Remembering Augusto Boal

By Kyoung H. Park
Korea Times Global Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO ― An Isreali and Arab child come together in Jerusalem; cultural differences are discussed in war-ridden Khartoum; a man decides to get tested for HIV in Mozambique; a prisoner walks out of jail and performs on the streets of Brazil.

At a time when global governance seems to be falling apart and everything from finances to the environment hopelessly deteriorate despite our better efforts, these individual acts of courage and bravery take place thanks to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed.

Boal, one of Brazil's most prominent playwrights, and 2009 UNESCO Ambassador for Theater, stated earlier this year on the body's World Theater Day that ``we are all actors: Being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.''

Boal began his theater career in the mid-1950s in Sao Paulo's Arena Theatre, exploring both the classics while creating new plays in the company of young Brazilian artists. He also researched modern theories of theater, including Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater, and was the first to introduce Stanislavsky's method in Brazil.

At the same time, he worked closely with Paulo Freire, author of ``Pedagogy of the Oppressed," and they mutually influenced each other's theoretical and practical responses to the current social movements in Brazil.

It was during this time that Boal began to create a series of politically progressive and aesthetically pedagogical theater techniques that would eventually become Boal's ``Theater of the Oppressed."

Imprisoned, tortured, and eventually exiled in 1971 for challenging Brazil's military dictatorship, Boal moved to Argentina.

Boal's seminal ``Theater of the Oppressed," first published in 1973, became a groundbreaking proposal for the theater arts. Claiming that all arts and sciences, including theater, can serve no greater good than the political ― or social ― good, Boal argued that theater had to be reclaimed by artists and audiences as a tool against social oppression and an instrument for social change.

Boal expanded the scope of his practice working in theaters in Chile, Peru and Portugal, before being appointed professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1978. There, he established a Theater of the Oppressed Center and from 1981 to 1985, organized international Theater of the Oppressed festivals.

For Boal, all human societies are spectacular: We use space, language, words and our bodies to discuss ideas and pursue our passions within human relationships and rituals structured in theatrical ways. However, all spectacles ― or human interactions ― have embedded within them structures of power and oppression; therefore, the purpose of theater is to illuminate these mechanisms of oppression ― and through dialogue, transform them.

Boal's vision for change, both in aesthetics and politics, led him to the creation of ``Theater Forum'' performances in which he empowered actors, and primarily non-actors, to become creators of their own stories.

After each Theater Forum presentation, the audience members ― or ``spect-actors'' ― were invited to come on stage and perform alternative solutions to the problems presented by the actors. Boal believed that people's direct intervention in the theater encouraged actors and, more importantly spect-actors, to take both a creative and active role against social injustices in their own lives.

After the fall of the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1986, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro and founded the Centro de Teatro do Oprimido. Further combining his aesthetic and political practices, Boal led a political movement that elected him city councilor in Rio for the left-wing worker's party.

As councilor, Boal created a theatrical form called ``Legislative Theater'' which enabled audiences in the theater to draft, discuss and vote for new laws for legislation.

During Boal's four years of public service, from 1993 to 1997, Legislative Theater enacted fifteen municipal laws and two state laws, all arising from its audience members' desires to take action against deep-seeded forms of oppression in Brazilian society.

At the same time, the Center de Teatro do Oprimido applied its techniques in cultural centers, schools, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals in eighteen states in Brazil and the theories and practice of the Theater of the Oppressed were disseminated worldwide.

Today, the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced in over 70 countries ― across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa ― and war-torn areas in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recognizing that dialogue is the conduit for conflict resolution, the ``Theatre of the Oppressed" has served worldwide as an important instrument for peace and social justice. For its successful, global application, Boal was nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize and named 2009 UNESCO World Ambassador for Theater this March. Unfortunately, this international recognition for Boal's contributions came late in his life ― in early May he passed away from leukemia.

Since April, I have been working as an international exchange artist with the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio. Boal's sudden passing has marked my experience in Rio in ways I still cannot define in words. However, I am certain that his work will endure through the Centro de Teatro do Oprimido and the theater's numerous practitioners in Brazil and abroad.

In his later writings, Boal synthesized his life's work as a tree of the ``Theater of the Oppressed," describing it as ``a project about helping the oppressed to discover Art by discovering their art; to discover the world, by discovering their world and, in the act, discovering themselves.'' With time, this tree has flourished to demonstrate how we can fulfill the most urgent and truest of our desires, by understanding not only how we act in this world, but how our creative powers can transform both ourselves and the world we live in.

kyounghpark@gmail.com

Kyoung H. Park is currently an international exchange artist with the Centro de Teatro do Oprimido in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This fall, he will be a Dean's Fellow at Columbia University's MFA program in playwriting.