In Tribute to Augusto Boal, Founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed
Augusto Boal, the founder of the Theatre of the Oppressed who died last week, believed that drama could bring about radical change. His innovative work encouraged audience members to take to the stage to act out real-life problems and, through this, to develop strategies for personal and social change. Members of the Citizenship DRC reflect on his legacy.
I heard about Boal's death this morning from Oga Abah. I am in Abuja attending a meeting of the National Technical Working Committee of Vision 20: 2020, Nigeria and the Federal Government’s new strategic design to launch Nigeria into the World's 20 largest economies by the year 2020. I had just spoken so passionately about Boal, and how as an individual with a global vision he has transformed the world of make-believe and the lessons that his theatre holds for Nigeria.
I know death is a necessary end that will come when it will, but I am not sure if this particular death is not very painful. Since morning, my mind has been playing his images, his postures during his workshop, his heavy Brazilian accented English and the melody that it produces each time he speaks. I cannot but keep playing back the debates his ideas have generated in the design and development of the theatre programme in the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, where as a student, his theatre approach converted me to the profession. And I reflect with amazement and deep wonder the extent to which his idea alone have influenced the programme of theatre studies, not just in my University but in countless other sites of learning the world over.
I cannot even begin to contemplate the magnitude of his influence both ideologically and artistically. As the person who ably and craftily translated Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed into theatre of the oppressed his model of theatre making did not only spurn movements of unparalleled proportions in the world of illusion, but he so forcefully ideologised theatre and brought into world consciousness its reality.
Boal cannot be said to have died – as a Nigerian I believe very strongly that he has merely changed sleeping places by progressing into ancestorhood – from that spiritual high pedestal he will stand as a perpetual guardian to the soul of theatre for development. With this translation into the realm of spirits he now has the capacity to be in all development theatre places at the same time through the power of his undying ideas. The more theatre of the oppressed and its varied mutative and polymorphous manifestations get used, the more Boal lives, in our minds, in our hearts, in our lives. In death Boal’s real life has become suspended and his theatre has begun.
Jenkeri Zakari Okwori works in the Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria
Adieu Boal!
It is sad,
It is a mighty loss,
But we must glory,
In the legacy he has left!
I first met Boal in 1985 at a workshop in London. I met him again in 1987 in Canada and in 2005 in Omaha, Nebraska. What was constant and what stood out each time was that his practice never stood still. He critiqued himself, he updated his ideas because he kept watch of world events. So his theatre grew. One amazing thing I enjoyed in all the workshops is that the world never depressed him. He told wonderful stories of how he negotiated it and of how poor people, able and disabled, inspired him.
On behalf of the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance (NPTA)/Theatre for Development Centre (TFDC), Nigeria we send condolences to Boal's family. But we say his works will stand the test of time. We have gained inspiration from them, we have domesticated them, and we have changed lives using them. Sleep well, Augusto!
Professor Oga Steve Abah works at the Theatre for Development Centre, Ahmadu Bello,University, Zaria, Nigeria
Theatre, Politics, Life: Remebering Augusto Boal
In early 1984, a friend lent me a book that changed my life: Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Within months, we’d formed a street theatre group, our centrepiece, ‘The Oppressed Person’, directly inspired by Boal. I remember the sheer anarchic thrill of swooping down on shopping centres and staging skits that invited people to challenge conventions, contest the abuse of authority and claim their freedom. Boal’s ‘Invisible Theatre’ was an especially delicious source of ideas. Our modest homage to this was a ceremony, complete with priest, sermon and chant, which we performed outside banks, provoking children to ask their mothers, ‘why are those people worshipping money?’ Over the years, I’ve gone back to Boal’s work time and again, finding new depths to it as I began to connect theatre’s potential to provoke radical questioning of what we take for granted with democratising ways of finding solutions for a fairer world.
Augusto Boal worked at the nexus between politics and theatre. His was a theatre of everyday life that was sharply political, bent on provoking change. His extraordinary dynamism and irrepressible intellectual and political energy was infectious, animating and activating people the world over. He evolved practices that addressed not only the stark face of domination – born of the experiences that drove him into exile from the Brazilian dictatorship – but also internalised oppression, what he called ‘the cop in the head’. Perhaps the most exciting of Boal’s innovations for the kind of work we do at IDS is Legislative Theatre: theatre that engages the people in coming up with laws and policies that can make a difference to their lives. This is a technique he exploited to full effect to close the gap between politicians and the people when he was elected municipal government councillor in Rio, generating ideas that he could pursue into legislation in the municipal chamber. Seeing Boal and his team at work in 2000, in an extraordinary workshop that had Brazilian Ministry of Justice officials using Legislative Theatre to explore barriers and possibilities for change in the Brazilian penal system, was one of the most moving and inspiring experiences I’ve had.
Over the years, the work of the Institute of Development Studies' Participation, Power and Social Change Team with participatory methodologies, citizenship and power has brought us into contact with Boal’s colleagues at the Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed (CTO) in Rio, and with countless others who have been influenced by Boal’s work. In IDS, several of us have used his ideas and techniques to animate our teaching. Playing Boal’s ‘Great Game of Power’ has helped complicate discussions of power in the classroom, connecting the personal and the political. And Boal’s methods have inspired ways of addressing issues of prejudice and power with sometimes the most unlikely participants – like a group of determinedly ‘gender-resistant’ Indian Administrative Service officers who I got doing Forum Theatre to create and intervene in everyday scenes of discrimination and unfairness in their offices back home, bringing the word ‘gender’ to life.
The legacy Boal leaves behind is a body of work and a way of working that will continue to fire the passion of activists the world over. His words on World Theatre Day this year are a call to action, full of energy and hope: as we mourn his loss, we owe it to him to carry on the work he inspired us to do.
‘We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage of life and in our own life… We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.’
Andrea Cornwall is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studie
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