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A review by akemi_666
Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal
4.0
This is such a beautiful merger of psychodrama and epic theatre.
From psychodrama, Boal takes the insight that conflict must be relived, in the here and now, for it to be processed properly. Instead of interpreting memories, dreams, and encounters symbolically, we must act them out, feel through them bodily and affectively, so that we may overcome our reified responses and reclaim our spontaneity.
Boal, however, is less interested in individual spontaneity, than political imagination. Boal understands Aristotelian tragedy as a tool of repression; through identification with the hero, we become passive spectators. Through catharsis, we empty ourselves of dissenting emotions. We identify with the virtues of the hero and examine ourselves in light of their vices; however, what is depicted as virtue or vice goes unspoken. For Aristotle, justice was his empirical observations: an economic system that subjugated slaves and women. Theatre then, operated to justify these conditions.
Boal argues that Machiavelli rids us of such traditional virtues and vices. However, he replaces them with bourgeois values: self-interest, rationality, pragmatism. Characters no longer good nor bad, but varying levels of successful in a market society. We move from virtuous heroes punished due to their vices, to singular individuals free as the strength of their wills.
For Boal, Brecht challenges these idealistic forms of theatre by situating such characters into a social field. No one is born with this or that essential trait; rather, traits, dispositions, and behaviours emerge through socialisation. Brecht understands consciousness as arising through material conditions, the ways we relate to one another. Whether we met our employers in the eyes or look down at our feet. Whether we shrink in the face of authority or expand with pride. Brecht explores how "Sociology becomes psychology". We move from identification and catharsis, to estrangement and defamiliarisation. From passive empathy to active critique.
Despite these advances, however, creative control remains in the hand of the singular writer (Brecht). While epic theatre reveals class antagonisms, it give no agency to its spectators. As with classical psychoanalysis, epic theatre generates only symbolic mastery. What is needed for change, however, is collective action, a theatre whose characters and events are generated by the oppressed themselves, so that, in re-enacting their oppression, they discover new forms of resistance.
In the theatre of the oppressed, there is no distinction between writer, actor, and spectator. Everyone is a co-participant in a dialectic of collective possibilities. Real world conflicts are staged; exploitative factory conditions, racial tensions between immigrant and local labourers, the public torture of political dissidents by authoritarian dictators. Everyone takes part playing the characters, from workers, to managers, to military personnel. After reproducing the scene, all are encouraged to suggest solutions, however, these suggestions must be acted out (a pragmatic way to avoid armchair socialism). Others may intervene, change the script. What matters is not a perfect answer, but everyone's growing capacity to act otherwise. Stuck in exploitative factory conditions, a man suggests blowing up the factory. However, he doesn't know how to make explosives. Another suggests going on strike. The manager simply hires more men from town (reserve army of labour). Another suggests sabotaging the machinery. The manager is forced to hire an engineer, and the factory workers finally get a few hours of rest. Not only are different tactics for resistance enacted out, those playing the managers begin to understand how their oppressors think.
In sum: theatre moves from a poetics of morality (virtue), to psychology (individual will), to sociology (material conditions). Similarly, the spectator's privileged mode of experiencing shifts from affect (a purging of negative emotions), to thought (a critical reflection on fiction's ideological force), to action (a participation in collective organising).
Consciousness raising through an ever expanding dialectic between various class positions (we must be more than proletarian to succeed as proletariats). Embodied experience over theoretical reifications (Boal's way of bridging the illiteracy rampant in Brazil in the 1960s). Pretend praxis as theory crafting. This is my beautiful dialectics of the concrete.
From psychodrama, Boal takes the insight that conflict must be relived, in the here and now, for it to be processed properly. Instead of interpreting memories, dreams, and encounters symbolically, we must act them out, feel through them bodily and affectively, so that we may overcome our reified responses and reclaim our spontaneity.
Boal, however, is less interested in individual spontaneity, than political imagination. Boal understands Aristotelian tragedy as a tool of repression; through identification with the hero, we become passive spectators. Through catharsis, we empty ourselves of dissenting emotions. We identify with the virtues of the hero and examine ourselves in light of their vices; however, what is depicted as virtue or vice goes unspoken. For Aristotle, justice was his empirical observations: an economic system that subjugated slaves and women. Theatre then, operated to justify these conditions.
Boal argues that Machiavelli rids us of such traditional virtues and vices. However, he replaces them with bourgeois values: self-interest, rationality, pragmatism. Characters no longer good nor bad, but varying levels of successful in a market society. We move from virtuous heroes punished due to their vices, to singular individuals free as the strength of their wills.
For Boal, Brecht challenges these idealistic forms of theatre by situating such characters into a social field. No one is born with this or that essential trait; rather, traits, dispositions, and behaviours emerge through socialisation. Brecht understands consciousness as arising through material conditions, the ways we relate to one another. Whether we met our employers in the eyes or look down at our feet. Whether we shrink in the face of authority or expand with pride. Brecht explores how "Sociology becomes psychology". We move from identification and catharsis, to estrangement and defamiliarisation. From passive empathy to active critique.
Despite these advances, however, creative control remains in the hand of the singular writer (Brecht). While epic theatre reveals class antagonisms, it give no agency to its spectators. As with classical psychoanalysis, epic theatre generates only symbolic mastery. What is needed for change, however, is collective action, a theatre whose characters and events are generated by the oppressed themselves, so that, in re-enacting their oppression, they discover new forms of resistance.
In the theatre of the oppressed, there is no distinction between writer, actor, and spectator. Everyone is a co-participant in a dialectic of collective possibilities. Real world conflicts are staged; exploitative factory conditions, racial tensions between immigrant and local labourers, the public torture of political dissidents by authoritarian dictators. Everyone takes part playing the characters, from workers, to managers, to military personnel. After reproducing the scene, all are encouraged to suggest solutions, however, these suggestions must be acted out (a pragmatic way to avoid armchair socialism). Others may intervene, change the script. What matters is not a perfect answer, but everyone's growing capacity to act otherwise. Stuck in exploitative factory conditions, a man suggests blowing up the factory. However, he doesn't know how to make explosives. Another suggests going on strike. The manager simply hires more men from town (reserve army of labour). Another suggests sabotaging the machinery. The manager is forced to hire an engineer, and the factory workers finally get a few hours of rest. Not only are different tactics for resistance enacted out, those playing the managers begin to understand how their oppressors think.
In sum: theatre moves from a poetics of morality (virtue), to psychology (individual will), to sociology (material conditions). Similarly, the spectator's privileged mode of experiencing shifts from affect (a purging of negative emotions), to thought (a critical reflection on fiction's ideological force), to action (a participation in collective organising).
Consciousness raising through an ever expanding dialectic between various class positions (we must be more than proletarian to succeed as proletariats). Embodied experience over theoretical reifications (Boal's way of bridging the illiteracy rampant in Brazil in the 1960s). Pretend praxis as theory crafting. This is my beautiful dialectics of the concrete.