***WHAT IS THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED?
The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and political 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 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.
***THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED LABORATORY The purpose of the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, founded in New York City in July 1990, is to provide a forum for the practice, performance and dissemination of the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed. We work with educators, human service and mental health workers, union organizers, and community activists who are interested in using interactive theater as a tool for analyzing and exploring solutions to problems of oppression and power that arise in the workplace, school and community--problems connected to AIDS, substance abuse, family violence, homelessness, unemployment, racism and sexism. Just as the principal goal of popular education is to change the power relations in our society and to create mechanisms of collective power over all the structures of society, so too the principal goal of the Laboratory is to help groups explore and transform power relations of domination and subjugation that give rise to oppression. Within this learning process: 1) all participants are learners; 2) all participate in and contribute equally to the production of knowledge, which is a continuous dialogue; 3) the learners are the subject and not the object of the process; 4) the objective of the process is to liberate participants from both internal and external oppression, so as to make them capable of changing their reality, their lives and the society they live in.
Since 1990, through the auspices of The Brecht Forum, the Laboratory has initiated and organized seven intensive workshops led by Augusto Boal in New York City--the latest held at The Brecht Forum in March 1993 and at Hunter College in February 1994. It has also planned and led more than forty public training workshops in the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed, with a special series on Image Theater techniques in the Fall of 1992 and Summer of 1993. In this capacity, the Laboratory has brought together people from diverse backgrounds, occupations, and organizations, and functioned as a resource, information and networking center serving individuals and groups interested in theater for social change.
In the past years, the Laboratory has developed and conducted on-site workshops with different community organizations to explore problems specific to their particular work: the role of the arts in the struggle against racism at the North Star Conference (January 1993); building solidarity among women at the Urban Pathways/Travelers Hotel Women's Shelter (October-December, 1993); AIDS prevention with the Shaman-Pregones-ASPIRA coalition (February 1994); and promoting health among an HIV afflicted homeless population at the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases (March-April 1994). Members of the Laboratory attended the International Festival of the Theater of the Oppressed held in Rio de Janeiro (July-August 1993), strengthening relations with theater activists from twenty-two different countries, while planning the creation of an International Association of the Theater of the Oppressed. The Laboratory has also given advice and support to individuals and groups who use the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed in their particular field (education, social work, community organizing, the arts). The Images Theater Collective, for instance, grew out of the meetings and study sessions led by the Laboratory on the political potential of interactive theater. In 1992, as part of the movement to counter the official Columbus Quincentennial celebrations, the Collective wrote and performed a play, based on Image Theater techniques, on colonial oppression and resistance in Latin America. In addition, as a result of Laboratory activity, Theater of the Oppressed theory and techniques have been integrated into the basic curriculum of both the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Training Unit and the Education Program of the Shaman Repertory Theater. Finally, in 1993, the Laboratory became an independent affiliate of the Institute for Popular Education at The Brecht Forum, established to promote the Paulo Freire approach to popular education.
***THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED IMAGE THEATER TECHNIQUES: RASHOMON Inspired by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's study in multiple perspectives, Rashomon is an improvisatory technique that highlights the role of perception in the creation of the "Other." Rashomon is specifically designed for the study of the rigid patterns of perception that create a negatively-charged Other, in an oppressive, closed, recurring situation; as such, it is particularly suited for exploring the role of individual perception in generating biases and hate.
***DESCRIPTION OF THE TECHNIQUE 1) Workshop members are asked to volunteer to tell the story of an incident of oppression that has happened to them, and that is likely to recur. The situation must involve well-established, antagonistic relations with others. The oppression is experienced by the narrator, or protagonist, as an impasse; it results from the objective interaction of people situated in a circular, conflictual social setting.
2) When all the stories have been heard, the group votes and chooses the story that has evoked the greatest collective resonance. The protagonist of the featured story then chooses fellow participants to play the other characters of the story, and together they improvise the scene.
3) Next, the protagonist makes an exaggerated image, involving the whole body, of how he/she felt and saw each of the other characters during the preceding scene, and gives them their corresponding image. They, in turn, take it, wear it, and freeze. The protagonist finally makes an image of how he/she felt and saw him/herself, and freezes. Keeping their images as masks, the characters then begin to improvise the same story, repeating the same dialogues and interactions.
4) Each of the other characters then gets to create a set of images that all will wear during successive improvisations. Each time, the dialogue and the interactions are filtered by the masks. The number of improvisations depends on the number of characters.
5) When all the images have been generated, the scene is improvised once more. This time, however, the characters can alternate between the masks that they have worn; they can chose at any given moment the one that feels most comfortable to them or that best helps them to obtain what they want.
