Augusto Boal “Poetics of the oppressed” in Community Performance Reader, ed. Petra Kuppers and Gwen Robertson (London: Routledge, 2007) 13-23.

Augusto Boal is renowned as one of the most influential theatre makers of the 20^th century due to his theoretical and orthodox methodology in the construction of interactive and revolutionary theatre. In this chapter of the ‘Community Performance Reader’ Boal outlines forms of successful ‘peoples theatre’ in which the performance occurs within non traditional performance spaces or through the direct engagement and interaction of the audience.

With a section of the chapter entitled ‘Spectator is a bad word’ Boal emphatically states that the role of spectator dehumanises and reduces individuals to passive observers of what is often the ruling classes didactic and closed theatre performances. In this Chapter, Boal writes clearly and with an unforgiving and fierce critique of the capitalist paradigm. This is seen as he peppers his theatre descriptions and scripts with a class analysis of dominance and repression created by living in a patriarchal and capitalist society.

Boal’s influential work in ‘peoples theatre’ and ‘forum theatre’ is never explicitly labelled by Boal as Performative research, but in essence is just that. Boal’s pedagogy for theatre creation is a form of practice led research that has been extremely influential in regards to different forms of qualitative and specifically performance-based research methods. Boal’s work is a must read for researches and students interested in utilising theatre as medium for social science research or just in regards to understanding the power and possibility for theatre to be a ‘rehearsal of revolution’.

Joh Fairley

Link to a short biography and interview with Augosto Boal in 2007