ABSTRACT
When Augusto Boal’s political philosophy became manifest as an aesthetic language, a language he called Theatre of the Oppressed, it was 1974 (the year of his book’s first publication) and he was in exile in Argentina after years of living under a hardline military-based regime in Brazil. The enemy in both countries was evident; the oppressive economic and political conditions derived from a known source, however masked its cultural agents may have been. Censorship, repression, violence, and exile were commonplace. In Brazil, those like Boal who were not very subtle in their expressions of resistance had been targeted for punitive action, at the very least for surveillance. Many such oppositional artists remained in Brazil even after the brutal military coup of 1968. Boal, after serving a term in jail, left Brazil in 1971. After approximately four years in Argentina and two years in Portugal, he set up residence in Paris where in 1979 he established his Center of Theatre of the Oppressed.
