Theatre of the Oppressed

With theatre of the oppressed, Boal (1979) prepares a performative way of (re-)enacting relations in roles that we too often deem naturalized: the designer and the client, the architect and the layman, the mayor and the citizen, the lecturer and the student, the peasant and the landowner, and so forth. Pages 121-135 of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed blueprint a kind of impromptu theatre to us that we can use to understand those roles in an embodied way, and to then interrupt the play itself to see how we can do things differently.

This group will be moderated by Jens.

(1) In your group, think of a time when you and/or your peers have experienced a moment in which your “future was taken away”: That does not necessarily have to be some disastrous spectacle, it could have been at a board meeting, a site visit with client, an unjust conduct of a teacher at university, or perhaps multiple small rituals encountered in the supermarket, and so forth. If you feel comfortable, share some of those moments with your peers.

(2) Once you have shared a few moments and experiences, think of a possible scenario that you would like to use and for which you would like to write a theatre play. The theatre play should present us with a problem and not offer a solution. There should be no happy end! Decide on a scenario in your group.

(3) Write the characters of the play:
(i) Write the persona of the main protagonist (introduce them in 100 words max) (ii) Write the other characters that are present (50 words max each) (iii) Think about the Mise-en-scène: the arrangement of props, tables, chairs etc. – give each character an object, and give each character a costume.

(4) Write your play in three short scenes (each about 3 to 5 minutes in length maximum). The first scene should introduce us to the basic relations and introduce the play to us, the second scene could either be a build-up to a tension that unfolds in the third scene, or it could be a turning point where something unfair or unjust happens.

(5) Once all decided and set, write down the dialogue, decide on who plays what roles, post your play as a performance to this wiki, print your play (a copy each) and rehearse until you present it this afternoon!

PDFs: PDF of Boal (2008)

[…] Rituals and masks: The relations of production (infrastructure) determine the culture of a society (superstructure). Sometimes the infrastructure changes but the superstructure for a while remains the same. In Brazil the landlords would not allow the peasants to look them in the face while talking with them: this would mean lack of respect. The peasants were accustomed to talking with the landlords only while staring at the ground and murmuring: ‘yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir’. When the government decreed an agrarian reform (before 1964, date of the fascist coup d’état) its emissaries went to the fields to tell the peasants that now they could become landowners. The peasants, staring at the ground, murmured: ‘yes, friend; yes, friend; yes, friend’. A feudalistic culture had totally permeated their lives. The relationships of the peasant with the landlord were entirely different from those with the agent of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, but the ritual remained unchanged. This particular technique of a people’s theatre (‘Rituals and masks’) consists precisely in revealing the superstructures, the rituals which reify all human relationships, and the masks of behaviour that those rituals impose on each person according to the roles he plays in society and the rituals he must perform. A very simple example: a man goes to a priest to confess his sins. How will he do it? Of course, he will kneel, confess his sins, hear the penitence, cross himself, and leave. But do all men confess always in the same way before all priests? Who is the man, and who is the priest? In this case we need two versatile actors to stage the same confession four times: First scene: the priest and the parishioner are landlords; Second scene: the priest is a landlord and the parishioner is a peasant; Third scene: the priest is a peasant and the parishioner is a landlord; Fourth scene: the priest and the parishioner are peasants. The ritual is the same in each instance, but the different social masks will cause the four scenes to be different also. This is an extraordinarily rich technique which has countless variants: the same ritual changing masks; the same ritual performed by people of one social class, and later by people of another class; exchange of masks within the same ritual; etc., etc.

Conclusion: ‘Spectator’, a Bad Word! Yes, this is without a doubt the conclusion: ‘Spectator’ is a badword! The spectator is less than a man and it is necessary to humanise him, to restore to him his capacity of action in all its fullness. He too must be a subject, an actor on an equal plane with those generally accepted as actors, who must also be spectators. All these experiments of a people’s theatre have the same objective – the liberation of the spectator, on whom the theatre has imposed finished visions of the world. And since those responsible for theatrical performances are in general people who belong directly or indirectly to the ruling classes, obviously their finished images will be reflections of themselves. The spectators in the people’s theatre (i.e., the people themselves) cannot go on being the passive victims of those images.

Theatre of the Oppressed (Forum Theatre): Therapists Managing Complicity in Hospitals,NYU Steinhardt Theatre and Health Lab (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y83wTEGPiY

Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. New edition. Get Political 6. Pluto Press, 2008.

PDFs: augustoboal-theatreoftheoppressedneweditiongetpolitical.pdf