6) At this point, the study of a circular, closed situation ends, and there begins a new moment: attempts to transform the situation itself. The Rashomon technique now expands into a lightning forum. The characters shed all masks and improvise the scene one last time. But now, members of the audience become "spect-actors." They can yell Stop and intervene in the action at any given moment by replacing the protagonist in order to show him/her alternatives to the behavior illustrated in the scene, alternatives that they feel are more empowering.
Rashomon is based on the premise that our perception of the Other is a social construct mediated by stereotypes. It also posits that, within the context of the "spect-actor" relation, the use of living body imagery in a three-dimensional space to explore patterns of perception that give rise to deformed, incomplete, or mistaken impressions offers the opportunity to develop a unique critical perspective. Rashomon is a powerful critical tool that can be used to collectively challenge stereotypes and promote greater understanding of empathy with others.
****THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED ACROSS THE CURRICULUM The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory proposes the use of specialized theater techniques in the classroom across the liberal arts and social sciences curriculum as a means of bridging the polarities that define the current academic achievement vs. social skills debate.
****WHAT TYPE OF CURRICULUM DOES THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED PROMOTE? The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory supports a curriculum that:
-recognizes the advancement of critical thinking as a fundamental objective of the educational process, and supplies practical structures for its development in the classroom; -defines critical thinking in terms of the interdependency of literacy and social skills; -promotes a politics of inclusion both in terms of the composition of the student body and of pedagogy inclusion of students' experience as an integral component of the educational process, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to course content; -is rooted in a social ethic that values human solidarity, tolerance and cooperation.
****THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED AND CRITICAL THINKING a. The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory emphasizes the need to understand and challenge the assumptions that are at the root of dominant educational practices. We pose the question: What values are being transmitted in the classroom that impede critical thinking? b. The pedagogical objective of the Theater of the Oppressed is to increase literacy. It implements a three-fold strategy for achieving this:1. Theater in the Service of Literacy
-minimizing alienation (student/student, student/teacher and student/text) through interactive approaches to teaching; -placing dialogue at the center of the learning process; -viewing the integration of practical social skills, such as self-organization and cooperation, as an inherent component of literacy.
2. Critical Thinking as Theatrical Practice In the Theater of the Oppressed, critical thinking takes the form of a general shift away from abstract to more concrete modes of thought, from subjective to more objective modes of perception, from monologue to dialogue. More specifically, in order to develop in participants powers of critical distance, the entire body is mobilized: emphasis is placed on the body in context. a) Games and techniques highlight the process of self-awareness and self-empowerment as the interplay of individual and collective modes of experience. The point of departure is always individual experience that progressively becomes amplified to the point of reflecting and containing within itself the diversity of a shared group experience. Thus, individual experience is valued both for itself and as a means of reinforcing the main focus of the process: the gradual construction of a shared group experience.
b) The techniques of Image Theater, based on the use of living body imagery, are designed to strengthen in each individual the skills of observation and dialogue required for effective group interaction. Rejecting interpretation as a search for truth that impoverishes the connotative potential of each image, Image Theater stresses: a) descriptions of concrete phenomena that occur in the here-and-now, and can be corroborated by others; and b) subjective impressions, prefaced by words such as it seems to me and it appears that that relativize their content. 3) In order to increase the powers of observation of participants, games and exercises are designed to stimulate the senses (looking at what we see, listening to what we hear, feeling what we touch) and break patterns of mechanized physical movement and perception.
4) Dialogue is promoted at all levels of exchange in the group. All games and techniques are designed to develop the social skills of cooperation and consensus-building along with those of observation and analysis. Games are also generated as interactive structures that allow spect-actors to physically intervene in open-ended dramatic action. The goal is not necessarily to find the correct solution to particular problems of oppression, but rather to explore and rehearse a multiplicity of possible solutions.
****WHAT ARE THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED TECHNIQUES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM? Theater of the Oppressed techniques are practical pedagogical tools that can be integrated into the framework of any humanities or social science program. They are easy to learn and complement existing course material. The techniques directly address the problem of student motivation and passivity. By enabling students to create parallel physical and verbal texts based on their own experience, the techniques both validate students' lives and skills and help create new structures of interaction among students, as well as between students and teachers, and students and course texts.
With its emphasis on physical dialogue, Image Theater can be advantageously used in a sociology, anthropology, psychology, peace studies or ethics courses, for example, to explore problems related to external or internalized forms of oppression, power relations, prejudices and stereotypes. The non-verbal imagery stimulates individual expression even among the most timid, and gives rise to perspectives that can greatly enrich writing, language and literature courses. Due to the fact that the images evoke subconscious thought processes, they have proven especially useful in initiating insightful discussions on complex topics such as racism, gender issues, alienation, ageing and the family. Indeed, living body imagery can function as a powerful springboard for in-depth critical analyses across the curriculum.
****For more information or for workshop schedules, contact the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, c/o The Brecht Forum, Inc., 122 West 27 Street 10 floor, New York, New York 10001; Phone: (212) 674-9145; Fax: (212) 674-650