Why Do We Live? To Be Happy!
An Interview with Augusto Boal

by Roberto Mazzini, Luc Opdebeeck and Ronald Matthijssen
Vienna, Oct 25, 1999

Did you get our newsletter?
Yes, I got five. I'm going to send the people in Rio.

So you know a little bit what we are doing in Holland?
Yes, what was written there and what I heard from Luc in Utrecht

OK, now the first question is actually Lucs question. He wanted to ask you for a long time, maybe he should ask you this question. Once you decided to bury TO on the beach, under the sand.
No, it was when we were doing the campaign, we made spectacular things: we wanted to attract the attention of the media. And the media is attracted by images. If you make beautiful images, the photographers come, they publish, and the newspapers and television and everything. During the campaign we made theatre -that was not exactly invisible because people knew that it was theatre but had some aspects of Invisible Theatre- against a nuclear power plant that the Germans had built in Brasilia in the period of dictatorship. There are three centers beside that one. Two have never worked. It was something they did entirely to get money, to steal from the population. The other one, which works, from time to time it stops and to keep it working it costs a million dollars a day. This is extremely expensive. For us it would be much better to desactivate that one and this project and to go on. What we did was a scene in which we were very much dressed in black, like it was a funeral, taking flowers and spades. And then we went there singing songs, funeral songs. Of course it was a sunny day and it was full of men and women, almost naked. Just to give you an idea: the women there they use maillot they call "dental floss". It's so small that it's for dental floss and then in the middle of those naked women and men come all people dressed in black and singing, with hats and other things. Then it attracted attention. Then we started digging graves and the people said: what are you doing there? And we said: we're going to need one million graves if it explodes there. So help us to make the graves and then, while we were opening the graves we were discussing about the centre of nuclear power and it got a very big information in the newspapers.

The journalists loved it!
They loved it, and the photographers they loved it too. Whatever has a good image. We did more, we did classes on the beach, on the sand, to protest against the raising of tuition in the Catholic University, the University of Santa Ursula, with books we made classes on the beach, and the photographers they come. But we did not bury the Theatre of the Oppressed. We said that we could not go on with the Theatre of the Oppressed centre, we got to bury it, but then we entered the election as a form of helping the Worker's Party. Again one of the things we did was opening graves. But the idea of burying the theatre of the oppressed was a general one; we said: we don't have money. We work a lot an we don't get paid for anything so let's finish, let's end. And the final action would be the central, it would be the campaign. And finally it was a revitalising thing, and not a burial.

How did it feel to receive an invitation by the Governor to return to Brazil, in the knowledge that there would be subventions to work for the next years?
It was a few months only.

After that subvention had come, it must have been like a dream come true?
It was from the Vice-Governor, so he had power. And it was certain that when I went back he gave us conditions to work. We had 35 culture animators from all over the state, from the public schools. And we did plays with those people and we had luck, we had four cars, not cars but camionettes, we had four. Everything we needed to go from place to place, we had. So during about a little bit more than six months we had the best conditions to work. So we could do very beautiful work. But after he lost the election, the next governor said: no, stop that.

Like they always do.
They always do that.

In your book on Legistlative Theatre you direct yourself directly to the readers with an appeal to start thinking about the possitbilities of Legislative Theatre in their own country. It was the first time you appealed directly to readers like that. Was there a special reason for this?
There has been much developing in so many countries, that it's very important to note such things and to make someone know. Like, you're going to have a newsletter. He (Roberto) has a newsletter also. The newsletters they are important. Because if you see what the other people are doing, you get more energetic to do your own thing. You say: oh, they're doing that, they're in Holland, they are in Germany, they are in Italy, they are doing this, why not me? Let's go and do. And that's very stimulating. And the Legislative Theatre in each country has to take the form of each country. It cannot be a reproduction exactly as it was in Brazil, no? But it's true, it's the first time I addressed directly, that I become more personal. Perhaps it's a trend. Now I have just finished the book about myself. My publisher in London asked me to write a sort of biography. And then I wrote a book in which I tell things about my infancy, from my father, how he met my mother, those stories that I......fantastic stories.

About liberating eggs, you liberated the chicken by breaking the eggs.
Yes.

