Theatre of the Opressed

Theatre of the Oppressed

Today in class, we were first introduced to the idea of theatre of the oppressed!! As one of the possible themes of work that we will be experimenting with.

The Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal was the first man to introduce this style of theatre in the 1960’s. We were explained, that its main idea was that it was a form of theatre that had the audience engaged as much as the actor in the performance, and that the themes of work were socio/political aspect of society.

First impressions!!:

At first, I though of this as being group talks, where people reenacted aspects of society for the audience to discuss with, however though exercises in class,  I learned that the approach was slightly different.

Theatre of the absurd is all about interaction!

Activity 1
We divided the class into 2 different groups, facing one another. We were asked to share a moment in life, in which we felt like we realized something about ourselves, and in which we might have felt oppressed. We then got to act out our scenes to experiment more about the principals of “theatre of the Oppressed!”.

Our group chose Juliana Ocampo’s anecdote, of the day in which she was grounded without going to a huge party of a very popular girl at school. She described to us the feeling of being dressed up in her favorite gown and being about to leave as she had made a lot of plans, however being stopped by her parents for not having had had her medicine before, and instead throwing it down the drain. These were her words” “I felt oppressed, inside my body and my house, as I wasn’t able to go out, I felt like I was being oppressed inside a very little bow, because of all the anger and anguish I felt inside”.

We acted out the role play, each of us taking up one of the roles of her family member. We showed a build in tension in Juliana when her maid told of on her to her parents, just before she was leaving the house. Tension was built in the intended moments of silent before her mum gave her the punishment. Amanda, who played as Juliana, exaggerated the moment in which she fell to the ground crying, to really highlight her distress. We used split screen to show the party image that we thought Jul’s would be imagining in her head as she cried, with all of her friends dancing in the disco. By this, we reinforced the idea of being oppressed and not being able to liberate yourself.

After having performed to the other group in the class, our teacher made us make alterations when we thought it was necessary to improve our performance, by having the rest of our class mates say :”STOP” at any moment of the performance, and either giving suggestions in terms of acting/positioning/ differing in reactions or coming in and substituting a member of original acts to act the scene out differently. This is a form of “Forum theatre”.

It was here when I understood!!

Theatre of the Oppressed is all about utilizing interactive techniques, in which the audience acts as “spect-actors” and therefore using communication as a base to understanding and producing drama. It was then when I understood how these types of drama are used in big groups to discuss political and social issues in society, as people can give their opinion of how things happen!!