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THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED

John Sullivan, Mecca Burns, Doug Paterson

Theatre of the Oppressed is a theatrical form that is oriented towards liberation

from oppressive beliefs and situations. TO, as it is sometimes abbreviated, addresses
social, political, and economic issues such as racism, poverty, homelessness, violence
against women, religious and ethnic conflicts, and environmental threats.
TO addresses any issues a community desires. Its strength lies in its
uncompromising commitment to oppressed groups, and its remarkable construction of
theatre events – both workshops and performances – which exhort us to engage in
dialogue and take action.
The International Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed estimates that close to
20.000 theatre artists around the world identify themselves as TO practitioners. Centers
of the Theatre of the Oppressed (CTOs) thrive in Europe, South America, North America,
and India. In addition, there are countless theatre practitioners who incorporate TO
elements into their own approaches, as various chapters of this book will attest.
In the most well-known method, Forum Theatre, a troupe of actors present a scene
and audience members help change the outcome. Augusto Boal, the Brazilian theatre
artist who invented TO, has spent almost a half-century developing a vast “arsenal” of
games, exercises and techniques to prepare actors for this collaboration with the
audience.
To many in the U.S.A. and Canada, the term “oppression” may sound severe, and
unrelated to some of our lives. It is useful to understand the method’s origins within the
sociopolitical climate of South America in the twentieth century.

History
Born in 1931, Augusto Boal studied theatre in New York City during his college
years. In the early 1950s, he returned to Brazil, where his own liberationist sentiments
were influenced by practitioners of political theatre and by Paolo Freire, who was seeking
to bring education to the peasants of Brazil.
Boal served as playwright and Artistic Director of the Arena Theater in Sao Paulo,
Brazil from 1956 to 1971. However, because Brazil came under the control of a right-
wing military junta in the 1960s, Boal’s efforts to aid the compesinos in a literacy
campaign ran afoul of the authorities. He was jailed and tortured in the early 1970s, and,
like Freire, finally expelled from Brazil. In exile in Argentina in 1971, Boal wrote the
seminal book, Teatro de Oprimador (Theatre of the Oppressed).
In Argentina Boal developed Invisible Theatre—ostensibly unstaged, politically-
charged provocations in the streets and public places of Buenos Aires. Another
elaboration was Image Theatre, which employed frozen scenes, or tableaux to
demonstrate power dynamics and generate dialogue between the indigenous peoples and
the descendants of European conquerors.
However, as in Brazil a few years earlier, Argentina’s military dictatorship in the
mid-1970s swung to the right and began its own harsh repression of dissidents. In 1974
Boal left Argentina and moved to Europe.
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In Paris, Boal found that Europeans were oppressed in their own way, under the
shadow of internalized oppression rather than political rights or material entitlements. In
the 1980s he created a new form of TO, first called Cop in the Head, and then renamed
Rainbow of Desire, which became the title of his third book. This new form connects
one’s personal reality with the unseen hand of a power dynamic that both nurture and
oppresses. Boal attracted many followers in Paris, where he established the first
international Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed (CTO).
In the later 1980s, the Brazilian government had returned to civilian rule, so Boal
returned home to found another CTO in Rio de Janeiro. In 1992, he was elected to Rio’s
city council as a vereador. Boal and his political/theatrical staff used Forum Theatre to
assess the needs and ideas of his constituents and propose laws, and Legislative Theatre
was born.
Boal was not re-elected, in part because of fierce resistance from Rio’s ruling
circles. He continued his work in schools, poor districts within Rio and Sao Paulo, and
prisons throughout Brazil. Currently, Boal is experimenting with a new TO system he
calls Subjunctive Theatre and a formal “Aesthetic of the Oppressed’ that connects the
multiple strands of his life’s work within a unifying framework. Today Boal travels
throughout the world, lecturing, conductings workshops, and mounting productions.
Boal attracts the attention of intellectuals and socially concerned theatre artists
wherever he goes. As mentioned, his techniques have been integrated into other forms of
applied theatre and social action groups. In many parts of the developing and conflicted
work, TO practitioners work towards intercultural understanding and political
consciousness-raising.
There have also been efforts to help promote inter-cultural understanding and
political consciousness-raising in many parts of the developing and conflicted world.
CTOs hold regional, national, and international conferences.

