Augusto Boal & Forum Theatre

Theatre is a form of knowledge: it should and can also be a means of transforming society. 
Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it
Augusto Boal

Forum Theatre forms the heart of No Fixed Abode and is based on the ideas of Brazilian director and political activist Augusto Boal.

It is one of the theatrical techniques known collectively as "The Theatre of the Oppressed" http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/ which Boal developed in the early 1970s and which is now practised throughout the world. 

Influenced by radical educationalist Paulo Freire http://www.freire.org/,  Boal believed theatre could be an educational, political process that could empower people faced with oppression (internally or externally) to fight back.

He rejected traditional theatre and its separation between actors and audience feeling it reflected and perpetuated the existing power dynamic where one side speaks and the other listens.

In Forum Theatre that traditional separation is broken down. After the actors present a problematical situation and its unsuccessful resolution, the audience is prompted to ask questions - to query the process on stage. The theatre then becomes interactive as the spect-actors (as Boal called them) are encouraged to step in and change the action on stage - to enact their own ideas. So the theatre becomes a place of debate, of critical thinking and of productive dialogue. 

Boal's beliefs and practise cost him heavily when in 1971 he was arrested and tortured by Brazil's military junta. Released after three months, he was exiled to Argentina where he continued to work on his ideas, including image theatre which uses physical theatre instead of speech. 


In 1973 he published his now famous book Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) which was translated into 25 languages. He later taught at the Sorbonne before  moving back to Rio de Janeiro when the junta fell in 1986. He organised many international TO festivals, set up various theatre companies, conducted TO training worldwide and developed further techniques such as invisible theatre where the public is unaware they are being involved in a theatrical situation.

In the 1990s he was elected to Rio de Janeiro's city council, adopting his theatre techniques to local politics. This method of governing in which ordinary people are encouraged to be involved and make laws was called legislative theatre. Experiments in this type of legislative theatre work have taken place in various cities around the world.

Among his many other projects he was a frequent visitor to London and worked with Cardboard Citizens where the translator of five of his books, Adrian Jackson, is Artistic Director and Chief Executive. 

Boal died in 1996 leaving behind an international legacy that changed the face of theatre and its role in education and politics. "While some people make theatre," he said, "we are all theatre".

His highly respected and influential books include: Games for Actors and Non-Actors, The Rainbow of Desire and Legislative Theatre, alongside his autobiography, Hamlet and the Baker's Son.

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