But if you see in Europe, everybody is talking about getting subventions, everybody is having problems getting money. Are you pessimistic or optimisitic about the future of Theatre of the Oppressed concerning financing the activities?
Well in some way I'm optimistic but I'm also pessimistic. I am pessimistic that I firmly believe that what's happening now is that capitalism after the end of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, they are very cynical now. And they are telling clearly that they could not consider humanity to be only one. They consider there are three humanities. The humanity of those who own the market. The second humanity of those who are inserted in the market as producing a good or whatever, and the third humanity that they discard totally. And they discard that third humanity not only in Africa. A few months ago I saw a photo, which was a tractor pushing lots of corpses of people that had died of hunger, pushing them into a common grave. And no-one cares. The new TIME published the fighting in Sierra Leone, in which they are cutting hands and legs. And you saw a girl of 10 years old without both hands, showing this (points at his elbows) only to the people. So this is terrible and no-one cares. They care when it's Kuwait. They care when it's Iraq, where there is petroleum involved. But in Africa, it can disappear, they don't mind. And then, that's the third humanity, which is dispensable. And they say that. So they don't care about education and health. Why should they make people healthy, because healthy people are going to fight more than weak people. And then educated people are going to fight better that uneducated people, so here they are telling me that they are going to the university and the years before they always had a job if they go to finish the university. Now they say that they don't have a job, that they go to have other jobs like taxi drivers and things like that. In England, a few years ago, they ran out of teachers of English. And so they went to Holland to ask teachers of English in Holland to go to teach in England. It's completely crazy.

In Holland they are employing also manufacture workers from Germany, because they can't find skilled workers anymore.
And they go also to Thailand and Indonesia to make the children work, because it's less expensive. That's what Reebok does, what Adidas does, all those companies, so what they care is about money, that they are going to have more and more and more. And this is not an ending process, because if they say, o.k. they want to have money and when they've got enough money, they stop. They do not just that. Bill Gates, five years ago, he had 10 billion Dollars. I'd say: o.k., that's enough, but no. Now he's got almost 100 billion Dollars, and he's projecting more.

He could buy all of Africa
And make experiments in it. It is as cruel as that. The world is as cruel as that. Capitalism is as cruel as that.

But you said you were also optimistic.
I am, because at the same time I believe that I have seen in many countries people raising, organising themselves, and including through theatre. But not only through theatre. They organise themselves. They are trying to fight back. That's why I'm optimistic. To see the reality now: I don't see a country in which people are happy. And what I was discussing this morning: Why are we alive? To be happy! There's no sense in being alive and suffering and unhappy. There's no sense in that, we have the right to be happy. If this extraordinary thing happens, that we are born, out of all possibilities, in the earth life came and then it developed not only life, but the consciousness of life. We have the consciousness that we exist, it's fantastic. It's more than vegetables, more than animals. We have the consciousness, we created that thing. So we have the obligation to be happy. It's not only the right, but the obligation.

Or the courage to be happy
(laughs) yes the courage to be happy. So I'm optimistic 'cos I see people fighting. They are not surrendering. They are not saying o.k.. And sometimes I see things that I find wonderful. It is for instance France, the resistance against the globalisation is coming from the people who are closer to the earth, closer to the soil. From the people who are making cheese. This Paul, eh, I don't remember his (last) name, was arrested. You wouldn't believe that. He's a peasant with his cows and his goats and he makes cheese, but the common market wants to finish with the French cheese, because it is not pasteurized. But you cannot pasteurize the Camembert, you cannot paseurize the blue cheese, because that's living cheese, that's something new, it's fungus.

But anyhow, we can be happy, but it's difficult to make TO without money. And we can be happy but sometimes it's becoming Theatre of the Depressed. We were asking ourselves, you described the process of how you tried to get funding from the companies in Brazil, and they wouldn't do that, because you didn't fit into their image. But if those companies would come to finance Theatre of the Oppressed, would this mean that it would no longer be following its own goals?
I don't think so, because look: I have refused some financing because they came, the finance came under certain conditions. There was a big multinational that said very clearly that they were ready to pay whatever we needed. To have everyone with salary, to pay a place for us to stay. They had a place for us. They gave all that we needed. They said: you are not going to have any problems anymore. But the only thing that you have to do is to train people to be better functionaries of the company, that is to select. It was the personnel department that invited me. And then I said: no, that is not Theatre of the Oppressed and I don't want to do that. And then I refused a subvention which was something with which we would last as far as I would accept that job. But I said: I cannot accept because I don't accept the idea of this particular company. If it was the Brazilian Petrobrás, in which we are fighting to say: the oil is ours and don't sell our oil company to the foreigners because they have to keep it. For us it's a symbol of our patriotism. It's a symbol of our country, Petrobrás. If they would invite me to do that, I would do, because I want them to be strong. But for this foreign company, not because it was foreign, but because it was cynical, taking the power in my country, so I don't want that, I cannot do it: think in one way when I'm working with Theatre of the Oppressed and think the opposite when I want to get money. I am not against financing. I like to get financing, because you can live better. We've got five permanents, three administrative people, we are eight permanents and we have still seven more that are not permanents but if we have more financing, seven more would be permanents so our work would be much better. So I need, and we want to have more financing. But not if it comes with the conditions that you have to work for them when you don't agree with them. Agree with them, o.k., why not?