Philosophy
The philosophical thrust of Augusto Boal’s work is influenced by Paulo Freire, his
colleague and compatriot. Freire’s work is founded on the bedrock premise that human
beings become more human through authentic relationships and meaningful work.
Freire’s popular education model calls for a teacher/learner relationship where
knowledge and learning flow in both directions. Through the process of participatory
democracy, people begin to reclaim their role as active, transformative agents in the
world.
Oppression is defined by Boal as a power dynamic based on monologue rather
than dialogue. The goal is not necessarily to overthrow the oppression, but to begin a
dialogue about it. Furthermore, Boal believes that oppression can best be solved by those
experiencing it.
In Theatre of the Oppressed (his first of several books), Boal critiques Aristotle’s
"coercive system of tragedy" which he views as a socialization process. In a Greek
drama, the spectator tends to identify with the protagonist as the action gradually builds
to catharsis. When the protagonist's tragic flaw is climactically revealed, the spectator
feels pity, and fear of experiencing a similar fate. The spectator is thus purged of the
tragic flaw—typically hubris, the arrogance of daring to defy the gods. However, in
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Boal’s view, a little hubris may be vital to help marginalized people challenge their
oppressors and achieve social justice.
Unlike conventional theatre, the goal of Theatre of the Oppressed is not to achieve
equilibrium. The conflicts cannot be resolved in the plot—they must be solved in real
life.

Methods
The evolution of T.O. approaches was mentioned previously, as it reflects Boal’s
travels through time and space. Image Theatre, Invisible Theatre, Forum Theatre,
Rainbow of Desire and Legislative Theatre will be described briefly and then Forum
Theatre in more detail.
Image Theatre. This approach serves to “uncover essential truths about societies”
without relying on the spoken word. In this technique, actors sculpt themselves and
others into still images or tableaux, drawing on the rich vocabulary of physical theatre.
Through body position, level, proximity, and facial expression, these living breathing
dioramas convey the essence of some predicament, abstract idea, feeling, or situation.
Observers may suggest how close or far apart the figures should be, what direction they
should face, and their gestures. The whole group thus participates in elaborating the
image, perhaps assigning captions—words, phrases, or even dialogue—to the figures in
the tableaux. The characters may engage in ritualized movements, or speak in soliloquy
or asides, muttering or stage whispering (but loudly enough for all to hear their “interior
monologues”). In a process called dynamization, the frozen image may ultimately come
to life as each figure moves toward his or her desire.
Image Theatre sharpens awareness of how we each interpret what we see, and
how we all (as individuals or cultures) tend to assume our interpretation is “right” or
“objective.” Moreover, working with images avoids privileging those who are more
verbally adept, or are native speakers of the language being used.
Forum Theatre. As mentioned, the troupe presents a dramatized situation based on
an instance of oppression, designed to evoke an emotional response from the audience.
An effective Forum Theatre piece kindles a powerful desire in the audience for a more
satisfactory outcome, and audience members are encouraged to implement these desires
onstage. To emphasize the active nature of the process, Boal re-named the audience
spect-actors:.
To enter the enactment of the Forum, spect-actors may shout, “Stop!” The actors
will freeze. The spect-actor enters the playing space, replaces the protagonist and says
exactly at what point in the scene the action should re-commence. Then the spect-actor
shows how she or he would respond in that scene.
Invisible Theatre. Always performed in public spaces, the purpose is to generate
spontaneous public dialogue about an issue by literally and figuratively “making a
scene.” Passersby do not know that the startling event they are witnessing has been
carefully planned and rehearsed. Actors planted in the crowd as agents provocateurs
emerge to vehemently take a side, and thus galvanize onlookers to voice their own
opinions on social issues like race or gender. There is dissent among TO practitioners on
the ethics of Invisible Theatre, which remains one of Boal’s most electrifying means of
transforming the traditional “monologue” of theatre into a dialogue between audience
and stage.
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The Rainbow of Desire. In Brazil, Boal saw overwhelming poverty and police
officers [ on every street. In Europe, there was more wealth and less of a military
presence. Yet people said they felt isolated and depressed, and the drug and suicide rates
were alarming. In time, Boal realized, “The cops were not on the street—they were in
people’s heads!”
Boal’s 1995 book, The Rainbow of Desire: the Boal Method of Theatre and
Therapy, deals with internalized oppression. Techniques include Cop in the Head, in
which the inner censors are made manifest, and Rainbow of Desire, which presents more
overtly the conflicts among the different desires and concerns that paralyze the freedom
to act.
The Rainbow concept is based on a metaphor: when white light is projected onto a
prism, all its constituent colors are revealed. Similarly, the group members can each
reflect a different facet of the protagonist’s inner state. Members of the group portray the
“cops” that live in our heads, or the various “colors” of our desires. Several participants
may each share a story, and the group can choose which story resonates for them. They
help play out an improvisation, beginning (and ending) with an encounter with a real-life
antagonist.
Legislative Theatre. When Boal returned to Brazil and was elected to the city
council in Rio de Janeiro in 1997, he took his theatre company into office with him, and
together they developed a revolutionary experiment in democratic practice called
Legislative Theatre. In this system, citizens of Rio (from street cleaners to blind people)
utilized Forum Theatre to dramatize their concerns, and then suggest legislation to
address these concerns. Thirteen laws were passed through this process, which Boal calls
“transforming desires into laws.”
After thirty years of politicizing theatre, Boal began theatricalizing politics. Instead
of people going to the theatre to escape from their problems, theatre is coming to them,
empowering them to make changes. Boal’s book on this form is called Legislative
Theatre

