| Creative Heresies and Inexcusable Deviations
by Augusto Boal
The Theater of the Oppressed is always in movement for the simple
reason that the people that practice it are alive. It is inevitable
that, in their work, new forms of oppression are revealed, demanding
new structures, new techniques and new ways of using the older
ones. There is nothing wrong with invention, adaptation, creation
. . . as long as they do not transgress the fundamental aesthetic,
philosophical, and, above all, ethical principles of the TO.
In this issue of METAXIS, you will see that James Thompson, working
in Sri Lanka, a country dilacerated by war, realized it was impossible
to do Forum Theater on a simple scene of identity control at a
check-point because it could make explode the latent violence
that existed among different ethnical groups. So, instead of Forum,
he decided to use Rehearsal Techniques from our Arsenal. These
techniques ended up functioning differently from what is usual,
re-situating the conflict, allowing the (belligerent) participants
to understand each other and the absurdity of the situation in
which war had placed them. It allowed for dialogue, understanding.
Adrian Jackson, in London, felt that the terrain where he worked
with young students was fertile, more than usual, and he decided
to integrate sessions of Legislative Theater into the Forum. The
sessions then continued through a website in order to allow the
school´s teachers and directors to learn more about the
desires of the students and their families; and, through this
knowledge, make the necessary changes.
In Bretagne, France, Mado LePennec was preparing a workshop for
government employees that treated immigrants with rudeness bordering
on racism. Instead of giving them hand-slapping lessons in morality
and civility, she decided to train them in the art of being a
Joker, and she made them work (as Jokers) with immigrants: now,
the primary virtue of a Joker is the sincerity with which s/he
should fraternally strive to help the audience to manifest their
desires and ideas, instead of hiding them beneath his/her own.
Learning to be a Joker, the employees learned the basic rules
of civility.
In Calcutta, Sanjoy Ganguly, working with peasants in small villages,
decided to allow the Grandfather (who is usually, in the family,
the supreme power, the Father of the Father, the tyrannical oppressor)
to substitute the actor that was representing him. The Grandfather
was then able to show a gentle, refined version of how he himself
supposedly behaved with his family – a false image. Sanjoy
understood that this substitution committed the Grandfather to
behave in the exemplary manner that he had publicly represented
in the scene. He was lying but committing himself to behave correctly
from that day on.
Heresies? Yes, but… Creative heresies: the techniques of
the Theatre of the Oppressed were made for people; people were
not made for the techniques. Our techniques are alive like their
practitioners, they are not dead words written on stone.
There is a lot of talk about heresies in the practice of our Method
and, because of this, we need to keep in mind that the TO is not
a religion that bears the Revealed Truth. It can and must grow,
and to grow is to change . . . however . . . not in it's essence.
Next to these creative and welcomed heresies, we know that there
exist some groups that dedicate themselves to working in favor
of corporations, obeying their commands, trying to adapt their
workers to the better fulfillment of their roles, so that the
workers might become more profitable, more lucrative. Even though
they use, in a fragmented form, some of the exercises, games and
techniques that we created, in addition to their habitual role-playing,
they seek to consolidate a situation of oppression – exactly
the opposite of our philosophy.
Clearly the TO has no responsibility for this, just as Wagner
and Verdi are not responsible when their music is used to stimulate
workers in a tractor and truck factory (which has been done!)
or Chopin´s and Debussy´s pianos are used in a software
factory (which is also true!). Freud is not guilty for any evil
that might result from the criminal uses of his discoveries. So,
these deviations are inexcusable, they are a total inversion and
perversion of the humanistic objectives of the TO.
The TO is, and always was, a theater of the oppressed,
about the oppressed, and for
the oppressed. TO is a Method that intends to help the oppressed
to find, by themselves, the paths of their struggle against the
oppressions that they suffer, so they can rehearse forms of liberation.
This must be clear!
Translator: Macolm McNee
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Under Pressure 11 - August 2002
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