ABSTRACT
As we have seen, productions are not the be-all and end-all of Theatre of the Oppressed but only one possible outcome of an exploratory process. Moreover, those that are created are constantly changing and open to change. This is more than a matter of staying alive and fresh – a quality of all good theatre. A Theatre of the Oppressed production is essentially a starting point, a proposition an audience is invited to contest. In this work, writes Boal, ‘we desecrate the stage, that altar over which usually the artist presides alone. We destroy the work offered by the artists in order to construct a new work out of it, together’ (Boal 1995: 7). From this perspective the production is the whole event, encompassing both planned and unplanned elements. Could any one production, with one audience, perfectly illustrate Boal’s theories in practice? Probably not, since at the heart of the work is the ambition of far-reaching social transformation; no individual event, however well conceived, executed and effectively provocative, could realise this. Furthermore, while one audience might be livelier and more responsive than another, a performance that is slower, its spect-actors reluctant or resentful, can be equally revealing about the nature of the oppression being addressed. For all these reasons this chapter focuses principally on the method of Forum Theatre, using
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Did Boal invent Forum? He is regularly credited with having done so, but it is possible to find related practices elsewhere. The British Theatre in Education (TIE) movement is one such area. While some TIE companies have made self-conscious use of Theatre of the Oppressed techniques since encountering the work in the 1980s, others used methods akin to Forum Theatre years earlier. The ambitions of Theatre of the Oppressed and TIE are similar: both aim to activate their audiences, creating structures that will facilitate spectators’ participation within the drama as makers of meaning and agents of change. Comparison can also be made between Forum Theatre and the ‘Conflict Theatre’ of Jacob Moreno, creator of psychodrama and group psychotherapy. Moreno identified a four-stage process towards a fully therapeutic theatre: Dogmatic Theatre (the conventional tradition within which the audience remains passive); Conflict Theatre (which combines the actors’ play with audience intervention); Theatre of Spontaneity (here theme, plot and development of the piece are agreed collectively and there are no ‘spectators’); and Therapeutic Theatre (a cathartic ‘theatre of the private sphere’, focused on traumatic life moments of participants). As Feldhendler observes, Conflict Theatre corresponds closely to Forum Theatre (just as Therapeutic Theatre resembles Boal’s Rainbow of Desire techniques): both forms begin with conventional divisions between actor and spectator, stage and auditorium, and then disrupt these by making space for personal responses and physical intervention (1994: 90-3). The point of these comparisons is not to imply lack of originality on Boal’s part but to place Forum Theatre within a wider context. Boal arrived at the method as the next logical step beyond the purely oral participation offered by Simultaneous Dramaturgy. Other practitioners follow different routes, but find the combination of observation and participation, action and discussion, production and process, similarly suited to their needs.
