Augusto Boal

Born in

Rio De Jeneiro

Brazil 1931

Died May 2009

Trained in USA as an engineer returned to San Paulo Brazil to join the theatre

Becomes an internationally famous and influential practitioner

He is an internationally renowned director and practitioner creating an enormous

and still thriving world wide theatre movement

1979

1992

1992 1998 2006 2006

Cardboard citizens London

Workshops led by Jaya Iyer Dharamshala India

Nepal

New York

Croatia

Dead Earnest from Sheffield

in Pendle Jordon

Augusto Boal • Born in one of brazil’s largest cities Rio de Janeiro• in 1931

• Brazil is a the largest country in Latin America.

• At the time he was growing up and still today it is a country of a huge divide between rich and poor.

• Large City Favelas ( slum areas)

• History of unstable governments a military coup in 1961

• But today is a well established democracy

Augusto Boal, the father of Forum Theatre,

• often called a revolutionary theatre artist and cultural activist.

• Seeing the struggle of the working class against the classist society of Brazil

• He brought theatre to the masses as a means of giving people a voice and an empowering experience

Overcrowded slums

Poverty

Crime rate very high

abandoned children working on streets

often Subject to police vigilante group violence – sometimes murdered

Arrested and sent into Exile

• 1960’s a new military regime came into power

• The military regime condemned Boal’s unconventional theatre and teaching methods and saw him as a threat.

• Boal was kidnapped in 1971, arrested, tortured and then sent to exile in Argentina.

,

Exile

• First in Argentina then Paris

• During his exile, Boal developed his ideas and practice which is known as -

Theatre of The Oppressed

Influences

Paulo Frere Radical educationalist and an activist for social justice who writes Pedagogy of the Oppressed – which explores

the relationship between social class and knowledge“

He states education is political and should empower people not be a ‘banking’ system where the student is viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher.

Bertolt Brecht – Theatre writer practitioner - acknowledgment of the politics

of life in theatre – his ideas to break the 4th wall and inspire people to go out and change the world

His ideas and theatre practices

Interview with boal

• We are unique as animals in that we have knowledge of ourselves as we observe ourselves in action

• We create a space memory imagination

• Conscious and unconscious

• We seek to create the Oppressed dialogue but in many societies all we get is monologues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOgv91qQyJc

Ideas

• All theatre is necessarily political because all the activities of man are political and theatre is one of them’ A. Boal

• Forum is about politics but not party politics

• But politics that brings out social relationships – the possibility of unity –

• Of there not being differences

• Of confronting hierarchies and inequality

• Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.

(1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge

Preface Page xxxi

• Forum

• Legislative

• Invisible

• Newspaper theatre

• Image

• Rainbow of desire

Games and Improvisation

• Games are an important part of his work

for breaking the ice

groups getting to know each other

awareness of the body and making it expressive

• Improvisation is an essential part of the work for workshops or for making a performance

Forum Theatre

• Transforms theatre from a passive receiving experience into an active dialogue

• This allows the audience of the theatre piece to react and express their views on the subject of the play

• Raise their concerns, express their opinions

• Propose solutions that are then incorporated in the play.

Forum theatre

A play about an important or contemporary issue is created

Characters -there is a clear key character ( the Protagonist )

The play focuses on their story – this may involve seeing them deal with various dilemmas – difficult choices – frustrations and sometimes violence

Forum Performance • Requires a clever script and supporting design that

makes it both pleasurable to watch and thought-provoking in content

• The facilitator (joker) warms up the audience with a

few minimal games e.g Mexican wave – shake hands with person your next to etc

• They introduce the play – asks audience to play close attention to the key character's journey and the issues – problems they confront

• Asks them to think of how they might act or can they see how something could have been handled differently

There are no answers • After watching the play the facilitator talks to the

audience and invites them to offer alternative different solutions to the issues situations seen in the play

• The actors perform some of the scenes again and any audience member can shout stop at any point

• The person who said stop – offers a different approach

• At this point the actors will improvise the scene again with the suggested new idea

• Or the audience member joins the actors and takes on the role of the character themselves

• There can be several times that different scenes are re- enacted with the audience suggestions/participation

http://www.slideshare.net/openstagetheater/guide-to-forum-theater

http://www.slideshare.net/Group.9/augusto-boal-resource-pack

• Boal often calls his forms of theatre a theatrical debate

• His audience are not spectators but ‘spectactors’

All people are natural communicators –

dialogue is a common and important dynamic between people

• Dynamisation permits the actor and spec-actor to take control of political and social problems and to probe and inquire, whilst trying to invent new ways to confront oppression.

In its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action.

Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts.

