In 1931, Augusto Boal was born in Rio de Janeiro to Portuguese immigrants on March 16. When he went to Columbia University to study chemical engineering, he also began to take a course at the School of Dramatic Arts under John Gassner where he observed the theories of Stanislavski being put into practice. In 1956, when he was back in Brazil, he joined the Arena Theatre in Sao Paulo where he worked on giving classics of world theatre a Brazilian feeling. By the end of the 1960s, Boal had developed a set of techniques that he called Theatre of the Oppressed, influenced by Brecht and Paulo Friere. Theatre of the Oppressed was based on the concept that theatre is a way of life that everybody could participate in rather than just a single event to attend. All human beings are actors and spectators because they act and observe all the time. Boal called these people “spect-actors.” The only difference between actors in a theatre and everyday people is that actors are conscious of what they are doing and what feelings they are conveying while the people on the street do not realize they are speaking theatre. He would often pause a performance to allow the audience to have an input on what they were watching and to break apart the wall that existed between actors and the audience. This was part of what was known as forum theatre. The development of it happened accidentally when an audience member could not get her idea through to the actor so went on stage to act it out for herself. Forum theatre involved actors performing a play with a scripted core once, then a second time to allow audience participation where spect-actors replace the actual actors. In 1986, Boal was invited by Darcy Ribeiro to create the Popular Theatre Factory with the goal to make theatre available to all people; in the same year, he created a Brazilian centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio which took his ideas of audience participation out on the streets. This was called invisible theatre where a play that has already been rehearsed will be acted out in the streets without the passersby knowing it is a play. The plays performed address a certain issue, such as racism or sexism, and some actors pretend to be passersby and comment on the issue to encourage real passersby to do the same. Boal’s goal was to get the community to discuss the issue and notice the violence present in society.
Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
Laying down her dagger
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,--
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:--
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather's joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
Using Boal’s theory, this monologue by Juliette would be acted out by a participating audience member. After having seen the tragic repercussions, the audience member would be allowed to attempt to change the outcome by altering some lines or actions. However, they cannot completely change the play but instead try to throw off the oppression found in it, which, in this case, would be the argument between the parents that forces Romeo and Juliette to keep their love quiet.
Another one of Boal’s ideas was image theatre. Each person “sculpts” themselves or another person to represent a specific situation or emotion. Then, all of the people move into one group and use the images they have just created to form one picture. Since Boal believed the body to be the most important form of expression, participants are encouraged to immediately form an image rather than thinking about it. The images can be altered until all the people agree on the last picture to fully represent what they think of the idea.
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