range from destroying equipment to creating breaks for workers to organizing a union. Each suggestion is then acted out so that community members can see what works and what does not. The director is transformed into a facilitator who helps guide participants through the activity. Another technique, invisible theater, places performers in actual settings of oppression where they then enact a preplanned event to bring different injustices to light. Invisible theater is designed as a direct action against society about a specific problem where the aim is to foster public debate. Boal has taught these practices at numerous festivals and conferences around the world. He returned to Brazil after the military junta lost power and served as an elected vereador in Rio de Janeiro, formed numerous performance companies, and founded the Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio.

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