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 two productions for illustration.