Now in Paris you founded the international organisation, the AITO. What has happened since then, what is the actual situation?
It worked, twice we founded. But to have this work really, we have to have money. Without money, you would have lots and lots of persons all for that.

UNESCO gave you the Pablo Picasso Award. When are they gonna give the money to do Theatre of the Oppressed and say: now you have to do something with that method because we have recognised it. In the next decade UNESCO will have a project against violence and for peace all over the world.
I think it's difficult, because we have tried already, because they want peace. And I want peace too, but not passivity. Peace, that's what we want, peace, but not passivity. Ans sometimes they want peace with passivity, and that's not possible to combine both things. Look, I am trying, UNESCO says: we want a scholarship for one person from Asia, or from Africa to start with us. Only one. And then they said: if we could find money in Brazil, they could send five, because, for instance, for one person they spend $ 5000, to take it and then if we could find $ 5000 there (in Brazil), they could instead of one person $ 25.000 for five persons, but we should have $ 25.000 there. And the Brazilians don't get that money, we cannot find that money, so they sent only one. They had promised me, but what happened is this: we could imagine to make an international centre if we had concrete things, maybe they would accept. You know, if it's not only one country, if it's only me in Brazil, they say you have to have the counterpart in Brazil. But I say o.k. I don't have the counterpart in Brazil, but it's not Brazil, it is Italy, it is Holland, it is Germany, it is, I don't know, England. They have a strong, strong movement of Theatre of the Oppressed in England. And then if we could have five countries and go to UNESCO, those five countries need to have a centre, an international centre, and this international centre needs to have a secretary, an office, whatever, where is it going to be, in which country? That could decide those things. It would be much much more possible. I probably, I'm going to work now with an organisation which has also ramifications in Holland and in Luxemburg and they invited me to go to Cambridge by the end of next month. It is an organisation, I forgot the name, but I can find it for you. And it will be an organisation that will fight for peace for eliminating conflicts using art and culture. That's exactly the combination of art and culture and the work for peace what we want, but without passivity. Then it's o.k. Maybe I can launch there the idea also. You are European, you want this, there is several groups of Theatre of the Oppressed in Europe, they would like to participate in something with you, that's in which way we can do that.

Yesterday we had a meeting with Roberto, with Fritz Letsch and somebody else from Germany and we were talking about the possibilities for a European organisation.
I would be happy to have a newsletter of all those groups. Because each one of you is creating one, but it should be necessary to have one that could have addresses.

We propose to offer our newsletter as a platform for other groups in Europe, so they can announce what they're doing, write articles and so on.
But you have the money to publish that?

At the moment we have. Because we are thinking in the opposite way. As you have probably read in our newsletter. We say: TO is needed. We say: you need us, we don't need you in the first place. So we cooperate with institutions in a way that they give us the logistics and the infrastructure and we provide the theatre. They provide the rest.
Yes, because sometimes something international really is necessary.At six o'clock I have a meeting with a woman from Uganda. I know there is a very big movement of Theatre of the Oppressed in Uganda. I don't have an address there. If I want to cummunicate with them, I don't know to whom, but they're there. There is Poona Chandra Rao of Sekundharab in India. Some of his actors were arrested. And then he's asking for help and support from the rest of the world to try to free them and let them do their work, no? But I got the address because someone via internet, a Japanese, sent it to me via internet. I don't know his name, but he's Japanese. Then I got in touch via Internet and I said: what can I do? I'm sending it to other people also, if that's important, no? So if we could have a central information. Sometimes things like this are happening, for instance you are not from here, you come from abroad, me too, we all come from abroad, but we meet here. It's important. In Minneapolis, in the United States every year they have a conference called "Pedagogy and the Theatre of the Oppressed", every year. The last year was in New York, next year it's gonna be in Minneapolis. What they are trying to propose for this time is that the conference will last three days only. And it's about education and theatre. But to stay together two days more, all those people who already practise Theatre of the Oppressed, like you who already practice the Theatre of the Oppressed. We try to say: can you come, can you come and get there and during two days stay together or either show the things that you have done, or asking things or giving information. To make, during two days, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, let's show things that we have seen, let's show video tapes, to have an idea what is the movement and out of that can be something more durable. But every year.

