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By Jake and Dan

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The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) describes theatrical forms that the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal first elaborated in the 1970s, initially in Brazil and later in Europe. Boal was influenced by the work of the educator and theorist Paulo Freire. Boal's techniques use theatre as means of promoting social and political change in alignment originally with radical-left politics and later with centre-left ideology. In the Theatre of the Oppressed, the audience becomes active, such that as "spect-actors" they explore, show, analyse and transform the reality in which they are living.

A photo from one of Boal's workshops in Harvard University

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CrDoDZ3DGg

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Forum theatre was developed by a Brazilian theatre maker called Augusto Boal. It’s a very useful tool for exploring drama during the rehearsal process. Company members become ‘spect-actors’ rather than spectators. This means that while watching work they can stop it and take the place of an existing performer to try out a new idea. Sharing ideas in this improvised practical way can provide fresh insight into a role and stop the drama from becoming stale.

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While Forum Theatre is the best-known form of Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal also includes several other varieties of performance under the label. For example, Image Theatre involves arranging participants in dramatic images. These are more like sculptures than plays. Usually, one participant moulds the others into a particular image. In some variants, they can then move around, altering the image, or someone else can mould it differently.

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While Forum Theatre is the best-known form of Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal also includes several other varieties of performance under the label. For example, Image Theatre involves arranging participants in dramatic images. These are more like sculptures than plays. Usually, one participant moulds the others into a particular image. In some variants, they can then move around, altering the image, or someone else can mould it differently.

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Forum theatre also involves a "joker". He would avoid all actions that cold manipulate the audience. He/she must watch for the 'magic' solution. They can interrupt the spect-actor's action and ask if they believe it to be a 'magic' solution. The joker must also decide with the performers if there are to be any missing characters. If the protagonist lives with his/her father, where is the mother?

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Most of Augusto Boal's techniques were created after he realized the limitations of didactic, politically motivated theatre in the poor areas where he worked. He found that his attempts to inspire the people living in poor or "slum" areas to rise up against racial and class inequality were inhibited by his own racial and class background, since he was white and comparatively financially comfortable, as well as his and his colleagues' inhibitions to perform violence themselves.

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Most of Augusto Boal's techniques were created after he realized the limitations of didactic, politically motivated theatre in the poor areas where he worked. He found that his attempts to inspire the people living in poor or "slum" areas to rise up against racial and class inequality were inhibited by his own racial and class background, since he was white and comparatively financially comfortable, as well as his and his colleagues' inhibitions to perform violence themselves.

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This involved the audience as well as the actors on stage.
The audience would watch the performance and talk to themselves about the problem in the story. The performance would be repeated again, but this time the audience can call out freeze, and take the place of the protagonist and try to change the series of events.

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Theater of the Oppressed is an arsenal of theater techniques and games that seeks to motivate people, restore true dialogue, and create space for participants to rehearse taking action.

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Invisible theatre: a technique of rehearsing a scene with actions that the protagonist would like to try out in real life. This is done in a place where these events could really happen and in front of an audience who, unaware that they are an audience, accordingly act as if the improvised scene was real. The improvised scene becomes reality. Fiction penetrates reality. What the protagonist had rehearsed as a plan, a blueprint, now becomes an act.
IMAGE THEATRE: creating short scenes, no longer than a minute or two, with a strong image that the entire audience can easily understand, identify, and apply to their own lives. Images can be realistic, allegorical, surrealistic, symbolic or metaphorical.
FORUM THEATRE: is a type of theatrical game where a problem is shown in an unresolved form. The audience is invited to suggest and enact solutions. The scenario is then repeated, allowing the audience to offer alternative solutions. The game is a contest between the audience and actors trying to bring the play (or oppression) to a different end. The result is a pooling of knowledge, tactics and experiences. As the audience participates in enacting solutions to break the cycle of oppression they are also “rehearsing for life.”

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Augusto Boal was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical left popular education movements.