Augusto Boal - Thought for the Month The act of transforming is transformatory. The spect-actor comes on stage and transforms the images that she sees and does not like - she transforms them into images she likes and desires, images of a just, convivial society and in the act of taking the stage, transforms herself into sculptor, musician, poet - in sum, entering the stage and showing her will in action, being the actor, being the protagonist, the spectator transforms herself into a citizen!

Theatre of the Oppressed Professional Training

As leading practitioners of Forum Theatre, Cardboard Citizens runs an annual programme of specialist training courses in aspects of the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Theatre of the Oppressed is the over-arching title given to the ensemble of techniques and approaches to theatre pioneered by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal. The common element of the various branches of this work is that they all seek to make the power of theatre a force for change available to everyone, particularly those in oppressed situations. The arenas of Theatre of the Oppressed application range from the classroom to the council chamber, the union meeting to the therapeutic group, from the development charity to the homeless people's hostel.

To make sure you are included on our mailing list for information on upcoming trainings, please sign up to our mailing list here and ensure you have selected that you are interested in Professional Training Courses.

"Everything and more I envisaged, expected, hoped for..."
Lizzie Menaghen, Lemon Cake- Forum Week 2007

"A fascinating snapshot of how to create and use forum theatre...interesting action, positive people, creative ideas."
Lisa Maule, Theatre Resource- Joker Weekend 2007

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The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is the over-arching title given to the ensemble of techniques and approaches to theatre pioneered by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal. The common element of the various branches of this work is that all seek to make the power of theatre as a force for change available to everyone, particularly those in oppressed situations. The arenas of TO application range from the classroom to the council chamber, the union meeting to the therapeutic group, from the development charity to the homeless people's hostel.

Invisible Theatre is a form of guerrilla theatre or public provocation, designed to elicit discussion from an audience which does not know that it is witnessing theatre.

Forum Theatre is the best known and most widely practised form of Boal's theatre; it is an interactive form used particularly in situations where there is a shared oppression, with a participating audience of 'spect-actors' focussed on gaining a better understanding of a problem or issue and testing out possible solutions.

Image Theatre is part of the essential vocabulary of TO, but can also be used in a wide variety of settings; essentially it involves communication through the sculpting of our own and others' bodies. It is also used extensively in The Rainbow of Desires, which applies many of the former techniques to enable a group of participants to gain an understanding of their 'internalised oppressions', the self-imposed limits we place on our own choices and behaviours; this branch of TO does not require an audience.

Finally, Legislative Theatre is a method in which Forum Theatre is used as a basis for the formulation of policy, rules or legislation, in any body from school to government.

More information on global Theatre of the Oppressed is available from www.theatreoftheoppressed.org.

About the techniques

Invisible Theatre
Invisible Theatre events usually happen in non-theatre public places such as shopping centres, the street or the underground. One or more performers create an arresting scene, designed to elicit discussion or debate; for instance, a destitute woman sets out all her belongings for sale on the street, or a man starts trying on women's clothing in a shop-front - anything, as long as it is relevant to the debate which the participants wish to spark.
Once this is established, another actor comes by as an agent provocateur, and vocally expresses an opinion for or against the action being shown; then yet another performer comes along and argues the opposite viewpoint, once again as vocally as possible. Gradually more and more members of the public are drawn into the debate. Then the original players may quietly disappear, leaving behind a hothouse of debate. A risky form, because the audience take it for reality, and thus the participants have to be ready for anything!

Forum Theatre
Forum Theatre is an interactive theatre form invented (or discovered) in the early 1970s by Augusto Boal. An audience is shown a short-ish play in which a central character (protagonist) encounters an oppression or obstacle which s/he is unable to overcome; the subject-matter will usually be something of immediate importance to the audience, often based on a shared life experience.

After this first showing, there may be a brief discussion amongst the audience, mediated by a figure known as 'the Joker' (as in a pack of cards, belonging to no particular suit, on no-one's side). Then the play is restarted, usually from the beginning, and runs as before - but this time, whenever a 'spect-actor' (active audience member) feels the protagonist might usefully have tried a different strategy, s/he can stop the action, take the protagonist's place, and try his or her idea. The other characters in the piece will react as they feel their characters would react, i.e. they will make it realistically difficult for any new tactic to succeed; but if an idea works, the intervening spect-actor can win, the game is not rigged.

Through a session of Forum Theatre, many people will take the stage and show many different possibilities. In this way, the event becomes a kind of theatrical debate, in which experiences and ideas are rehearsed and shared, generating both solidarity and a sense of empowerment. It may be used to rehearse for an imminent occasion, or to uncover and analyse alternatives in any situation, past, present or future.

