A Brief Biography of Augusto Boal

-- by Doug Paterson

Brazilian Dr. Augusto Boal was raised in Rio de Janeiro. He was formally trained in chemical engineering and attended Columbia University in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Although his interest and participation in theatre began at an early age, it was just after he finished his degree at Columbia that he was asked to return to Brazil to work with the Arena Theatre in São 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.

Birth of the Spect-Actor

Prior to his experimentation, and following tradition, 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 1960's 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 in a now legendary development, a woman in the audience once 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 collectively on the suggestion, and thereby become empowered to generate social action. Theatre became a practical vehicle for grass-roots activism.

Boal as a Threat

Because of Boal's work, he drew attention as a cultural activist. But the military coups in Brazil during the 1960's looked upon all such activity as a threat. Walking home from an Arena performance of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Boal directed in 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, arrested, tortured, and eventually exiled to Argentina, then self-exiled to Europe. In Argentina in 1973 he published his first major theatre text, The Theatre of the Oppressed (Routledge Press). While in Paris, Boal continued for a dozen years to teach his revolutionary approach to theatre, establishing several Centers for the Theatre of the Oppressed. In 1981 he organized the first International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed in Paris.

Return to Rio

Following the removal of the military junta in Brazil, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1986 where he continues to reside. He has established a major Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed there (CTO - Rio) and has formed over a dozen companies which develop community-based performances. The vehicles for these presentations are primarily Forum Theatre and Image Theatre. Forum Theatre relies upon presentation of short scenes that represent problems of a given community such as gender for a conference on women or racial stereotyping for a class on racism. Audience members interact by replacing characters in scenes and by improvising new solutions to the problems being presented. Image theatre uses individuals to sculpt events and relationships sometimes to the accompaniment of a narrative.

Second Book Published

In 1992, Boal also published his second major work, Games for Actors and Non-Actors (Routledge Press). This is a splendid basic introduction to the entire range of TO theory and practice, and is useful to people experienced and inexperienced in theatre making.

Boal & Freire

Over many years, Boal continued to strengthen his relationship with liberatory educator, Paulo Freire, author of the acclaimed Pedagogy of the Oppressed. At the Second Annual Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference in Omaha in March 1996, both men appeared together on a public platform to reflect on liberatory education and to answer questions from an audience of around one thousand people. Because of their several necessary flights for personal and family safety during the 1960's - 1980's, this co-appearance was the first time Augusto Boal and Paulo Freire shared a common public stage. Sadly, Paulo Freire passed away in early May, 1997. Said Boal: "I am very sad. I have lost my last father. Now all I have are brothers and sisters."

Legislative Theatre

Though he lost his bid for re-election in the fall of 1996, while in office, Vereador Boal developed a Forum type of theatre -- which he called Legislative Theatre -- to work at the neighborhood level to identify the key problems in the city. Using the Forum concept, he employed the dynamics of theatre to discuss what kinds of legislation needed to be enacted to address community problems. The resulting discussions and demonstrations became the basis for actual legislation put forward by Boal in the Chamber of Vereadors. Not surprisingly, Boal has summarized these discoveries and processes in Legislative Theatre, published by Routledge in 1998.

His objective is always to leave behind at least a core of people who can offer Boal-style workshops, analysis, and ideas. Hopefully there are hundreds and even thousands of people carrying out this liberatory approach to community animation.

Bibliography

Boal, Augusto. The Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Urizen Books, 1979. Republished by Routledge Press in New York/London in 1982.

----. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. New York: Routledge Press, 1992,

----. The Rainbow of Desire. New York: Routledge Press, 1995.

----. Legislative Theatre. New York: Routledge Press, Fall 1998.

----. Hamlet and the Baker’s Son. New York: Routledge Press, 2001.

----. The Cop in the Head: Three Hypotheses. in: The Drama Review. Fall 1990, 35-42.

----. Invisible theatre. in: Adult Education and Development (1979), 12, 29-31.

Norden, Barbara. "The Cop in the Head." in: New Statesmen & Society. 5, Mar 27, 1992, 33 - 34.

Paterson, Douglas L. "A Role to Play for the Theatre of the Oppressed." in: The Drama Review. T - 143, Fall, 1994, 37-49.

Paterson, Douglas L. "We Are All Theater: An Interview with Augusto Boal." in: High Performance. Summer, 1996, 72, 18-23.