They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. Boal,

. (1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge

Preface Page xxvi

Image Theatre

A response to his experiences in the western world of more

psychological forms of oppression

Image theatre

Theatre and therapy as developed in his book

‘Rainbow of Desire’

Image Theatre

• In Image Theatre, still images are used to explore abstract concepts such as relationships and emotions, as well as realistic situations. 

• The idea underlying Image Theatre is that a picture paints a thousand words and that our over-reliance on words can confuse or muddle issues rather than clarify them

• It gives a collective perspective on a theme

• Eg – a group are asked to create a series of still images ( photograph) on a given theme - ? unemployment

Image theatre and ‘Cop in the Head’

In some instances images can be closer to our true feelings, even our subconscious feelings than words, since the process of thinking with our bodies can short circuit the censorship of the brain.

Boal calls censorship of the brain cop in the head, as these are the do's and don'ts already placed there by society's  structures and our personal experiences.

Sculpting is Participants are often asked to do an exercise sculpt an image using another actor/ participant

Image Theatre• Sculpting is when ideas are expressed using the bodies of

others. It is an important technique as 'it requires sensitive physical interaction… and develops physical communication skills, since the sculptors must use their bodies, rather than words, to give shape to their ideas.

• The piece might eventually involve many images moving from one image to another

• Image Theatre is dynamised through physical transitions from one moment of enacted theatrical oppression to another

• These physical transitions provide a way for the spec-actors to question, discuss and analyse and try to solve the problem.

Invisible theatre

• The purpose of invisible theatre is to make a point publicly in much the same way as graffiti or political demonstration,

• E.g a heated argument over a political or social issue (e.g on the street in a café)

• This type of theatre is performed in public with unexpected bystanders, whom the actors will try to get unknowingly involved in the scene.

Aspects of invisible theatre • An important aspect of the beauty of invisible theatre

is its spontaneity

• But it is also important to anticipate and rehearse potential audience responses.

• Test out your scene with people who did not participate in its creation to see what responses it provokes.

• An invisible theatre performance is only as strong as the reaction or thought process it provokes in your audience.

Invisible theatre

(1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge page 6

He gives some examples here – a series of scenes on the Paris Metro on sexual harassment

1st action

Both actors -Paris metro a man gets on sits next to a woman and rubs his leg generally harasses a female passenger – she protests he says it was accident etc – she finally moves to back of carriage

No one defended or helped

Invisible theatre

• What could be the pitfalls/difficulties ?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu0iLRH8zM0 (example)

Legislative theatre • Boal becomes a member of Rio De Jeneiro legislator( town Council)

• Boal developed a Forum type of theatre — which he called Legislative Theatre — to work at the neighbourhood level to identify the key problems in the city.

• Using the Forum concept, he employed the forum theatre to discuss what kinds of legislation was needed to help community problems

• The resulting discussions and demonstrations became the basis for actual legislation put forward by Boal in the Chamber of Vereadors.

• It also helped to give confidence and training using theatre to those who wanted to also be in local politics

• Writes book Legislative Theatre, published by Routledge in 1998.

Pedagogy of the theatre of the oppressed says

• Augusto Boal was a giant in so many ways: theatre director, scholar

• representative and statesman in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil

• International speaker and teacher

• Nobel Peace Prize nominee

• Visionary who conceived and patiently developed one of the most revolutionary cultural and artistic practices of the last millennia, the Theatre of the Oppressed.

http://ptoweb.org/aboutpto/a-brief-biography-of-augusto-boal/

Cardboard citizens London

Workshops led by Jaya Iyer Dharamshala India

Nepal

New York

Croatia

Dead Earnest from Sheffield

in Pendle Jordon

International festivals

Festival in India Jana Sanskriti - Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in India

• Festival in New York

• Festival in Chicago

• Annual Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed Conference – Nebraska

Useful resources • http://prezi.com/zqwxj3zqskeq/augusto-boal-and-the-forum-theatre/

• http://www.slideshare.net/Group.9/augusto-boal-resource-pack

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOgv91qQyJc

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srvnPJcLmlM

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXutHbXGQfg&list=PLB9ABD8574B362D6F

• http://prezi.com/zqwxj3zqskeq/augusto-boal-and-the-forum-theatre/

Books by Augusto Boal

• Boal, A. (2000) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto Press.

• Boal, A. (1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge. 

• Boal, A. (1998) Legislative Theatre, London: Routledge.

• Boal, A. (1992) The Rainbow of Desire, London: Routledge.

• Boal A. (2006) The Aesthetics of the Oppressed.. Trans. Adrian Jackson. New York: Routledge,

1979

1992 1992 1998 2006