Image Theatre
Image Theatre is the basic vocabulary of all the various branches of the Theatre of the Oppressed. From simple techniques such as Image of the Word (where participants are asked to sculpt themselves into a statue representing their reaction to a given word) - through to more complex techniques such as Image of Transition (where the technique studies the possibilities of change). Image Theatre harnesses the simplest form of self-representation to arrive at the deepest form of debate.

The Rainbow of Desires
This is a set of techniques akin to various elements of psycho-drama and drama-therapy. It is usually for a closed group. First of all, one or more participants will tell a story about an issue they are dealing with or have dealt with in their lives - unlike Forum Theatre, here the sense is that there are not outside oppressors, but still the protagonist is troubled, perhaps by internalised oppressors. The group will settle on one story; an improvisation based on a real encounter related to the issue will be played out. Then, depending on which technique is being used, the group will react to the story they have heard and seen by making images (Image Theatre); the story-teller will then interact in different ways with these images.

The techniques range from The Cop in the Head, where the protagonist wants to do something but internal censors are stopping him, to the eponymous Rainbow of Desires, where the protagonist has so many different desires that she is not sure which she really wants. Like the other elements of TO, this work can be done by anybody, but repays study and repeated experiment and will initially require skilled facilitation.

Legislative Theatre
In 1997, Augusto Boal became a vereador (legislator) on Rio de Janeiro's city council. He took his entire theatre company into office with him, and together they developed the Legislative Theatre. In this system, Forum Theatre was used to enable groups around Rio (from street cleaners to blind people) to investigate issues of importance to them; after the Forum, they had the opportunity to suggest laws that might be passed to help their various causes. After some editing and revising, Boal would then take these laws to the Chamber and propose them. In Boal's words, the proposition was 'To transform desire into law'. In this way, some thirteen laws were passed.

Groups around the world have experimented with their own localised versions of Legislative Theatre. In 1998, with Adrian Jackson and others, Boal created a symbolic session of Legislative Theatre at the old Greater London Council debating chamber in the heart of London. In 2000, Cardboard Citizens used the methodology to enable London schools to devise policies for receiving refugees or asylum seekers. The same year, with input from CCs, the Scarman Trust in Brighton initiated a Legislative Theatre project with local social providers and health bodies. In 2002, Theatr Fforwm Cymru used Legislative Theatre with a number of groups to input into policy for the newly formed Welsh Assembly.

For an interview with Augusto Boal and Adrian Jackson about the GLC Legislative theatre event, go to www.glastonburynetradio.co.uk, and for an account of the Scarman Trust's Brighton project, visit www.scip.org.uk

For Theatr Fforwm Cymru, visit: www.theatrfforwmcymru.org.uk

Augusto Boal

Founder of Theatre of the Oppressed

Augusto Boal is a theatre practitioner, writer, director, theorist and teacher, and the founder/inventor of a vast international movement, the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1931, the son of recent Portuguese immigrants to Brazil, Boal went to study industrial chemistry in New York and became smitten with theatre.

On his return to Brazil, he rapidly became co-artistic director of the Arena Theatre in S?Zo Paulo, which had an agenda of producing Brazilian plays and developing Brazilian playwrights (counter to the prevailing tendency of the time, which was distinctly Eurocentric). At the Arena, his best known show was Arena Conta Zumbi, (Arena Tells of Zumbi), the story of the leader of a slave revolt in the seventeenth century.

Increasingly radicalised at a time of increasing repression, in 1972 after three months of imprisonment and torture, he went into exile, first in Argentina and Peru, then Portugal, finally coming to rest in Paris, where he stayed till his return to Brazil in the late 1980s. In this period he codified and developed the Theatre of the Oppressed, writing the eponymous first of a number of books about his work. Gradually, he developed a centre in Paris, and a series of invitations to teach his work worldwide followed; this peripatetic existence still consumes a large part of his year.

In France, his practice widened to take in internal as well as external oppression, and it was at this time that he formulated The Rainbow of Desires, which arose out of an extended experimental workshop.

When he moved back to Rio finally, with the juntas finally seen off, he established a centre there, working with all sorts of groups from housemaids to homosexuals, from landless peasants to black students. He made history in 1992 when he took his whole theatre company with him into a governing institution, the Rio de Janeiro Camara dos Vereadores (the equivalent of a powerful city council). Inevitably, a new direction resulted: the Legislative Theatre, an attempt to use theatre to formulate laws, a device to arrive at a true form of democracy.

Recently, Boal has been directing conventional theatre (conventional-ish - a samba version of Traviata for example) again, as well as working with his groups in prisons and with the MST (the landless peasants movement). This year sees the publication of a new updated edition of his seminal 'Games for Actors and Non-Actors'. He shows no sign of slowing up, 74 years young that he is.