Theatre of the Oppressed Essay

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It is nineteen sixty-nine. Brazil is in political turmoil. An innocent man has just been forced into exile in Argentina because of his classic text, Theatre of the Oppressed. How is it that theatre can cause such controversy as to force a man to have to leave his home? Who is this man to be influential enough through his art to attract political attention? This man is none other than Augusto Boal. Boal had been interested in theatre from a young age and participated in shows during his youth in Rio de Janiro. However, he did not get heavily involved in theatre until after his education at Columbia University. When Augusto Boal was a young director for the Arena Theatre in São Paulo he first began forming ideas which would eventually lead to the creation of the Theatre of the Oppressed. Originally Boal would allow the audience to discuss the play at its end which followed tradition. Eventually this led to audience members guiding the action of the play throughout its performance. However, after an incident in which an actor could not understand an audience member, they got up on stage and performed the described action. This evolved into the creation of the "spect-actor." A spect-actor is an audience member who directly participates and guides the action during the performance of a show. Through this, Boal "discovered that through this participation the audience members became empowered not only to imagine change but to actually practice that change, reflect collectively on the suggestion, and thereby become empowered to generate social action"(PTO Web). This quickly turned into a way for the people Brazil to make a commentary on the world around them particularly the military takeover of government that occurred at this time. Although this earned Boal fame, recognition, and love from the Brazilian people, it also earned him government attention and one night when "walking home from an Arena performance of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Boal directed in 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, arrested, tortured, and eventually exiled to Argentina, then self-exiled to Europe" (PTO Web). While Boal was in Argentina he wrote his most famous work, Theatre of the Oppressed in nineteen
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