Introduction

In the Introduction, Schutzman provides a history of the development of Augusto Boal’s Joker System in Brazil during the 1960s. It offers a description of the structures, elements, characters, and goals of the Joker System, or Coringa (in Portuguese), as originally articulated by Boal in Theatre of the Oppressed. Schutzman argues for the Joker System’s relevance in contemporary culture, focusing on its rare fusion of ethical rigor and wildly experimental, even chaotic aesthetic strategies that destabilize encrusted notions of reality. She poses the Joker System as a form of resistance that does not promote or intensify oppositional stances – that is, one that does not reinstate binaries and identity-based divisions. Schutzman cites how the structural slippages in humor can be harnessed toward such nonoppositional resistance, offering personal and professional experiences that support the possibilities. Finally, the Introduction includes descriptions of the six chapters and (In)conclusion of Radical Doubt, which together expand and apply the principles of the Joker System well beyond the realm of the theatrical.