=================================================== A major memorial tribute
and celebration of the life of Augusto Boal will take place at a future
date to be announced. In the meantime, what better way to honor Augusto
Boal than by carrying on the work to which he had dedicated his entire
life? And who better than Julian Boal to carry on that work? Please come
to this special Evening of Theater of the Oppressed with Julian Boal on
Memorial Day at 7:00 pm at The Riverside Church in New York City.
Monday, May 25, 2009 at 7:00 pm SALAAM Theatre
An Evening of Theater of the Oppressed
with Julian Boal
The Riverside Church -
Assembly Hall
(Subway: IRT Broadway/Seventh Avenue local #1 to 116 Street; walk north on Broadway to 120 Street, turn left, walk one block to Claremont. Bus: M-4, M-5 or M-104 to 120 Street or 122 Street.) Contribution--sliding scale:
$10/$15/$25
Presented by The Brecht Forum, The Education Ministry of The Riverside Church, The Mission and Social Justice Commission of The Riverside Church, Theatre of the Oppressed at The Riverside Church, and The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB). =================================
Forum Theater, one of the techniques in the Theater of the Oppressed repertory, is an innovative approach to public forums, and is rooted in the Brazilian popular education and culture movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It is designed for use in schools, community centers, trade unions, and political, solidarity and grassroots organizations. It is especially useful as an organizing tool in social justice movements. Workshop participants (the actors) are asked to tell a story, taken from daily life, containing a political or social problem of difficult solution. A skit presenting that problem is improvised and presented. The original solution proposed by the protagonist must contain at least one social or political error which leaves the problem unresolved. When the skit is over, the audience discusses the proposed solution, and then the scene is performed once more. But now, audience members are urged to intervene by stopping the action, coming on stage to replace actors, and enacting their own ideas. Thus, instead of remaining passive, the audience becomes active "spect-actors" who now create alternative solutions and control the dramatic action. The aim of the forum is not to find an ideal solution, but to invent new ways of confronting oppression. In Brazil and other parts of Latin America, as well as in India and Africa, Forum Theater has been used with peasant and worker "audiences" as training in labor and community organizing and participatory democracy. If you've been wondering what Theater of the Oppressed is all about now is the time to find out! Julian Boal lives in Paris and Rio de Janeiro and has worked as an independent workshop facilitator of Theater of the Oppressed for many years. In addition to his own work as a TO trainer he collaborated extensively with his father, Augusto Boal, and has presented numerous workshops in France and Brazil, and throughout the world, including Switzerland, Bosnia, Italy, Spain and the United States. He has also done a considerable amount of work in India with the famed theater company Jana Sanskriti, and was the initiator of that troupe's annual tours to Europe. For the past several years Julian Boal has co-facilitated annual workshops for the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) at the Brecht Forum in New York. He is the artistic director of the Groupe du Théâtre de l'Opprimé (GTO) in Paris and is one of the driving forces behind the International Theatre of the Oppressed Organization (ITO). He is the author of Images of a Popular Theater, as well as many articles, and is the translator of the French edition of Augusto Boal's The Rainbow of Desire and the editor of the new French edition of Games for Actors and Non-Actors, also by Augusto Boal. The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and Workers' Party (PT) activist Augusto Boal, is a form of popular theater, of, by, and for people engaged in the struggle for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in their daily lives. In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression is defined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than dialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits the oppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppressed is a participatory theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants. Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language designed to: 1) analyze and discuss problems of oppression and power; and 2) explore group solutions to these problems. This language is accessible to all. Bridging the separation between actor (the one who acts) and spectator (the one who observes but is not permitted to intervene in the theatrical situation), the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced by "spect-actors" who have the opportunity to both act and observe, and who engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that help foster critical thinking. The theatrical act is thus
experienced as conscious intervention, as a rehearsal for social action
rooted in a collective analysis of shared problems of oppression. This
particular type of interactive theater is rooted in the pedagogical and
political principles specific to the popular education method developed
by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: 1) to see the situation lived by the
participants; 2) to analyze the root causes of the situation; and 3) to
act to change the situation following the precepts of social justice.
Augusto Boal's 2009 World Theatre Day Message All human societies are "spectacular*" in their daily life and produce "spectacles" at special moments. They are "spectacular" as a form of social organization and produce "spectacles" like the one you have come to see. Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre! Weddings and funerals are "spectacles", but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting - all is theatre. One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the "spectacles" of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can't see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life. Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide, slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in some respectable bank or in some honest trader's hands in the stock exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theatre, a dark plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have remained spectators in the last row of the balcony. Twenty years ago, I staged Racine's Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each presentation, I used to say to my actors: "The fiction we created day by day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right to lie. Theatre is the Hidden Truth". When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life. Participate in the "spectacle" which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life! We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. Augusto Boal (Original
Portuguese)
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