I’m motivated about theatre after todays experience is Second Life, both because of it being a Theatre par excellence AND because our host Kim had such an exciting deep perspective about drama and education. Learning about Boal was a find, though it is more a case of finding something lost. I think I owned a copy of Theatre of the Oppressed at one time, having a brush with Paulo Friere in the early seventies. He spoke here just as we were setting up a school.
The motivation is not just an external thing, it has been on my mind as I prepare to train others in Psychodrama this year. Theatre is an essential component of Psychodrama – it is as much theatre as therapy, it is therapy because it is theatre… but we must go further than that. Psychodrama is not only “clinical Psychodrama” it includes applications on the world, good theatre can transform the world.
I don’t like the line he has below, though the last thing I really want is a debate, I love the spirit of all this,
“it is a rehearsal for the revolution”
The reason I don’t like that in therapy is more obvious. It is possible in surplus reality to scream, shout, and annihilate whole planets, to do what you will. This only works if people are stable enough to see this as NOT a rehearsal.
So what is it?
Transformation, making things possible in the world.
So, when it comes to Sociodrama, that too might be a way of transformation, making things possible in the world.
Theatre guru Augusto Boal: “As workshop leader, I am merely an instrument”
February 2008 –“I always fiercely opposed our government, but that is over now. Gilberto Gil is an excellent Minister of Culture. The Minister of Justice recently announced that cultural centres will be established in two hundred Brazilian cities. That is fantastic, because I know this is not an empty promise. It feels like a reward for our years of work.”
Augusto Boal
Augusto Boal (Rio de Janeiro, 1931) wrote his first book, Teatro del oprimido (Theatre of the Oppressed), in 1975. His philosophy has attracted followers under that name throughout the world. “The audience holds a general rehearsal for what happens in daily life. Key concepts are human development and freedom. The theatre shows us new roles. In essence, these roles are ready and waiting for the time when the viewer actually needs them. The theatre itself is not revolutionary: it is a rehearsal for the revolution.”
