page_title: Theatre of the Oppressed
section_title: Forum theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Theatre of the Oppressed / Major branches / Forum theatre
caption_attribution_description: English: Participants in the Theatre of the Oppressed workshop presented by Brazilian theater director and writer Augusto Boal at Riverside Church in New York City.
context_page_description: The Theatre of the Oppressed describes theatrical forms that the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal first elaborated in the 1970s, initially in Brazil and later in Europe. Boal was influenced by the work of the educator and theorist Paulo Freire. Boal's techniques use theatre as means of promoting social and political change in alignment originally with radical-left politics and later with centre-left ideology. In the Theatre of the Oppressed, the audience becomes active, such that as "spect-actors" they explore, show, analyse and transform the reality in which they are living.
context_section_description: While practicing in South America earlier in his career, Boal would apply "simultaneous dramaturgy". In this process, the actors or audience members could stop a performance, often a short scene in which a character was being oppressed in some way (for example, a typically chauvinist man mistreating a woman or a factory owner mistreating an employee). In early forms of "simultaneous dramaturgy", the audience could propose any solution, by calling out suggestions to the actors who would improvise the changes on stage. This was an attempt to undo the traditional audience/actor partition and bring audience members into the performance, to have an input into the dramatic action they were watching.
  Forum Theatre was essentially born from "simultaneous dramaturgy". The concept of the "spect-actor" became a dominant force within and shaped Boal's theatre work, gradually helping it shift into what he called Forum Theatre (due to the acting's taking on the character of a public discussion or series of proposals, only in dramatic format). The audience were now encouraged to not only imagine change but to actually practise that change, by coming on stage as "spect-actors" to replace the protagonist and act out an intervention to "break the oppression". Through this process, the participant is also able to realize and experience the challenges of achieving the improvements he/she suggested (Wardrip-Fruin, 344). The actors who welcome the spect-actor volunteering onto the stage play against the spect-actor's attempts to intervene and change the story, offering a strong resistance so that the difficulties in making any change are also acknowledged.
  Thus, Boal's current manifestation of Forum theatre is as follows: the actors (either professional actors or non professionals drawn from oppressed communities) perform a play with a scripted core, in which an oppression relevant to the audience is played out. After reaching the scripted conclusion, in which the oppressed character(s) fail to overturn their oppression, the actors begin the production again, although often in a condensed form. At any point during this second performance, any spect-actor may call out "stop!" and take the place of the actor portraying the oppressed individual (this actor stays on stage but to the side, giving suggestions to the spect-actor who has replaced him/her).
  If and when the oppression has been overthrown by the spect-actors, the production changes again: the spect-actors now have the opportunity to replace the oppressors, and find new ways of challenging the oppressed character. In this way a more realistic depiction of the oppression can be made by the audience, who are often victims of the oppression. The whole process is designed to be dialectic, coming to a conclusion through the consideration of opposing arguments, rather than didactic, in which the moral argument is one-sided and pushed from the actors with no chance of reply or counter-argument.
  Boal clarifies that this practice is not intended to show the correct path, but rather to discover all possible paths which may be further examined. The theatre itself is not revolutionary; but it offers a chance to rehearse for revolution. The spectators learn much from the enactment even though the acting is fiction, because the fiction simulates real-life situations, problems, and solutions. It stimulates the practice of resistance to oppression in reality, and offers a "safe space" for practicing making change. When faced in reality with a similar situation they've rehearsed in theatre, participants who have experienced Forum Theatre ideally will desire to be proactive, and will have the courage to break oppressive situations in real life, since they feel much more prepared and confident in resolving the conflict. Another way of thinking about it is that rehearsing the actions helps spect-actors to develop their own courage and makes them desire action for change in real life. The practice of this form creates an uneasy sense of incompleteness that seeks fulfillment through real action. (Wardrip-Frui
caption: Participants in a workshop on the Theatre of the Oppressed in New York City. Riverside Church, May 13, 2008.
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