It was thirteen years before you returned to the Netherlands last September. What was your impression after this very long time.
It was good. I met you again, I met Paul that had changed a lot with his conception. It was nice to have seen you. But it was really thirteen years in that city.

Yes Orvelte was famous, for when you left there was really a huge explosion of all kinds of groups starting off. We started in 1987 too. We did ten years of good work and we did more than 300 performances of Forum Theatre and then we went bankrupt. But we put a lot of energy into it. We had a break for two years and now we've come up with a new organisation.

Now we come to the Legislative Theatre. We found that it does not necessarily have to produce laws but also internal regulations, internal democracy like in unions and big organisations, like a hospital.
Yes, because what made us start working with the Legislative Theatre was that: If we make a Forum for a specific reason, I mean like a strike that we are going to do tomorrow, we make Forum and that immediately we prepare a strategy to go and extrapolate real life. Some you'll do it only for reflecting of the problem. In this case it can be very good. But it can also have a cathartic effect, when you say, oh, well I have done it, so I don't have to do it anymore. I did it in the theatre, so I don't have to do it in real life. And what we want is to transform real life. It's not only to show that transformation is possible, it's to transform reality. And then we started saying: we have to do something beyond that. And one of the ways was to say: let's be inside the parliament and make the law. The law being some instrument of work, not something we discussed this morning, it's not god, it's not that you make the law and everything is good, no. Because the law is not self-appliable. The law needs someone to apply it. So we need the Forum Theatre in order to make sure we make Legisalative Theatre. We got to make sure that it will have consequences, to not only to reflect about it. Not only to think about, but to act. And then it was one form of acting to go to the parliament and to make law in the parliament. But of course if you have a trade union, and a trade union has regulations, has a law all the same, so you do the same. The problem is how do you make the relation between the population, the basis, which is the idea of the Legislative Theatre, and the promulgation of the law. Who promulgates the law? Normally you vote for the person, and then the person is away from you. The moment that they vote, you are not there.

You cannot de-vote them.
That's what I would like to do, to signal: I want my vote back. So you would have it always. It's like on television, where they have a way of knowing how many people are watching a program. So you could know that 44% during your speech, while you were talking (switched off).

One specific question about the Rainbow. You describe the human being in a psychoanalytical sense. Would you agree?
I would not use the word psychoanalytic, because the psychoanalysis is a technique, is a special technique.

But it's also a way of analysing the human being, of descibing what he is, in relation to the cosmos.
Yes, but if you look into what I say there, the basis of all that is Stanislawski. And beside Stanislawski: Freud and Moreno, they are all from the beginning of this century. And my wife is a psychoanalyst, so we discussed very much about psychoanalysis and all that sort of things. But that's what I really believe and Stanislawski also. So it can have, it is a psychological analysis.

In psychoanalysis, Freud says: culture makes people suffer, it restricts the possibilities of the human being. You said the desire is the thing we have to liberate in the human being. So that sounds very similar.
And the desire in confrontation with the desires of the people of the same kind. It's not my desire and the rest of the world. It's all desire as members of the movement called Theatre of the Oppressed. So we have one desire. Each one of us has the same desire as the other one. And we are workers in the same factory. We have one desire. It's not a desire in the sense of: I desire this only, it's not in the sense of society. It is as though I could say that it's a social desire, if I could use that expression, which is an incoherence, because desire usually goes against society. And society is about the regulation of desire, you have to regulate desire. But sometimes the regulation of the desire is done by the desire of some people, that they impose their desire. Before you had the figure of the king, not the English king, or the Danish king or the Dutch king, but of the absolute king who was also in the first line of the fighting, he was there. It was his will what law. Because he desired that it's a law, you don't have to question that.