Key Role Designations: Joker, Protagonist, Antagonist, Spect-Actor

 Several elements serve as the engine for this encounter: the joker, the actors, and 
emerging from within the audience, the spect­actors
The facilitator (or rather, “difficultator” as Boal likes to say) who leads workshops
and conducts the forum process is called the joker. The term is not meant to imply
someone who mocks, or to be associated with surprise betrayals or Batman’s arch-foe.
Rather it is derived from the wild card in a deck of cards, which is not tied to any
particular number or suit. The word implies a playful, exploratory attitude, an invitation
to wonder together, “What if...?”
Indeed the TO joker plays many roles. More than just the public figure of a forum
or workshop, many jokers are organizers, motivators, community activists, directors,
technicians, and costume and prop advisors. A joker is a multi-skilled person who works
both on and far beyond the stage.
The joker’s main challenge is, without censoring or dominating, to ensure that a
scene’s structure invites the audience to intervene. S/he introduces the event, guides the
interactions among the players, and stimulates the audience to participate, sometimes
through structured games that have been strategically sandwiched in.
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A joker improvises constantly within the process: adding, pacing, modifying and
transitioning through a vast array of available structures to suit the unique and evolving
needs of each group. Following the enactment the joker will ask spect-actors and players
how they felt during the scene, and how well the interventions worked. This dialogue is
crucial.
The protagonist is the person who is the focus of the predicament. During a
workshop, several people may each offer a situation that evokes a feeling of unfairness or
oppression, and the group will choose one to focus on, or coalesce several stories to
represent the whole group. While the story may be fictionalized, it must still retain its
essential truth. The protagonist is the primary person to be replaced in a Forum Theatre
performance.
The antagonist represents the one who consciously or unconsciously perpetuates
the oppression. An example might be a disadvantaged farm worker as protagonist trying
to get the ear of the wealthy landowner, who, in this scene would be the antagonist.
Who is the oppressor, though? Is a mother who wants to liberate her daughter
from peer pressure the protagonist or antagonist, when the daughter begs to be allowed to
wear provocative clothes, or shoes that might be bad for growing feet? Are the
antagonists the peers who are pressuring the girl to wear the “in” fashion? Or are they the
editors of the fashion magazines?
Boal has observed that in any situation, if looked at from a different angle, these
roles could be reversed. However, when the purpose is to motivate people to take action,
ambiguity can create confusion and lack of focus. The ultimate purpose of this theatre is
always to spur debate and dialogue.
Playing the antagonist is a challenge that is often reserved for experienced T.O.
actors. Playing an antagonist well is a genuine act of service to the community.
As this character is rarely replaced, the antagonist must field almost every
improvisational offer coming from the audience. The actor must sense when to increase
the oppression and when to back off; this way the spect-actor’s solution is truly tested,
and not merely shown. Acting skill may be an asset; however, untrained members of the
oppressed group often excel at playing antagonists because they know their language and
tactics so well. This advantage may outweigh all other factors.
The spect-actor. The audience is not expected to sit there passively. At a certain
point when the action heats up, they are urged to get involved! Audience members who
are activist by nature are most likely to step through the “fourth wall” and become an
active agent in the forum drama.
Yet sometimes people intervene who nobody imagined would-- the forum process
can indeed be transformative. Counter to everything they’ve ever been taught about the
rules of theatre etiquette, individual audience members actually do leave their seats and
mount the stage, especially if the issues are burning ones for them. Even if they choose
not to intervene, audience members still have the power to do so, and thus are
transformed from spectators into “spect-actors” – activated spectators.
In its purest form, the Forum Theatre audience is of the same oppressed group as the
protagonist. Drawn to the Forum because they are personally impacted by the focal
issues, they have a real stake in attending, and active participation makes sense. Forums
are often staged in community spaces rather than theatres, and audience members may
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recognize friends and neighbors on stage. These factors further amplify the sense of
community ownership.

