02/27/2024
Part 2: Augusto Boal
Theatre of the Oppressed was founded by Augusto Boal who was born in Brazil in 1931. He graduated from Columbia University and returned to Brazil to work at the Arena Theatre of Sao Paulo. His work at the Arena Theatre led to his experimentation with new forms of theatre that would have an extraordinary impact on traditional practice.
His most significant contribution was the innovative ways that he changed the theater experience. Prior to his work, audiences were invited to discuss a play at the end of the performance. In so doing, according to Boal, they remained viewers and “reactors” to the action before them. In the 1960s 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 at one performance, a woman in the audience 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, and become empowered to generate social action. Theatre became a practical vehicle for grass-roots activism.
In 1964, a military regime took over Brazil. He was exiled for 14 years for his "controversial" teaching. During his exile, he wrote books and travelled, working mostly with people in small, poor communities.
This biography does not begin to touch upon the work that Augusto Boal produced or the lives whom he touched. I strongly encourage you to read more about this fantastic innovative activist.
Biography information from Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed https://ptoweb.org/
