ABSTRACT
In 1982 the Greenwich Young People’s Theatre (GYPT) began integrating the methodology of the Brazilian director Augusto Boal into its existing TIE practice. It was the first British TIE company to do so, and those early tentative steps marked the beginning of an experiment which was not only to enrich its own work for the next decade but to spread the influence of Boal throughout the TIE movement and to presage the introduction of the Theatre of the Oppressed to a wider constituency of practitioners and teachers in many reaches of the British theatre world. This chapter will examine the reasons for Boal’s work proving so peculiarly appropriate for translation to a TIE context and providing such an enduring source of inspiration; it will also highlight the significant changes and developments made by the GYPT company in the process of adapting his methodology to its own usage.