Workshops

Workshops can be used to educate people in the basics of TO, or specially designed to
confront real-world issues of oppressed groups. Workshops can also be extended to
develop performance pieces: image theatre sequences; forum scenes; forum theatre pieces
for legislative theatre; and invisible theatre scenarios.
The “classical” use of the TO workshop is to work with a group of highly motivated
non-actors focused on hot-button local issues, preparing their skills and developing a
Forum performance that is to be given with a larger audience of spect-actors. This
involves a pre-presentation process that benefits from an investment of 20 hours or more.
Including experienced actors in the mix may or may not accelerate the process. Note that
acting workshops alone will never substitute for activist passion and commitment.
A workshop can be adjusted in content and time, reflecting the needs of the
sponsoring group. It may be a weekend workshop, or a 3-hour event as part of a bigger
conference.

Workshop Exercises

Games for Actors and Non-Actors contains literally hundreds of exercises, games, and
techniques. Some are named after exotic places in the world where they were invented by
Boal and others over the years. This book seems to be a favorite of many acting teachers,
although it definitely works best when augmented by live experience with T.O.
Workshops typically begin with sensory exploration in four categories: feeling what
you touch; listening to what you hear; seeing what you look at; and dynamizing several
senses. The theory is, if we truly are to address oppression in the world, we need to
revolutionize our own bodies, which have become mechanized and habituated to the
status quo. The exercises and games are designed to acquaint us with new kinesthetic and
tactile experiences, open our eyes and ears to sights and sounds that we had
unconsciously filtered out. They also let us connect with others in novel ways, lifting us
beyond limitations we didn’t realize we had.
This warm-up may be followed by image work or other games that link with the main
focus of the workshop: Image Theatre, Rainbow of Desire, or devising Forum scenes to
perform for Forum Theatre, Invisible Theatre or Legislative Theatre.

Rehearsal Techniques
Often the joker uses “special moves” to spotlight and analyze aspects of a
character, situation or intervention. These rehearsal techniques are extremely effective for
honing forum pieces, and some can be used during performances and workshops:
Playing to a Deaf Audience. The scene must be enacted in silence. This requires
the actors to physicalize what’s happening through actions, which will clarify the
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meaning so that everyone will understand. This instantly transforms a “talky” scene and
reveals emotional subtleties.
Interrogating or Hot-seating A character is questioned by the group and
improvises in response. This technique is used theatrically to “assemble” a character with
layers of understandable intentions.
Styles or Genres: Group members request that the scene be played as a western,
melodrama, film noir, reality TV show, sitcom, horror movie, and so forth.
As-if: Scenes can be played as if characters have reversed status or gender, as if a
hurricane is raging, as if all the participants are children, whatever the group dreams up.