So we don't want to liberate his desires.
No, not his desires, not Bill Gates' desires, but the social desire. What can we represent in this class, representing this group? And it's some more also desire. It's not any desire. I can have the desire to put fire into the whole city. Nero, o.k., it was his desire.

During your courses you explain that TO is not a dogma. Many groups are inventing TO everyday around the world. Are there any examples you can give of new techniques?
No, I would say that for instance there is no dogma in the sense that I joker a scene with my personality, my way of jokering. There are people that are more calm and go more directly to a point. There are the people who are more excited. For instance, the Africans, they joker in a very special way. What I saw in South Africa that even the intervention of the specators, of the spect-actors, many times in South Africa they intervene with rhythmical movement of their bodies, but they understood what it meant. But I could not understand it. So I have seen some interventions and the audience was reacting and I said but what are they reacting, what does that dancing mean? And they had another from another nation that had an other culture and danced in a different way, it meant something else. So they don't use, for instance the Austrian way it is much more talking, it's more through the words. The Africans are not like that, it is more rhythmical. I would say that the Indians are more melodious. You have that melody of their movement and they dance all of the time. The presentation they did in Brazil, two shows and one that I saw there in Calcutta, everyone seemed to be under water. That's their style. They use it in a way that it's more their culture. What cannot be changed, not because it is a dogma, because it's part of this structure, is what's essential. For instance, if you replace the antagonist, the oppressor, to make the antagonist, the oppressor a nice person, comprehensive, you don't operate the fundamentals of the Forum Theatre which is to fight and try to find new ways and you don't do that. And it's not because I don't want, it's because if you do that, it does not work. It's not because I invented the rule, I discovered that rule. You invent when you create something, and then it's out of your head. You discover something that existed already. So don't think they're invented and not discovered. They cannot be changed because it's not my opinion. It is so, or it's not so. And then you cannot change the essentials. But the Forum all of the time, many many times I put in my book: sometimes I learn techniques, I learn games. And I put the origin in my book. I put: The Columbian Hypnosis, the Telegram of Palm Beach, I don't remember well, it was Seattle, Carnival in Rio. Wherever I learn the technique or I invent a technique there, but it has to do with that group. So I always give the origin, to show that it's not in my office that I am on my computer, inventing games. It's by seeing people, how they exchange. The Theatre of the Oppressed has this advantage inside, it has many cultures inside.Games for Actors and Non-Actors has things from all over the world and some things I thought were originally from one country and then I discovered that it was four centuries old. The games in Brueghel's Games for Children painting, that is here in the Museum in Vienna, there are some games that I thought were Portuguese games, that they're in Brueghel already, I saw, I recognised it. So they're very ancient and very recent.

We play Brecht's The Exception and the Rule as a Forum play and many people recognise themselves in the Tritagonist role, the one who doesn't say anything, the one who is the passive one, who is just there to keep the oppression going on, you could say. Because he's not acting. So I experiment a lot with replacing that role, because people said to me while I was jokering: I am not the victim, I am the one who is doing nothing. I thought that was quite interesting.
That's very interesting, it's very nice that you did it with Brecht also, because it's an already existing play. Because for Forum Theatre most of the time we write the new plays, but you can use old plays also. They are there with a problem, why not? I did the Jewish Wife, I did The Exception and the Rule and I believe that in Brecht there are many other scenes that you could put into Forum. But it happens yes, that sometimes, for instance it has happened in relation to racism that people say: I am white, I never suffered racism, but when I see a black man being a victim of racism, I don't know what to do. And so they make plays about them being oppressed, cos they don't know what to do in that character that didn't do anything. So what can I do? Then we don't want to know what could the black man do, 'cos we are not blacks. We don't know if we can do that or not. But we are passive witnesses sometimes, and we would like to know: what can I do? And that's very nice when you see that, because sometimes people, it's much more honest to do that than to force to replace the child, but you are an adult, replace the woman, but you are a man, so you have neither identity nor sometimes even analogy. If you have identity, at least analogy. If you don't have analogy, why should you replace, it's not your capacity, you cannot learn anything from that, you cannot know what the problem is.

So there's no metaxis.
No, no metaxis, you don't belong to that world.

O.k. Thank you very much.
You're very welcome, But let's continue to think about the collective thing