THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED

An opportunity for anybody to intervene in the social play

Theatre of the Oppressed is a set of tools aimed at providing people with the opportunity to analyse, understand and resolve their problems by exposing them on stage.
These Participatory Theatre events and trainings can happen anywhere (street, subway, school, political assembly, church…). The goal being to open up theatrical spaces for anybody to foster change and evolution on tricky situations.

Forum Theatre, one of the main techniques, stages problematic situations. This is the first step. In the second step, these are performed before audiences whose members will be invited to intervene, will grow aware of difficulties, discover common mistakes, test solutions and decide together which is the best behaviour. This theatre is very accessible since its games, exercises and techniques, all very gradual, are meant to allow anybody to express and overcome oppression, beyond linguistic and intellectual capacity.

Augusto Boal is the inventor of Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal deeply revolutionized classical theatre giving people the possibility to intervene in the Play, hence training to improve their social life and to surmount oppressions. Boal became deputy of Rio De Janeiro in the 90’s and allowed people to create laws through theatre.

Antanas Mockus also had a deep influence on our way to practice theatre. The ex-mayor of Bogota used very diverse theatrical tools to transform his city. Mimes were posted in streets, instead of policemen, to tackle incivility and traffic violations. Clowns and other street artists considerably appeased the city and fostered active citizenship in a very creative way.