ABSTRACT
The landscape is distressing, but not desolate. There are struggles, joys, and life that exist in the world of Theatre of the Oppressed, potentialities that will probably only be extinguished when we are no longer haunted by the vampire who transforms everything into a commodity to suck its value dry. May this book be of some help to the vampire hunters yet to come! It is with those who make such invaluable, fragile, and intermittent experiences of TO that I feel solidarity. To speak of those groups, with whom each experience is always singular, in just a few mere lines here would be to generalize and turn them into abstractions when their strength lies precisely in being linked to their time like lips to teeth. It is for those groups that I write what I hope will be of some use. Our goals are cloudy, and the mist—who knows—may never completely disperse. The difficult task, however, is old and evident. End oppression. To do that, we will have to confront oppression as it is constituted today. With the ever-changing world, there is no guarantee that our theatrical arsenal will be up to the task, but there is also no need for the fatalistic assumption that it will not be! Our tools cannot simply be abandoned; nor can they be used without a critical perspective. No sign from the sky will validate our work. We remain with only the poor and irreplaceable proof of practice. May our practices grow each day more intertwined with people's organizations and more inventive to deal with the problems we face now. May those practices grow stronger and more powerful until the day they will no longer be useful in any other way than that which is required by the splendid realms of leisure and beauty.
