Theatre of the Oppressed

The Theatre of the Oppressed is a series of methods of Augusto Boal, Rio de Janeiro. It came in his time of exile in the 1970s to Germany and after working with actors above all introduced for the political education and is practiced in about 70 countries worldwide.

It combines art and self-discovery with a political trial action. It offers many possibilities of activation of everyday life often suppressed or neglected social and communicative resources in playful, aesthetic and theatrical encounters between people. Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed is based on two principles: The viewer as a passive nature and object should be to activists of the action. The theater should not only deal with the past, but also with the future and its possibilities.

The dialogue in the interaction between coaches and directors and the participants is a central component. Not the director determines the content of the scenes and plays, but the participants set the thematic priorities. Exemption from duties of everyday life, insight into their own actions, questioning of social suppression rules etc. are important objectives in the work and are included in the techniques and forms of this theater.

The Forum Theatre will enable passive spectators. But activation does not see itself as an end in itself. Who freed the theater from prescribed (consumption ) roles, which is also able to act courageously in similar situations in everyday life. Therefore, it can convey impulses, especially in the ( social) education and social therapy work that is not to provide a cognitively oriented teaching practice is capable of.

In Forum Theatre are raised by " model scenes " issues. The viewers can make a substitution after the scenes depicted and replace the drama ends, playing the weak, those discriminated against or disadvantaged. This is about the answers to questions: What would I do in the illustrated situation played? How can we change our ideas and our actions scenes? Forum theater is so ( aesthetic ) Training for future action in explosive conflict situations.

Legislative theater is a continuation of the Forum Theatre in the political debate: In Rio de Janeiro approximately 60 legislative proposals for the city council were with 19 grassroots groups in the neighborhoods developed, 13 of which were enforced immediately. The spectators are transformed by the issue to the discussion and role of the Legislative (eg as a city council or Senator ).

The application in Europe was discussed at international conferences though, due but also the reliable cooperation of parliamentarians, which today are missing.

An older method is the " invisible theater " that Boal has adopted and adapted in the 1920s from the theater tradition of the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. It will be played (eg, on the street, department store, etc.) theater scenes by actors in the public, without the audience knows that this is a staged event.

Even after the " idea ", the audience is not elucidated. Purpose of the action is to show the acted scenes of oppression in a society. It is a stated goal of invisible theater to bring the viewers to expose themselves to the " idea " to interfere and thus actively participate in the work on the topic (see also: street theater ).

The method of invisible theater is today among other things, applied by the Volxtheaterkarawane. The actions of the Viennese theater group always excited considerable media attention, such as the " biometric measurements " that were part of the Festival of Regions 2003 at the Gymnasium of the Benedictine in Lambach (Upper Austria ) carried out on students. The Volxtheater activists pretended to be a European Institute for Biometric Research before staff and could thus initially unhindered access personal data of the pupils and iris scans and make oral cavity cutting back on them.

The specific experiments, in 1979 organized Boal occasion of the " theater of the world" in Hamburg with German actors are, though not as a failed method, but in the matter. Boal, who had fled in the 1970s before a brutal and inhumane military dictatorship in Brazil, though could transfer the technique of invisible theater one on one to Europe, but not achieve the hoped-for enlightening purpose. In the discussions that followed the experiments, Boal conceded literally that " the suppression mechanisms in Germany are much too subtle to be made visible by the invisible theater. "