Forum Performance
While some applications of TO never lead to a performance, it is the public Forum
that allows a larger audience to access TO’s process. Forum performances create a
context for dialogue that addresses issues relevant to their own welfare. The actors will
serve as representatives of their community’s needs, aspirations and dreams, inciting
others to step out of the audience and test their ideas for change as embodied actions on
stage.
The origin of Forum Theatre is often told by Boal through a dramatic story. At one
performance of an agit-prop play in northern Brazil, the peasants became so aroused by
the action that they wanted Boal and his troupe to lead them to overthrow the landlords.
Boal was in the awkward postion of having to explain that he was an actor, and the
weapons were only props. That day he realized that participants must enact stories of
their own oppression, not someone else’s.
The forum actors prepare for the 60­ 90 minute performance through hours of games,
explorations of images and improvisational techniques, and the development of scenes 
based on experiences that are emblematic for their community. 
During the performance, the actors must strive to maintain the passionate integrity of
their characters as spect-actors replace the protagonist or allied characters. If moved by a
particular intervention, their character’s mindset and actions will change direction.
Otherwise, they must stay within the original boundaries of their characters and
situations: easy answers and quick fixes are never useful in addressing complex
community issues. The joker will ask certain forum actors – particularly the antagonist –
whether they felt changed or resistant during spect-actor interventions and these
discussions are a vital part of processing the issue central to each scene.
It is very advantageous to devise forum scenes that are full of action, rather than
only dialogue. Otherwise, when it’s time to “forum” the play, the audience may not feel
the need to get out of their seats, but may be inclined to sit and discuss the situation. This
is where the aforementioned rehearsal techniques and sense exercises bear fruit.
“Stop! C’est magique.” An important principle involves the avoidance of “magic”.
Occasionally, a spect-actor proposes an overly simplistic solution, a deus ex machina.
This Latin term harks from ancient Greek and Roman drama in which problems could be
solved by a god who is lowered by a crane to magically restore equilibrium. The phrase
suggests a highly artificial way of working out the plot line. Applied to real-life problems,
magical thinking doesn’t work, so the joker encourages the audience to seek realistic
possible solutions.
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Often things get disrupted; focus shifts; confidence sometimes wanes. While an
atmosphere of kindness and sensitivity tends to prevail, there is no assurance of
“psychological safety,” per se. The priority is to shake up the system, not prop up a false
sense of security. Remember this approach comes from places in the world where often
the only hope for psychological –or physical-- safety might be to challenge the status quo
Ensembles often evolve styles that incorporate elements of their cultures: physical
theatre; dance– modern or folklorico style; folk music; hip-hop; spoken word; teatro
popular pageant-style or dada images; and zany set pieces. Any of these may prime
audiences to jump on their opportunities to intervene and are used in Forums world-wide.
Wherever Forum Theater is used, it quickly incorporates the folkways, lingo, rhythms,
appearances and local knowledge of the people making it. From South Bronx, NYC to
Lagos, Nigeria, the Forum constantly reconfigures its appearance and adapts its style
while keeping its essential rules and character intact. Boal blesses this decentralized
innovation.

Training
One can learn beginning skills in a workshop, but the training to be in a Forum troupe is
ongoing, and much experience is needed to be a joker. At present, there are few
“authorized” training programs, nor is there any official certifying body, and this is both a
central virtue and a tricky problem for the TO world.. CTOs hold regional, national, and
international conferences.

The Scope of Theatre of the Oppressed Today

Practitioners worldwide now use Boal’s forms to deconstruct and analyze issues such as
environmental justice, sectarian violence, human rights violations, institutional racism &
internalized oppression, economic and cultural globalization, the death penalty, lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) issues, and access to adequate health care.
TO methods are rarely applied in the corporate environment, though they could be if
there was a sincere interest in transforming power dynamics within the organization.
As the United Sates attempts to align itself with global trends, we have an opportunity
to participate in the unfolding of grassroots political change, both here and abroad.
Theatre of the Oppressed can promote alliance among those who care about exploring
situations without pushing answers on people.

Conclusion
Theatre can be used to question political and social norms and transform how they play
out in people’s lives. This kind of theatre gives participants the message that in a play—
just like in real life-- “if they don’t change it, who will?” Theatre of the Oppressed 
methods demonstrate Augusto Boal’s great contribution to both the craft of theatre and 
the needs of civil society: a direct, dramatic form of democracy based on dialogue among
multiple points of view. As the inventor of the method himself would say  “Theatre can
help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.”